Texas Cold Weather Discussion

[joshb]

Back in Delaware, we’d lose power for two to three days on a regular basis. I bought and buried a thousand gallon propane tank, put a propane heat system in the house and bought a 20kw generator that runs off the new tank. It cost a good bit to do, but the wife is happy! Hard to put a cost on that!

 

[Straightshooter1]

The other day, it was strange to hear a weatherman report that it was colder in Houston, TX than in Anchorage, AK.

With so much freezing up around Texas, it was kinda interesting to hear a report on their wind power production actually producing above the daily average during this freeze. Apparently, it's the other back-up systems) that failed due to various instruments freezing along with the high demand.

Freezing with no power and no water for extended periods of time is miserable. So, I sure hope things thaw out and get these problems resolved quickly for the sake of a lot of people.

 

[skeeljc]

Welcome to The Green New Deal! Texas is the bellwether for the Liberals policy of "follow the science" and Global Warming with no regard to practicality!

 

[butchlambert]

The other day, it was strange to hear a weatherman report that it was colder in Houston, TX than in Anchorage, AK.

With so much freezing up around Texas, it was kinda interesting to hear a report on their wind power production actually producing above the daily average during this freeze. Apparently, it's the other back-up systems) that failed due to various instruments freezing along with the high demand.

Freezing with no power and no water for extended periods of time is miserable. So, I sure hope things thaw out and get these problems resolved quickly for the sake of a lot of people.

Did you say our windmills worked during this winter storm? Not the case, they froze up!

 

[john 800]

Backfeeding can have the potential of being very dangerous . I would not recommend it unless you are familiar with what you are doing. Retired lineman from Va.Power.

Agreed, the lineman have enough to worry about. Makes me think of the movie “A Million ways to die in the west” a transfer switch is a pretty small investment in the big picture of owning a home.

 

[Straightshooter1]

Did you say our windmills worked during this winter storm? Not the case, they froze up!

I have no doubt that some did, but not all. The report I read said that the wind production was above (slightly, I think) the daily average (a big surprise to me). I don't really know what that means in terms of how many turbines were operating or not or where the operating ones were and why they produced that much. I wish I had made note of the source as I don't remember just now or I'd site the source.

I'm a big proponent of nuclear power, but even those in TX had a problem in this freeze.

In any case, the wind turbines don't contribute much to the grid in winter anyway and if there was a loss of all of them, it'd be a small percentage of the loss . . . as it has shown to be.

No, frozen wind turbines aren’t the main culprit for Texas’ power outages

Lost wind power was expected to be a fraction of winter generation. All sources — from natural gas, to nuclear, to coal, to solar — have struggled to generate power during the storm that has left millions of Texans in the dark.

www.texastribune.org

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

 

[ncageneral]

We got the freezing rain first , then sleet , then snow. Its finally melted for the moment with more on the way according to the weather services guess. In '77 or '78 we stayed out of power for a week and a half, which taught me that all electric is not what its cracked up to be. We've been out of power for a couple of days , came back on this morning. We are charging everything that we can think of . Worst part of it was the hot water line froze up, thawed now. We are back to "normal". Hope everyone comes through this no worse for wear.

 

[SGK]

Only four days? Meh. Try 17 days post a hurricane with no AC. In suburban Miami.

 

[jackson1]

Those of you with out power I feel you pain. Last night with the temperatures in the single digits, my furnace went out at 10:00 PM. Temperature in the low 50's this morning. Got a repair man out at 7:30 this morning. Was blessed, he fixed it for zero charge, 3 years after I believed the warranty expired. Evan thought its a sad day, something good happened to me. You Texas have my sympathy.

 

[FNSafari]

I guess we will all remember the big freeze of 2021. I was planning on having a home generator installed in our new house before hurricane season hit, I never thought I would need one for being froze in.

I have lived in the Gulf Coast Area my entire life and have never seen it like this. We recently moved to Tomball just north of Houston and last night it hit 5 degrees. That’s without the wind chill. The entire State is without electricity.

8 inches of snow. we are lucky we have gas log fireplace. We hung sheets on all of the entrances to the living room, and the place is comfortable enough. I have been shoveling snow into buckets, thawing it on the stove and using it to flush the toilets.

Hopefully by tomorrow it will get above freezing.

The truth is, we are not used to this type of weather in this part of the country. It’s no big deal for people who live in regions and go through it every winter.

I guess it is difficult to prepare for things that you think will never happen.

