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What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

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Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#841

Post by theshrike79 »

tallanvor wrote: post #839
theshrike79 wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work that well. American fireplaces in general are a joke. You are just spending way too much energy and not really storing it anywhere except the air around it. They are built to look good, not to actually heat anything properly. Check any Nord…

Why would most places bother with the expense of a fireplace really designed to heat a room? I can assure you that most new construction in Oslo (pretty much only apartments these days) don't include fireplaces. And why would they? With steam pipes running through much of the city, there's no need for the expense and pollution involved with a fireplace except for show anyway. The fact is that cities in the US, like i…

Of course apartments in city centres shouldn't have wood burning fireplaces in them. This discussion wasn't about multi-story apartments, but about the uselessness of American-style fireplaces in detached homes.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#842

Post by makomk »

tallanvor wrote: post #839
theshrike79 wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work that well. American fireplaces in general are a joke. You are just spending way too much energy and not really storing it anywhere except the air around it. They are built to look good, not to actually heat anything properly. Check any Nord…

Why would most places bother with the expense of a fireplace really designed to heat a room? I can assure you that most new construction in Oslo (pretty much only apartments these days) don't include fireplaces. And why would they? With steam pipes running through much of the city, there's no need for the expense and pollution involved with a fireplace except for show anyway. The fact is that cities in the US, like i…

Cities in the US and Europe have very reliable power and gas supplies, until suddenly they don't. The trouble is that people have started to take the reliability of the power grid for granted and stopped thinking about what happens when it inevitably fails.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#843

Post by evgen »

s0rce wrote: post #303
mikesabbagh wrote: post #270

It is surprising that windfarms are freezing. Here in Quebec, we have windfarms that have more than 6 months a year of snow and temperatures much below the freezing point. How can they freeze? they dont use water or gaz or oil. It is only a fan and dynamo. Did water seep inside and freeze it?

Different choice of lubricants? I have no idea really, I also read they have wind power generation in Antarctica so its not a fundamental problem just a result of certain design/engineering choices.

If you hunt around a little you will find info on the cold weather packages for wind turbines. Easiest for me to find was info about GE's 'Cold Weather Extreme' package for some of their mid-sized commercial turbines. You are looking at different lubricants, heating systems that use parasitic load on the turbine to warm joints and other critical points of the structure, and systems to prevent icing on the blades.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#844

Post by Mauricebranagh »

tacon wrote: post #798
roenxi wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is annoying when this sort of event happens and everyone starts deciding what they believe to be truth within 48 hours of the outage. It makes more sense to be talking about the 2011 outages in terms of what went wrong than the 2021 ones - because we have actual information on 2011 instead of "things went wrong!" now. I want to thank you personally for injecting a PDF into the discussion, but also positively asser…

Since the Texas Legislature is in its once every two year session right now, and four million Texans are pissed off, it will be fun to see if new laws result this cycle.

Once every two years FFS this makes the Handforth Parish Council look Good.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#845

Post by makomk »

cromwellian wrote: post #499
cavisne wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heavy reliance on natural gas is not traditional. Its a side effect of 1)

No, it's because natural gas got cheaper, and they switched to the cheaper source. "The report also addresses the interdependency of the electric and natural gas industries. “Utilities are becoming increasingly reliant on gas-fired generation, in large part because shale production has dramatically reduced the cost of gas,” In 2011 when this happened before, Texas had even less renewables. I realize you're trying to…

Natural gas got cheaper if you don't include the cost of the power grid going down in the case of weather like this. I do wonder if it would still be cheaper if you do... it's not just the power plants that failed, apparently the pipelines and the natural gas production infrastructure couldn't cope either, and that sounds potentially really expensive to fix.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#846

Post by batty_alex »

paraselene_ wrote: post #780
theshrike79 wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work that well. American fireplaces in general are a joke. You are just spending way too much energy and not really storing it anywhere except the air around it. They are built to look good, not to actually heat anything properly. Check any Nord…

Or you know, instead of having a whole fireplace, just get a kerosene heater? Enough to heat a whole room in case of power&gas outages, last long enough through the night on one fill, and kerosene can be had at a gas station.

