Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

houstonchronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 1001 posts

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#711

Post by cycomanic »

tharkun__ wrote: post #545
ip26 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, if you think about it almost all of the heat from the fire goes right up the chimney. The brick of the firebox & chimney are generally built outside the building envelope for safety reasons, so any heat in the brick doesn't warm the house. The only heat that actually makes its way into the house is the radiant heat cast from the fire itself, which is small. The smoke is poison, and unlike a furnace, gas firepl…

https://www.offgridquest.com/fload/homes-dwellings/heating-c... Almost without comment. All I will say is that we have some friends in Germany living in the 'countryside' (as much as that's still a thing in densely populated Germany) that heat their main living area with one of these (way less elaborate design lol). My grandma had one of these sitting in the wall between kitchen (right next to the eating area) and th…

My parents have one of these in their holiday house by the sea (essentially an old farmhands dwelling). I can confirm that it heats the house up to blistering temperature even in the coldest winter if one wants. Other friends use a more modern design in their house which essentially heats up the whole house (I don't think they have any other heating except water heating)

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#712

Post by austinheap »

txlpo78 wrote: post #115
magnawave wrote: post #18

The result was "an electrical island in the United States," Bill Magness, CEO of ERCOT, said. "That independence has been jealously guarded, I think both by policy makers and the industry." https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/02/16/texas-power-... Maybe it’s time to rethink that. HaI has an interesting take on something similar: Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo88zA5nq4Q Running your own grid seems cool…

This current problems wouldn’t be fixed if Texas wasn’t on its own grid. The Texas grid does have connections to the other grids, and even right now is importing power from both the East and West interconnections. The problem is that this is a truly regional event and not just isolated to Texas. The entire central US is struggling right now. The SPP (which manages electricity for Oklahoma, Nebraska, Arkansas, and oth…

This is a two day old account repeating exactly one trope FWIW.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#713

Post by hinkley »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #702
kelnos wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1996 (or thereabouts), I lived in Maryland, and my family lost power for 6 days due to a snow/ice storm that took out a ton of power lines (water froze on them and the added weight pulled them down). We had no natural gas service, and our running water was provided by a well in the backyard that had an electric pump. So no electricity, heat, or running water for 6 days in ~20-30°F weather. (Fortunately we'd prepar…

Interior or central chimneys make more sense to me than ones against an exterior wall, and they seem common enough in houses of a certain vintage at least. If your chimney is on an outer wall, doesn't it radiate heat to the outdoors?

The ones on the outside can use outside air to go up the chimney, avoiding the problem listed above. Harder to do with inside chimneys.

Last place I rented with a fireplace, there was a metal door in brickwork below it in the basement. It wasn’t until after I moved out that I realized what it was for.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#714

Post by JamesBarney »

Animats wrote: post #546
gregw2 wrote: post #117

What went wrong is that the Texas legislature which owns Texas-specific grid process to avoid interference from the Feds didn't figure out how to also ensure Texas generator companies got compensated for weatherizing (and ensuring it was done). How many of the 24+6 recommendations from the NERC/FERC review of last time this happened in Texas (hint:2011) were taken up by the legislature or those at ERCOT they delegate…

Would customers be willing to pay 20% more for electric power to prevent a once a decade event?

Are they related?

Was the 20% cost savings they just stopped winterizing the generators?

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#715

Post by gnarlysasquatch »

hotsauceror wrote: post #561
qbasic_forever wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck, and here's some advice from a midwesterner that has dealt with cold, ice, and snow forever. If it's cold enough to start freezing things inside then make sure you have some water flowing in your pipes. Keep your kitchen sink running on a low (very tiny) dribble. Maybe even keep a shower/bathrub running at a very low rate too. You do NOT want to be dealing with frozen, broken flooding pipes on top of no pow…

Also, leaving water trickling when you’re on a septic system can ruin your grinder pump because it stirs up the solids in the first separating tank. And, as I learned the hard way this week, even if all the faucets are dripping, there’s no way to trickle a toilet. The supply lines for both of our toilets froze while the sink next to them kept right in dripping. And then there’s the question of how to keep your water…

It’s not that it “stirs up solids,” it’s that a continuous leak causes the pump to cycle on more frequently. Your pump might cycle a few times a day normally; a running toilet could cause that to be every 30 min, and at that rate you could need a new pump in a year or two instead of 10.