Up here we loose our grid power often, especially during winter storms so we, along with scads of other folks, have installed auto generators or have one to plug into a disconnect switch setup. Worth their weight in gold. My wife insisted on a solar array so that went in late last year. In January and February on a sunny day it outputs about 30 to 33 kWh. Most is fed back into the grid for a credit(net metering in Maine) for those days when its cloudy. If the clouds are thin enuf it still produces 10-12 kWh. We use about that per day in the winter. The backup for this is one big Tesla battery pack. It would run our house for about 2 days if we are careful. But, we use the genie during the day and save the battery for the nighttime which extends the battery life considerably. The generator will not charge the Tesla, only the grid.

Hope you all see a turn in the weather soon.

 

[swd]

Even though we're off the beaten path we have very reliable power. The problem now is that after all the fires in Kommifornia caused by power lines every time we get any kind of wind and it's been dry for while the power company shuts it off.

 

[KMart]

The other day, it was strange to hear a weatherman report that it was colder in Houston, TX than in Anchorage, AK.

With so much freezing up around Texas, it was kinda interesting to hear a report on their wind power production actually producing above the daily average during this freeze. Apparently, it's the other back-up systems) that failed due to various instruments freezing along with the high demand.

Freezing with no power and no water for extended periods of time is miserable. So, I sure hope things thaw out and get these problems resolved quickly for the sake of a lot of people.

The power companies brought this on themselves years ago. In the 90's the petrochemical companies were trying to expand and in our case we bought all the power from HL&P. Our company offered up money for them to expand their facilities to produce more electricity. The power companies balked. They didn't want to expand. So, the petrochemical companies started building CoGeneration plants on their sites to make their own electricity and the power companies then HAD to buy the excess electricity that was produced. The power companies also had to manage the distribution of that excess.
When bad weather strikes and the petrochemical companies have operational problems, they do not produce an excess of electricity and the power companies must make up the difference. I would guess that there are thousands of those CoGen facilities up and down the Gulf Coast.
The reason we are out of power now is that the power companies are waiting for the petrochemical plants to get back up to put more electricity out on the grid.

 

[PatMiles]

Was blessed, he fixed it for zero charge, 3 years after I believed the warranty expired.

Put that man on your Christmas card list!

 

[mousegunner]

West Texas here, got power, gas and groceries. Yes it got cold but with temps coming into the 70s this weekend looks like we dodged a bullet but I should keep my mouth shut. Not gloating at all, got family in south Texas eating Spam.

 

[JoeDuke]

This seems to be a relatively well written article on the Texas power situation. I am no fan of cnn but they seem to quote facts and figures here that make sense. The power shortage has to do with lots of things and stretches across all the forms of generation. Biggest issue is that lots of companies schedule maintenance outages in winter when demand is lower. Also interesting that they quote it as record winter demand of 69,000 megawatts. Summer peak is 125,000 megawatts. So, it is not really an issue of total supply. Rather is is a problem with a bunch of equipment down for scheduled maintenance plus the problems of losing some production due to weather issues. The total hurts.

Why the Texas power grid is struggling to cope with the extreme cold (msn.com)

It still sucks to be cold and without power no matter what the reason.
BTW, I live way out in the country. The lines have held fine here but we have been having rolling planned outages for two days. But we stay warm so life is good.

Joe

 

[snert]

AOC says she can fix it...

 

[joshb]

AOC says she can fix it...

Biting my tongue! Sad day........did you here Rush died?

 

[Adam in WI]

Comparing no a/c to no heat in sub freezing temps... Nice

 

[Racebannon3855]

I guess we will all remember the big freeze of 2021. I was planning on having a home generator installed in our new house before hurricane season hit, I never thought I would need one for being froze in.

I have lived in the Gulf Coast Area my entire life and have never seen it like this. We recently moved to Tomball just north of Houston and last night it hit 5 degrees. That’s without the wind chill. The entire State is without electricity.

8 inches of snow. we are lucky we have gas log fireplace. We hung sheets on all of the entrances to the living room, and the place is comfortable enough. I have been shoveling snow into buckets, thawing it on the stove and using it to flush the toilets.

Hopefully by tomorrow it will get above freezing.

The truth is, we are not used to this type of weather in this part of the country. It’s no big deal for people who live in regions and go through it every winter.

I guess it is difficult to prepare for things that you think will never happen.

Jackie,

We lose power in my part of upstate NY several times a year. We also have lots of brown outs and trouble when the power comes back on.

Dusty can comment on whether or not this is neccesary, but this is what I do when the power goes out:

- I shut off any circuit with sensitive electronics on it.
- Leave light switches on.
- When the lights are on and stop flickering for a few minutes I turn the other circuits on.
- We have a Gentran Switch so I can leave our generator on a few circuits till the grid settles down.

The couple times I was not home to do this we lost a refrigerator and a boiler control.

I hope you get some electrons flowing your way soon.

Mark

 

[FNSafari]

OAC...she is a nit wit. Knows nothing about which she mouths off on.

AOC says she can fix it..