Please don’t run a kerosene heater indoors without an amazing ventilation system.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#847

Post by ants_a »

lmilcin wrote: post #825
evgen wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between a fireplace and a wood-fueled heater. You have described the latter. No one would ever call what you have shown in those images a 'fireplace' in English. There are wood-fueled heaters but they have mostly been replaced by ones that use composite wood pellets, these are popular for off-grid heating in the US.

That's exactly the point. Here this is the fireplace. You will find western style "fireplaces" in some new homes which are nothing more than show pieces to have cosy atmosphere but are utterly impractical for the task of heating the home. Now, what what we would call "heater" is usually placed in the basement for practical purposes. The ones I showed above are placed directly in living area and are way more efficient…

There are plenty of manufacturers making glass fireplace inserts that are designed to be combined with a heat accumulating flue systems. Romotop or Hoxter are examples of fancier ones. The finished stoves typically are specced to retain 50% peak heat output after 12h, 25% after 24h. Combined with automated dampers you just load the firewood, light it and can then basically forget about it as the automation takes care of regulating primary and secondary air and shutting air supply off once the fire is done burning.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#848

Post by Ma8ee »

makomk wrote: post #842
tallanvor wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would most places bother with the expense of a fireplace really designed to heat a room? I can assure you that most new construction in Oslo (pretty much only apartments these days) don't include fireplaces. And why would they? With steam pipes running through much of the city, there's no need for the expense and pollution involved with a fireplace except for show anyway. The fact is that cities in the US, like i…

Cities in the US and Europe have very reliable power and gas supplies, until suddenly they don't. The trouble is that people have started to take the reliability of the power grid for granted and stopped thinking about what happens when it inevitably fails.

We take metric shit tons for granted in our everyday lives. The risk that we will be out of power for more than a few hours where I live is very small, so I chose to save the about $10000 that it cost to install a fireplace and a chimney, so I’m instead prepared if I get long time sick, unemployed, or the car breaks down. All of those risks are order of magnitude higher than that we would be without electricity for any extended period of time.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#849

Post by dbrgn »

lmilcin wrote: post #810
gregw2 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: All 7 developers in my Houston team (semi-geographically scattered in the city) lost power; half for >24 hrs (it's 10-25 degrees F here for the last 2-3 days). Most lost water for some stretch of time and some still don't have it. I don't think any completely lost heat (most have gas) but at least one person found their gas fireplace they were hoping would heat them up when out of power didn't really work t…

I have seen some fireplaces in US (I am from Poland) and outside of northern states they are all decorative pieces not designed to heat the home. A good fireplace is completely closed (yes! no fire visible!) and is built to recover and store as much heat as possible. * the fireplace must be enclosed completely so that it is possible to regulate amount of air going inside and especially to close it completely and SAFE…

Where I previously lived (in Switzerland), we had a fireplace/stove very similar to the first picture. A bit similar to this: https://artoffire.ch/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Kachelofen-s... On the other side of the wall was the kitchen, and this was where you actually set up the fire, inside an ancient iron cooking stove. Using some kind of a "flap" you could allow the heat from the stove (for cooking) to go to the tiled stove in the living room (for heating).

In my current appartment (also in Switzerland), this is the stove we have: https://imgur.com/a/SVKahw5 We also have an oil based central heating system, so it's not really needed anymore, but on very cold days it allows to get the living room warm and cozy.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#850

Post by roenxi »

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #844
tacon wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the Texas Legislature is in its once every two year session right now, and four million Texans are pissed off, it will be fun to see if new laws result this cycle.

Once every two years FFS this makes the Handforth Parish Council look Good.

Continuing my theme from above; if legislators took a 6 month recess after every major crisis before starting to debate it the quality of law would probably be a lot better. Democracies naturally tend to deadlock anyway, stuff everyone agrees on got waved through years ago. Most of the time in session is grandstanding and making a fuss without achieving much.

Legislators have a terrible habit of using a crisis to:

1) Make something that was already illegal super-dooper illegal (see: terrorism).

2) Mucking up traditional safeguards against bad government - like evidence requirements, reasonable process, human rights in some cases, debating the legislation, reading the bill before voting on it, etc.

In emergencies, legislators are just going to rubber-stamp things technical experts wave under their nose/hand power to some executive. They aren't needed.

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