power outage will affect any grow. the fact that a power outage will also affect your watering cycle is kinda shitty but not that big of a deal.u can hand water every hydro system just like anything else.people say "well every thing happends so fast theres no way i can catch it"not true, only in a aero system is were u really really run into trouble".i like hydro a.for the growth.b the production. c. the quality. with hydro u can see the problem fast and learn how to fix it and watch the problems fade away verry verry fast,as aposed to soil were fixing problems can take weeks to show results instead of in 1 or 2 days.its just a matter of personally preference.i think i will never do a soil grow again for as long as i live,with the exception of maybe doing a few auto flowering strains that im thinking about running. its just to much effort to try and hand water over 30 soil containers,then trying to deal with the run off water.no thankssss. as far as checking ph and tds every day,it take less than 1 min of your time to stick in a hand held meter and get a reading. i spend about 5 mins in my grow room every day except when im changing my water, and that only takes about 10 min max, including mixing up a new solution whal the old stuff is pumped out doors into the garden.