Trickling your faucets (just a drip-drip-drip) for a few days is a small amount of extra wear on your pump in exchange for not rupturing pipes.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#716

Post by pixl97 »

zamadatix wrote: post #631
turtlebits wrote: post #625

Maybe its time for people to stop treating electricity like essentially an unlimited cheap resource and instead something they consciously try not to waste. I've been working in an off-grid office where I am limited by solar and battery capacity and it really puts into perspective what really needs to be plugged in all the time and how much running a large appliance affects capacity. Maybe electricity should be sold…

I think most would rather pay an e.g. +10% premium for the plants to handle more extreme conditions once a decade than think about what has to be plugged in all day every day.

The generator will take that 10% as profit and not invest, then when the disaster happens they'll beg for public money and even higher rates.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#717

Post by JamesBarney »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #537
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering how rolling outages on the proposed schedules were supposed to work in this situation. If they gave everyone power 50% of the time, everyone would crank everything they have to the max during those periods to get some heat into their buildings. Unless their total ability to consume energy is less than 2x their average consumption, it's not going to help. To have any effect on overall power consumption,…

You are right if they were trying to reduce load 50%, that's basically impossible for the reasons you mention. They were only trying to get it down 20% and it might have worked if they could have effectively rolled the blackouts. A lot of people have natural gas heat. It doesn't work when the power is out (no ignition, no thermostat, and no fan), but doesn't put a huge load on the electric grid when it is on. For a w…

I don't know about North Texas but I don't think gas furnaces are that common in Houston or Austin.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#718

Post by stephenhuey »

lordgroff wrote: post #368
ulisesrmzroche wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re not ready for this kind of weather here in Texas. I’d you’re so smart you should know people 150 years ago lived differently and built their houses differently Are you without power? I don’t think so. Real easy to talk shit when you’re warm and comfortable. It’s not like you built any infrastructure or built your house, so don’t take credit for keeping it warm What’s more is that it’s not only hackers and engin…

Yeah, living here in Canada, when I read the temperatures I had to rub my eyes in disbelief. Temperatures of -30,-40C are by no means unheard of here but we know it will come every winter. I can't imagine a prolonged, unprepared for infrastructure failure, with houses getting down to minus territory indoors. Sounds terrible.

Exactly. Several of us here in Houston are taking refuge at a friend’s house and one person in the group is from Minnesota. She says that even though it’s not so terribly cold outside she still wouldn’t want to repeat this, that it’s much easier in Minnesota because the power doesn’t go out or if it does it’s something that can get fixed quickly rather than be prolonged over several days.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#719

Post by pixl97 »

landemva wrote: post #375
t0mbstone wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frozen wind turbines aren't the problem. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/16/texas-wind-turbines-...

Natural gas doesnt really freeze, so something else is going on here. Misleading text in linked article: "We didn’t run out of natural gas, but we ran out of the ability to get natural gas. Pipelines in Texas don’t use cold insulation – so things were freezing."

Natural gas right out of the well does freeze, and the dewatering systems freeze. Been out on a site trying to get one working in 10F weather a number of years ago.

Re: What went wrong with the Texas power grid?

#720

Post by JamesBarney »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #475
svnpenn wrote: post #20

Dallas 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'm wondering how rolling outages on the proposed schedules were supposed to work in this situation. If they gave everyone power 50% of the time, everyone would crank everything they have to the max during those periods to get some heat into their buildings. Unless their total ability to consume energy is less than 2x their average consumption, it's not going to help. To have any effect on overall power consumption,…

If you gave everyone power 20% of the time though, I don't think the vast majority of people would shift that much load.

The only real power consumption anyone does above usual is plug in their phones. And obviously their heaters run full blast.

Post reply on HN