THIS is Texas? 6º F

[cjcride]

Our electric utility up here is recommending you get rid of your gas stove and go electric. Sheesh.

It's the 'New Fad'

 

[Snagglefoot]

It's the 'New Fad'

Yes, and next they’ll want you to buy a green stove.

 

[Wylie6G72]

The dummies that built this house equipped it with a gas furnace, gas fireplace, gas water heater, and an electric stove. Had a line run 2 years ago and fixed that problem. Thankful for the ability to cook during this fiasco.

 

[OVERKILL]

Feb. 15 when you posted this, the temperature in Dallas was colder than we had in Toronto Canada.

Wild eh?

It was -25C here this AM in the 'pete though (-13F) this AM and wind output has predictably filled its shorts. It is -22C currently.

 

[Snagglefoot]

I praise the grip of ice-cleats that I use on my shoes and boots when there is ice on the ground. When you use them it is like being glued to the ground even when there is a 1/4 inch or more of ice covering everything. The hospitals her in Pittsburgh PA get patients with broken bones from falls on ice every time we get ice on the ground, and people here are use to ice and snow ever winter. If you do not have ice-cleats you are better off staying at home until it melts. Broken bones can be a painful thing and a broke hip or neck of the femur can be life threatening and may even cause death. Falls on ice are nothing to fool with, and they happen very fast once you star slipping. And the older you are the worse the damage and the slower you heal. I have seen it happen too many times to try to walk outside without ice-cleats when there may be ice hidden under the snow. I keep one set of cleats in the car and two sets in the house.

So my warning to you in the south who are not use to ice, is if you do not have ice-cleats just stay home until it melts. Seriously, I am not kidding, especially if you ain't no 21 year old any more.

From experience, I’ve noticed the two common ways of running into weather related problems are:

1. A person is shoveling snow and their heart rate exceeds 140 for the first time in ages and they have a heart attack due to clogged arteries.

2. An older person slips on the ice and breaks their hip. They get it pinned but they are immobilized. Pneumonia sets in and they pass away.

My 94 year old Uncle passed away two weeks ago due to falling while shovelling snow and breaking his hip. Then he got pneumonia. He had a good life.

On the other hand, not too many are bit by rattlers or get sun stroke up here.

 

[cjcride]

Very tough few days near San Antonio. 4 inches of snow but it was 7 degrees yesterday. We had power for 2 hours yesterday total.

About 2am this morning I couldn't take it anymore, and started boiling pots of water to get some warm air in the house.

Power came on from 4am to 6pm, and we got the house heated up to 70 (it was 49 degrees inside the house).

Power went out again today at 6am, and came back just now at 10am.

I'm trying to knock out a few things for work, but I was so happy to take a hot shower and eat a toasted sandwich.

We went to get gas for my wifes Tuscon last night, and the pumps were frozen at the Valero. I pumped about 20 cents worth of nothing into the tank and took it back home.

We would have gone to a motel but we own the house and have two cats, and I didn't want to deal with burst pipes when I got home, so I tended them most of the night by dripping water.

It was 28 degrees yesterday afternoon, there was no restaurants open and the food in my fridge was rapidly decaying. Decided to grill chicken with my propane grill. I'm sure the neighbors think I'm a nut.

We are going to throw away the $200 in food I bought, what a shame.

You get your Eskimo badge

 

[4WD]

From experience, I’ve noticed the two common ways of running into weather related problems are:

1. A person is shoveling snow and their heart rate exceeds 140 for the first time in ages and they have a heart attack due to clogged arteries.

2. An older person slips on the ice and breaks their hip. They get it pinned but they are immobilized. Pneumonia sets in and they pass away.

My 94 year old Uncle passed away two weeks ago due to falling while shovelling snow and breaking his hip. Then he got pneumonia. He had a good life.

On the other hand, not too many are bit by rattlers or get sun stroke up here.

Yeah, but snow snakes are harder to see and they don’t buzz up to warn you

 

[JustinH]

We did a little better yesterday. Power came on for four hours between noon and 4pm.

I was able to get VPN'ed into work and take care of a few things. Had to drop off a call with a MS engineer because we dropped power and my little UPS would not be up to the task of powering my Router/Cable modem for more than about 20 minutes.

