Out-to-Lunch
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
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).
Besides Generac, who else makes home generators?
That's for sure! Wow. So sorry to hear this.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.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.
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!
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.
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.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.
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.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!
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)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.
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...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.
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.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+).
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.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.
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+).
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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¢.
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.
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!