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Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

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Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#281

Post by sdenton4 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #211
jwkpiano1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The elevation of Houston is _higher_ than the elevation of SF. Yes, there are many hills, and the _max_ elevation is obviously higher, but there are also plenty of low lying areas and areas at sea level.

Nonetheless, there are no recorded instances of large storm-induced floods in the SFBay area that I'm aware of. Do you know of any? Fires, earthquakes, heavy rains causing mudslides that have actually killed people: yes. Some very localized flooding around the Russian River happens all the time. The Guadalupe River in San Jose flooded a few years ago. But storm surge from the ocean? nope, nope.

There was a pretty bad flooding event portrayed in the documentary movie San Andreas.

https://youtu.be/jvIGFhqbe0c?si=ZCaVjWjw-oi84HgD&t=1m39s

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#282

Post by BenjiWiebe »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #138
bdcravens wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a matter of population, but land. Berlin is about 345 square miles; Houston is 640.

Berlin including suburbs ("Speckgürtel") is ~1400 square miles.

So approximately 1/7th the size of the Houston metro area.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#283

Post by nxm »

namesbc wrote: post #182
spamizbad wrote: post #105

Why is Texas infrastructure so brittle? It’s a wealthy, prosperous state unencumbered by regulation or legacy stuff that tends to cause issues in other states.

It is the lack of regulation that is the problem here. The power company is incentized to make higher profits year around by not preparing for a disaster.

PG & E is "heavily regulated" and yet Newsome allowed them to not upgrade power lines which eventually caused massive wild fires

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#286

Post by BenjiWiebe »

jmward01 wrote: post #276
Scoutmaster wrote: post #205

Yesterday I spoke with a Generac (home standby generator) dealership owner in the Houston area, and they are getting swamped with calls (80 a minute at times) and they have 20 people manning the phones. One of the problems I see is that people aren't prepared. I live my life by the motto "Be Prepared" (see username). One of the Merit Badges I teach is Emergency Preparedness, and with camping, my Scouts are okay going…

We live in a society and preparing as a group means that we can efficiently use resources and focus our energy on things that are interesting instead of everyone being overly prepared. Everyone going out and buying a generator is expensive, wasteful and incredibly inefficient. Why isn't it reasonable to just expect reliable infrastructure and quick responses to issues?

Maybe it's unreasonable to expect reliable infrastructure after getting many examples of how the infrastructure is not reliable.

You and I are highly unlikely to be able to fix the infrastructure; we can, however, be prepared for doing without it.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#287

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jtolmar wrote: post #190
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Seattle’s Ballard area, but work with people on the east side. Big storms blow down branches all the time on the other side of the lake, causing power outages. We have less trees here in Seattle, comparatively, or maybe Seattle power and light is better at tree maintenance, but ya lots of trees = lots of power outages from what I can infer. Some richer communities on the east side bury their lines so power…

Downtown Ballard had a lot of power outages over the last two years. Apparently they were using a different transformer than everywhere else, all of which are getting old, and some procurement mistake lead to the spare parts being back-ordered by a year. (This is second hand through a neighbor who actually went and bothered them about all the outages, so there are probably mistakes.)

Ya, I live on 60th, so 4 blocks north of market, and it’s weird that they get power outages to about 56th or 57th while we never do.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#288

Post by BenjiWiebe »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #57
soared wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homes/buildings in your area are built with not having AC in mind - window locations, shade, insulation, etc is all purpose driven. Homes in Texas and generally the US are built with AC in mind, so we can’t not use it - it would get 104 inside.

I've also noticed that newer homes tend to have this problem more than older ones. They're better sealed thermally, so while they're more efficient to keep cool, when they get hot they stay hot for a lot longer. Great for winter, not so much for summer heatwaves. I used to live in an apartment built in the 70s which was a pain to cool or heat because it was so badly sealed. But the one benefit it did have is that on…

It's pretty easy to temporarily "unseal" a house though - open doors/windows.

A well sealed and insulated house takes less to cool too, though. It doesn't just help in winter.

Sadly, in central Kansas where I live, it regularly forgets to get cool at night. Last summer we did our corn silage chopping at night and slept in the day, as we were getting burned trying to operate equipment. At night it was still very hot and muggy. IIRC the dewpoint was in the mid-to-upper 80s F.

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#289

Post by richrichie »

hedora wrote: post #71
blantonl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wasn't a "grid issue." It is a last-mile issue. It's specifically an issue with the sheer amount of above ground power lines and population density. There is no easy fix, preparation, or practically anything else that can be done to prevent something like this. Plus, what causes the same amount of power outages (wind damage) isn't going to be different between 90mph winds and 150 mph winds. The effects are going…

I disagree, and I speak from experience. We've been repeatedly hit by climate-change induced typhoons here (near the SF Bay Area), and hurricane-force gusts hit both of the last two years. Our area looses a lot of roads to mudslides, and of course we have extended power outages. Having said that, the first year, PG&E only delivered one nine of availability last year, and this year, they're closer to two nines. The di…

[flagged]

Re: Houston-area residents enter sixth day without power, air conditioning

#290

Post by BenjiWiebe »

sojournerc wrote: post #165
KingOfCoders wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, AC moves heat from inside homes outside into the city.

My point is that it doesn't create heat, thus does not contribute to climate change on its own. Only the energy source that powers it potentially does.

Since ACs are pretty far from 100% efficient, they turn electricity into heat. There's also heat generated along with the electricity because generation isn't perfect either.
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