Plan B: 1. generators, generators with plenty oil. 2. satellite internet 3. water tank or large container 4. food for two weeks.
Hopefully your water tank doesn't freeze
What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
661–670 of 1001 posts
Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
#662Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would customers be willing to pay 20% more for electric power to prevent a once a decade event?
Are customers being asked to pay 20% more? 20 whole percent more?
20% is about what energy deregulation supposedly saved customers. Utilities regulated under rate-of-return regulation tended to overbuild and maintain large safety margins, because they could pass those costs along to the customer.
Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
#663Dallas suburb here (Las Colinas). No power since Monday 6am. I had to get room at holiday inn. I actually got the room yesterday, but the hotel lost power after an hour, so I had to go back home and sleep in 5 degree apartment. Don't believe anything you read about "rolling outages". It's only rolling, if you define that as "out until it's not freezing anymore".
I was out for 17 hours from yesterday to mid afternoon today. Slept through the 0deg weather without power and yet still kept the house at 43deg internally without a heat source. Here is our simi-successful attempt to survive. * boarded up all the windows and doors with sheets, curtains, and heavy drop clothes * limit going outside to fewest essential trips * close all bedrooms and abandon them. All pets and occupant…
As a Canadian, a few more tips: keep kitchen and bathroom cabinet doors open. To keep water pipes from freezing. They are trouble if they freeze, expand, crack, and then when thaw - start leaking. (Empty toilets if risk of freezing.)(add glycol if you have it, in bowl.)
Also can trickle water from the taps - moving water sure but freeze so fast as still water.
Blankets, in doorways, hallways, Windows - keep warmth in room where you need it.
Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
#664But you got cheap taxes
Expensive taxes don't help either. California had blackouts in 2020.
Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
#665Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being close to the gulf a lot of people have generators that are likely big enough to power at least their fridge and one or more window/portable AC units. (For hurricanes.) That size is usually big enough to run a blower and control board (and maybe a few other circuits), but it wouldn't come close to powering an electric heating element. But having a gas heater makes it all doable. That's what we do, anyway.
Maybe not a heating element, but heat punp?
It's more an explanation of how you can have gas heat without power. Also, even heat pumps use a heating element at some point below 28~30 degrees. If you rely on the pump only below that, it'll start to freeze up into an ice block itself at some point.
Plus having a continuous plug-in (natural gas) fuel source is a big advantage over refilling a gasoline generator, which most portable generators are.
Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
#666The Texas-only grid was definitely part of it, and should be a lesson to people who thought the lesson from Covid is "do more locally." No, having stronger, longer distance connections is what makes you more resilient, at least when there are local problems.
I'm not sure how true this is. There are DC ties that allow Texas to import from both the East and West interconnection, but power is scarce everywhere now. So even if their region was fully AC connected, all the other nearby regions were scrapping the bottom of the barrel as well.
But the lines have a fixed capacity, and only Texas is having California-style rolling blackouts.
Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
#667conservatism
Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
#668Earlier quoted context omitted.
The people down the street from me in Houston are currently powering their house with their solar panels, actually. They were able to loan their generator to their neighbor. We had to abandon our house.
Last year, I went on vacation to Alaska. Me and my friends airbnb'd an off-grid home/cabin in Talkeetna, about several hundred miles north of Anchorage. It was powered entirely on solar panels on the roof and right by the house. Water from the rivers. Granted, it had a wood stove, like most cabin/homes are in the north. Just want to chime in and say that renewables are absolutely very prevalent in colder, remote clim…
Miles north of anchorage? How many hours of sun were you getting? 3? 1?
Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
#669Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are non-critical loads all over that were never interrupted (my neighborhood, north edge of ATX). It's pretty arbitrary. Even worse: for about the first 24h there were (largely uninhabited!) commercial buildings all over the place that were fully lit up. We're talking skyscrapers. Even some unfinished skyscrapers. I think they've finally begun to address those. The charitable interpretation is that it was simpl…
Keep in mind: the details of how generators shed load is not ERCOT's decree. If there is unfairness in how liad shedding is taking place, you need to look at the entities generating/transmitting it. Not ERCOT. Bluebonnet has done a great, if annoying job. They converged to a near 50/50 duty cycle I think between two trunk lines. I've heard Austin Energy is epically failing some of it's customers though.
The people getting dangerously cold in their own homes don't care about the nuances between ERCOT and Austin Energy and their city government and county and state and federal governments and this private organization and that. The system as a whole has failed. In tragic fashion. Period. Modularize your organizations if you want to, but it is not an excuse for passing the buck.
There are people at the top of the whole pile. And they have the authority and the responsibility to make sure the whole thing works, at the end of the day, no matter the implementation details. And the whole thing doesn't work.
This is what the American system is chronically worst at. We delegate, and we contract out, and we federalize, and we privatize, and we divide responsibilities. We avoid centralizing things at all costs. And then when put under pressure, those separate pieces often fall apart. Communication fails. At best nobody knows what's going on, at worst they willfully ignore responsibility because somebody else will end up with some or all of the blame. This keeps happening over, and over, and over again. I can't help but feel our society is crumbling.
Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?
#670Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are non-critical loads all over that were never interrupted (my neighborhood, north edge of ATX). It's pretty arbitrary. Even worse: for about the first 24h there were (largely uninhabited!) commercial buildings all over the place that were fully lit up. We're talking skyscrapers. Even some unfinished skyscrapers. I think they've finally begun to address those. The charitable interpretation is that it was simpl…
Keep in mind: the details of how generators shed load is not ERCOT's decree. If there is unfairness in how liad shedding is taking place, you need to look at the entities generating/transmitting it. Not ERCOT. Bluebonnet has done a great, if annoying job. They converged to a near 50/50 duty cycle I think between two trunk lines. I've heard Austin Energy is epically failing some of it's customers though.
As an Austin Energy customer a large portion of the blame for this on their poor infrastructure configuration and the number of critical circuits.