Do not recommend Cyber Power brand from Best buy, it is near worthless even for powering a small gateway, voip gateway, and comsumer router for more than a few minutes.

Power went off from 4pm until a little after midnight. I slept for about 11 hours, nice to have central heat running.

We have had power now since midnight, and are rushing to make breakfast and take showers in case it goes out again.

They are calling for an inch or so of snow, and 70 degrees by Saturday/Sunday.

 

[RTexasF]

Rolling power blackouts here starting at 6PM Tuesday. It just came back on so I'm typing quickly! Drizzle happening now which means ice, not good.

This lifesaver really came into play last night. I bought it almost 40 years ago, still got the camp stove too if everything turns to caca.

 

[Rmay635703]

So you mean that label saying the resistance heating system isn't really 100% efficient

How efficient is the coal plant making the electricity?

How expensive is the higher than normal power draw both for you and the utility to support ?


In terms of what happened in Texas grid failure has nothing to do with wind or solar and everything to do with shutdown gas plants and deregulation .

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/16/ercot-texas-electric-grid-failure/?outputType=amp

Only poor planning including how homes are built and heated in Northern Texas alongside incompetent home owners (no backup) and incompetent regional building standards and incompetent deregulated power operators .

What is unfortunate is Texas claims to have cheap electricity yet it’s no cheaper (in many cases much more expensive) than antique regulated regions of the country

 

[4WD]

I have power, natural gas and 6 gens, have never been dumped by the grid …
And I bet you the odds are very high I’m far better equipped with survival means than the cocky boys in this thread …

 

[SZR48207]

It has been interesting these past few days to see the schism(?) between the common perception that Texans are this sort of rugged independent cowboy archetype and the reality that the big cities in TX are just modern urban centers like anywhere else.

I know there are still some true cowboy types in TX.. probably as much as there are in other states like NM, WY, SD, ND, and even OK.. but people in general have gotten very comfortable to modern life and a lot of that is depending on back-stage actors to keep things like water, light, and heat seamlessly flowing 24/7/365.

(and I imagine the news stations right now are milking any footage they can get of city dwellers who are without power and water; it wouldn't be worth broadcasting a bunch of prepper types sitting comfortably at home)

 

[53' Stude]

I have power, natural gas and 6 gens, have never been dumped by the grid …
And I bet you the odds are very high I’m far better equipped with survival means than the cocky boys in this thread …

All I will say is I have power, and heat and tons of canned foods. In my states defense we have nuclear and coal

 

[Rmay635703]

I have a heat pump in my location several hundred miles north of Florida, and it works just fine.

However, my house was built with the idea that it does get cold in the winter. So it is well sealed and insulated.

Air to air heat pumps are useless below zero, a real heat pump exchanges heat with the ground, my guess the op has an issue with a window unit not a real home sized solution

 

[brianl703]

Air to air heat pumps are useless below zero, a real heat pump exchanges heat with the ground, my guess the op has an issue with a window unit not a real home sized solution

Either that or his central air needs the services of a qualified technician.

 

[Yah-Tah-Hey]

Pretty much looks like where I'm at just north of the DFW Airport. We'll be moving in a few weeks up to NE Oklahoma and apparently we've got about a foot of snow at the new place. I was going to make the trip up there this past weekend, since they were forecasting the snow to arrive late on Sunday, well after I figured to be back. I changed my mind at the last second and sure glad I did, as I woke up to snow on Sunday mor

I disagree. ERCOT can only do so much within a budget.

For example, normal building codes assure new homes to be built structurally strong enough to survive 120 mph winds. Could every single home be built to withstand 200mph winds? Yes, but at extreme costs. ERCOT, like other utilities prep enough to cover probably 99.9% of the conditions expected. This deep cold is a very rare event for Texas, its the 0.1% that is stressing the system.

This is going to pass soon and Texas will be just fine.

You hang in there 77665.

