This weather is awful!! 2008-2021

[Out-to-Lunch]

Besides Generac, who else makes home generators?

I will put in a plug for the locals: Kohler, and Briggs and Stratton. Also Honda (not local, obvi).

 

[W2R]

Just got an email from our electric co-op saying to expect our power outage to continue for another 24-48 hours. Which also means no water from our well.

This has moved beyond inconvenient.

That's for sure! Wow. So sorry to hear this.

From what I am reading online, unfortunately it is going to be a while until power is restored for most Texans who have lost it. What's even worse (misery loves company, right?) apparently local governments in Texas have been unable to locate "warming centers" for those exposed to the cold such as old people with no heat in their homes due to the power outage. Most of their usual warming centers (schools, churches, hospitals, etc) have no power.

They have been telling us that we're next, as this front moves from Texas into Louisiana. Baton Rouge got clobbered. But here in New Orleans, so far, so good. It's 27F outside right now and while we have power outages due to the weather (icicles on the lines, I suppose?), most people have power here at least right now. Frank and I have power, heat, water, internet, and so on. Hoping that lasts.

 

[jollystomper]

I have nieces in Texas. One in the D-FW area, married with kids, is fortunate to have a neighbor with a generator. The neighbors are empty nesters (maybe part of the FIRE community? ) and have opened their home to then to sleep. So they will have warmth overnight. The other, single, in the Houston area, has been without power in her apartment since early morning. She has periodically gone to her car to warm up but is layering up to sleep in the apartment overnight. She is in good spirits ("I'm 27, I can handle it, I feel sorry for the older folks" ).

 

[Leo1277]

Just got an email from our electric co-op saying to expect our power outage to continue for another 24-48 hours. Which also means no water from our well.

This has moved beyond inconvenient.

Very sorry to hear about this! Having been through such things myself way too many times in Michigan, where this is more common, I know how it feels and how frustrating it is.

But now, I have to go an "rant" detour, if you permit me. I am originally from Europe, and I have to say that this constant "power outage when the weather turns bad" is a typical American thing that just isn't necessary in our modern world. In Western Europe, in the vast majority of places, all power is underground, and these wires just aren't affected when trees snap, and snow and ice cannot drag down wires either. On top of it, I am often appalled by how even very upscale neighborhoods are spoiled by the myriads of power wires from leaning wooden poles that are reminiscent of the 19th century rather than the 21st.

I drove along a nice coastal road in Hawaii not too long ago, and the views of the ocean and lush scenery were absolutely gorgeous - except that for the entire drive, there was such an ugly power line on the ocean facing side of the road The only developed place in the world that is worse yet is Japan, where the jungles of power lines are legendary, and there are entire "artistic" coffee table photo books published on the matter.

So US, just bury your wires! The reason you aren't losing city water or city sewer or even city gas in every decent storm is because those are all buried! Folks are buying natural gas powered generators, based on the implicit assumption that gas may be there while electricity may be out. But to me this looks backwards, and rather a wholesale shift of public perception of what is acceptable and what isn't seems in order.

 

[NW-Bound]

So US, just bury your wires! The reason you aren't losing city water or city sewer or even city gas in every decent storm is because those are all buried! Folks are buying natural gas powered generators, based on the implicit assumption that gas may be there while electricity may be out - how backwards!

In this case, the loss of power is due to insufficient generation, not because of transmission. Does anyone expect solar power plants to work? Earlier in the thread, we talked about power windmills being frozen with ice, and Texas has more windmills than many countries.

Loss of power and freezing cold impact the equipment of natural gas producers, which then cannot feed the generating stations running on nat gas. It's a vicious circle.

Speaking of city water and city sewer, these are being impacted too, in some locales! Nat gas is running low. People are being asked to conserve nat gas.

Around 100,000 people in north Fort Worth are under a boil order after a power outage at a water treatment plant and loss of pressure on Monday and many, if not all of them, have lost water entirely.

Officials said that the Eagle Mountain Water Plant and raw water pump station at 6801 Bowman Roberts Road has been without power for more than two hours, and has experienced multiple outages since they began.

 

[Leo1277]

In this case, the loss of power is due to insufficient generation, not because of transmission. Does anyone expect solar power plants to work? Earlier in the thread, we talked about power windmills being frozen with ice, and Texas has more windmills than many countries.

Loss of power and freezing cold impact the equipment of natural gas producers, which then cannot feed the generating stations running on nat gas. It's a vicious circle.

Speaking of city water and city sewer, these are being impacted too! Nat gas is running low. People are being asked to conserve nat gas.

Power outages long predate the appearance of wind power. Of course frozen windmills aren't great either and this issue needs to be understood and worked out. But in your typical storm, the most vulnerable part is the electric grid, and as you say this can then have cascading effects on other utilities which also rely on electric power.

What we hear is that there are regions where power isn't expected to be back for 24-48 hours while others have power, which is unfortunately common in such storms. If this would be primarily a generation problem, the prudent way would be to do rolling blackouts where power is turned off for say 2-3 hours but for everyone to share the burden equally, which is common in Eastern Europe and Russia. Better have everyone at 65 F than some at 70 and others at 40.

By the way, here is one of the "coffee table book" type pictures, from Kyoto in Japan, one of their most picturesque cities full of centuries old national treasures.

 

[NW-Bound]

Earlier, in the summer of [-]2020[/-] 2019, Texas had a couple of days when an outage was caused by insufficient generation.

What happened was the excessive summer heat of those days coincided with lack of wind for the windmills to work to provide for all the cranking ACs.


PS. I found that event again. During 14-16 Aug 2019, the spot price of electricity in Texas hit $9/kWh on those summer days, about the same price as it is just now. They blamed the shortage on not having the backup thermal generating plants that were retired recently.

 

[Leo1277]

Earlier, in the summer of 2020, Texas had a couple of days when an outage was caused by insufficient generation.

What happened was the excessive summer heat of those days coincided with lack of wind for the windmills to work!

Yep, that's one of the problems of wind and solar. While the production cost of a kWh of these now undercuts NG and coal under normal circumstances, there is the big issue of non-uniform generation. I am not sure if Elon Musk's "Battery In Every Home" or huge centralized battery farms will really do the trick, but this issue is something we surely have to recon with. Where there are lakes and hydro power, you can run the generators backwards and replenish the upper storage, which is surprisingly efficient. In the Sierra foothills they even have a train line straight up the mountain where an electric engine pulls rail cars filled with rocks up a steep incline when there's too much power, and lets them roll down to generate power when there's too little. All kinds of ideas, I'll be curious how all this will work itself out.

 

[NW-Bound]

We talked about energy storage in several past threads, including several "fun" ideas such as the rail cars that you just described.

None can promise the level of storage that the entire US would need. Hydropower is the best, but for the entire US, we need to pump water between Lake Huron and Ontario. I found a guy who had done a quick calculation, and the fluctuation of water level would be huge and ecologically devastating (I forgot what it was).

Why Lakes Huron and Ontario? Lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron are not too different in elevation, and lake Erie's volume is too small.

 

[Leo1277]

PS. I found that event again. During 14-16 Aug 2019, the spot price of electricity in Texas hit $9/kWh on those summer days, about the same price as it is just now. They blamed the shortage on not having the backup thermal generating plants that were retired recently.

Just incredible. If you have a charged Tesla, which holds, say, 80kWh, you can sell its charge for $700! From your other posts, it seems you are very active in the markets - may want to buy yourself a few kWh before the next storm, and some Teslas to store them But joke aside, if something like that happens more often, things like battery home storage are becoming economically interesting. Even your typical $100 lead acid car battery holds 1kWh, so a dozen round trips of such storms and selling the kWh, and the battery is paid for. Even in a single storm, several round trips may be possible if you time the spot market right (and your internet is still running to do the trades, haha)

 

[NW-Bound]

As I often described on this forum, I have a DIY solar array of 8 kW generation, coupled with a 34-kWh lithium bank. It's an off-grid system that powers part of my home.

I will not be selling any kWh because I cannot. But I do not generate/store enough for my own use anyway. I use as much as 100 kWh/day in the hottest summer day (115F+).

 

[Leo1277]

We talked about energy storage in several past threads, including several "fun" ideas such as the rail cars that you just described.

None can promise the level of storage that the entire US would need. Hydropower is the best, but for the entire US, we need to pump water between Lake Huron and Ontario. I found a guy who had done a quick calculation, and the fluctuation of water level would be huge and ecologically devastating (I forgot what it was).

Why Lakes Huron and Ontario? Lakes Superior, Michigan, and Huron are not too different in elevation, and lake Erie's volume is too small.

Yes, now that you mention it, I vaguely remember such earlier threads. But note that unless we want to protect against a Russian software hack that shuts down all our power plants at the same time, only a small fraction of the above storage would be necessary. What would be needed is a more robust power transfer system - while Texas is currently cold and has frozen windmills and their solar panels may be covered by snow, the sun shines on Florida's solar farms during the day, and even the wind of the current storm may be powering some non-frozen windmills elsewhere. But I feel sorry to ponder all this fun stuff while the poor Texans are freezing...

 

[NW-Bound]

Watching the Californians, and now the Texans, I am glad I built this DIY system. It took me 2 years to build it up piecemeal.

Thought I am done, but now watching people without power, I am getting scared and already looking to add more solar panels and more batteries. More, more, more... This is how I am going to blow dough, to be sure to stay cool in the summer. Who knows if Arizona will not have a shortage of power this summer?

 

[NW-Bound]

Yes, now that you mention it, I vaguely remember such earlier threads. But note that unless we want to protect against a Russian software hack that shuts down all our power plants at the same time, only a small fraction of the above storage would be necessary. What would be needed is a more robust power transfer system - while Texas is currently cold and has frozen windmills and their solar panels may be covered by snow, the sun shines on Florida's solar farms during the day, and even the wind of the current storm may be powering some non-frozen windmills elsewhere.

It may be solvable, but with more of everything. If each state must have enough power generation not just for its own use but also its neighbors, then what excess capacity is that? Lots of capital expenditure, and lots of unused power in most of the time. Lots of excess transmission capacities too.

And if there's excess power most of the time, people will find a way to waste it: energy inefficient homes, cars, everything. And then, when there's a shortage, we still not have enough.

 

[Telly]

So far so good (knock on wood!!!) for me & DW today in DFW, our power has stayed on. For many many people, not so. DW was hearing in the morning by 8 AM already from people she knows that the "rolling" blackouts were not doing much "rolling". I read somewhere today that some areas that were turned off, they had trouble bringing them back up, due to insufficient grid stability by doing so (inrush effects, I presume), so were not going to turn those off again, just hit others more and longer.

Yeah, it IS the coldest it's been since 1989... but that was known for quite a bit in advance, not a surprise. The real problem is online generating capacity has dropped severely due to lack of winterization of power plants in Texas. Heard that we are the only state that doesn't do it. Lessons "learned" in 1989 and (again!) in 2011 were never acted on with any real degree. Natural gas-fired plants, coal-fired plants, and even supposedly, a nuclear plant!

Been watching the graph at our Texas system operator, ERCOT, a lot today, as outside duties permitted. Texas went from 65k MW of power generated at 12 AM Monday, declining through the whole day down to about 45k MW, a 30% drop in generation. ERCOT, acting via the distribution companies, have been shedding load left and right. Watched late this afternoon, as demand goes up like it usually does as night arrives, they shed more and more load to match the measly 45k MW generation. But their "predicted" generation curve was always going upwards. But at every update, generation just stayed around 45k MW no matter what the "predicted" was. Never happening. Now it's Tuesday, same thing, big increase in generation predicted hour by hour... not happening, demand is still being held to ~44k MW to keep 1-2k MW in reserve for stability. Ain't lookin' good. I hope after this is all investigated, that it's not an "Enron", take 2 situation underneath it all.

 

[Leo1277]

As I often described on this forum, I have a DIY solar array of 8 kW generation, coupled with a 34-kWh lithium bank. It's an off-grid system that powers part of my home.

I will not be selling any kWh because I cannot. But I do not generate/store enough for my own use anyway. I use as much as 100 kWh/day in the hottest summer day (115F+).

Right, I have to read up on your posts about your system. The only thing I did was to build a 12V system for all the home electronics if power goes out here in Florida, which in the summer can happen in every decent thunderstorm. I use a single car battery for backup, which can power internet, VoIP, WiFi for 3-4 days and can re-charge cell phones. I just made sure that all my electronics is native 12V, if you then power them directly instead of through their little wall warts, it's amazing how little power they draw. The system itself can be recharged from the car battery via a transfer switch or the car's alternator if really necessary.

Interestingly, while summers are tough here too, here it's the humidity, while the temp rarely exceeds 90. When power does fail (and believe me it does, and way too often, and manages to do so even without frozen windmills), the thing to do is to just resist the instincts to open the windows, rather stay put inside and take the 90 degrees. If you manage to keep the humidity where the AC last had it by not opening the windows it is still bearable, and it doesn't go above outside air temp since there is no radiation heat load since the sun don't shine in the thunderstorm that caused the outage.

 

[Leo1277]

It may be solvable, but with more of everything. If each state must have enough power generation not just for its own use but also its neighbors, then what excess capacity is that? Lots of capital expenditure, and lots of unused power in most of the time. Lots of excess transmission capacities too.

Well, I think one wouldn't need to have so much excess capacity for generation, since while even a big storm such as this affects local power generation in Texas, it doesn't have an impact on Arizona and Florida. So it's mostly a matter of redistribution, and perhaps a federal framework of rules governing how to lend and borrow power across state lines and different power companies.

 

[ERObjd]

-28 here in Lincoln Ne as i sit here typing this. Rolling blackouts expected for the next couple of days. Thankful for our basement wood stove. When rollling blackout hits all electricity goes out for about 2 hours . Yesterday it was -17 when our blackout hit house can cool down quickly without heat source.

 

[street]

As I often described on this forum, I have a DIY solar array of 8 kW generation, coupled with a 34-kWh lithium bank. It's an off-grid system that powers part of my home.

I will not be selling any kWh because I cannot. But I do not generate/store enough for my own use anyway. I use as much as 100 kWh/day in the hottest summer day (115F+).

WOW! So, to clarify you use 100,000 Watts a day in the hottest summer day??
That is a lot in a 24 hour period. Here 100 KWH's a day would cost me $7.50¢.

 

[NW-Bound]

[/B]

WOW! So, to clarify you use 100,000 Watts a day in the hottest summer day??
That is a lot in a 24 hour period. Here 100 KWH's a day would cost me $7.50¢.

No, the average consumption is only 4.166 kW.

My 5-ton central AC alone uses 5 kW, but it does cycle off occasionally. And I set it at 78F.

Over 24 hours, the total consumption is 4.166 kW x 24 hr = 100 kWh.

I think your cost would not be 7.5c, but $7.5/day. For me it's more than $15/day, with my Time-of-Use rate.

 

[aja8888]

My daughter's house about 7 miles south of us in Spring, Texas has been without power since 3 AM yesterday. It's 46 F inside her house now and the water pipes are frozen.

I have power and she is headed this way to sit this out.

 

[NW-Bound]

Well, I think one wouldn't need to have so much excess capacity for generation, since while even a big storm such as this affects local power generation in Texas, it doesn't have an impact on Arizona and Florida. So it's mostly a matter of redistribution, and perhaps a federal framework of rules governing how to lend and borrow power across state lines and different power companies.

Arizona has barely enough for our own use. I don't think we can support a state as big as Texas.

And then, there's Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Minnesota, Iowa, Wyoming, and Nebraska, who may have shortages, and are facing rolling blackouts as I quoted earlier from SPP (SouthWest Power Pool). See post #5319.

 

[street]

"I use as much as 100 kWh/day in the hottest summer day (115F+)".

Okay, ^ quote to mean is 100 (KWH) a day X 1000) (Kilo) equals 100,000 Watts.

Thanks

 

[NW-Bound]

My daughter's house about 7 miles south of us in Spring, Texas has been without power since 3 AM yesterday. It's 46 F inside her house now and the water pipes are frozen.

I have power and she is headed this way to sit this out.

This is terrible. I wonder how many households will have burst piping. The economic damage is going to be big!

 

[aja8888]

This is terrible. I wonder how many households will have burst piping. The economic damage is going to be big!

I'll bet hundreds of thousands of homes around Houston will have frozen pipe damage after this.

No homes with basements here and all water plumbing runs into attics, and in many cases, down through outside walls. Usually, water heaters are placed in attics. This is a time bomb on cold weather.