I praise the grip of ice-cleats that I use on my shoes and boots when there is ice on the ground. When you use them it is like being glued to the ground even when there is a 1/4 inch or more of ice covering everything. The hospitals her in Pittsburgh PA get patients with broken bones from falls on ice every time we get ice on the ground, and people here are use to ice and snow ever winter. If you do not have ice-cleats you are better off staying at home until it melts. Broken bones can be a painful thing and a broke hip or neck of the femur can be life threatening and may even cause death. Falls on ice are nothing to fool with, and they happen very fast once you star slipping. And the older you are the worse the damage and the slower you heal. I have seen it happen too many times to try to walk outside without ice-cleats when there may be ice hidden under the snow. I keep one set of cleats in the car and two sets in the house.

So my warning to you in the south who are not use to ice, is if you do not have ice-cleats just stay home until it melts. Seriously, I am not kidding, especially if you ain't no 21 year old any more.

"I've fallen and I can't get up" I purchased a pair of Stabilicers twenty some years ago and really like them. Have to use added precaution on ice though. One manufacturer of a similar product uses replaceable tungsten carbide inserts about 1/16" diameter that look like they would be better on ice.

 

[OVERKILL]

In terms of what happened in Texas grid failure has nothing to do with wind or solar and everything to do with shutdown gas plants and deregulation .

It's not that simple. It had nothing directly to do with wind and solar because neither were expected to show up in any significant capacity during the event. Therefore, their replacement capacity (gas) is where the burden fell. So yes, wind failing to show up even to the low expected levels wasn't a major contributor to the rolling blackouts and inability to meet demand, but that doesn't mean we get to ignore the fact that wind capacity was AWOL, even if it was expected for that to be the case.

Framing it as "it's not the fault of renewables" INTENTIONALLY ignores the fact that it's not their fault because they were NOT EXPECTED to contribute when the chips were down and demand soared. So where is the VALUE in these sources if they cannot be relied on to provide meaningful output? The answer is of course that the value is quite low. They, intermittently, displace gas generation. But that gas generation is still depended on to deal with periods of high demand and so yes, when those gas plants and their JIT supply chains aren't adequately hardened against potential rare events like these, they and their operators shoulder the majority of the blame but we don't get to avert our eyes from the fact that wind didn't show up either just because it wasn't expected to, that's still an issue and highlights some of the folly with the "renewables can do everything" narrative being spun when clearly, that's not the case, and grid operators don't even plan on them providing meaningful capacity during high demand periods for that reason.

 

[4WD]

You hang in there 77665.

"I've fallen and I can't get up" I purchased a pair of Stabilicers twenty some years ago and really like them. Have to use added precaution on ice though. One manufacturer of a similar product uses replaceable tungsten carbide inserts about 1/16" diameter that look like they would be better on ice.

I still have some heel stops from Russia … went back rainy again so more ice ahead …
(18 wheeler hit a patch and cut off a major highway this morning)

 

[Yah-Tah-Hey]

just saw on the local news that the record low for Colorado was in a small town in northwest Colorado in 1985.
-61 F
Not a typo thats minus 61.

I lived twenty some miles east of Maybell in Craig, Colorado when that occurred working at Craig Generating Station. Air dryers for our instrument air compressors had a guaranteed dew point of -40F, and instrument air lines heat tracing could not prevent air lines freezing up. This led to loss of instrument controls in our fan rooms and we dumped over eight hundred megawatts on the grid. Fire suppression piping for our Rothemuhle combustion air preheaters froze and ruptured and the fan rooms looked like huge seven story frozen waterfalls. We were off line for weeks replacing piping. Fortunately, we still had on plant site large trailer mounted LP fired heaters that had been used during plant construction. Our maintenance people resurrected those units and local LP vendors were kept busy delivering LP day and night for weeks.Mr Murphy had once again jumped up and took a piece out of our backside. One of many.

 

[4WD]

It's not that simple. It had nothing directly to do with wind and solar because neither were expected to show up in any significant capacity during the event. Therefore, their replacement capacity (gas) is where the burden fell. So yes, wind failing to show up even to the low expected levels wasn't a major contributor to the rolling blackouts and inability to meet demand, but that doesn't mean we get to ignore the fact that wind capacity was AWOL, even if it was expected for that to be the case.

Framing it as "it's not the fault of renewables" INTENTIONALLY ignores the fact that it's not their fault because they were NOT EXPECTED to contribute when the chips were down and demand soared. So where is the VALUE in these sources if they cannot be relied on to provide meaningful output? The answer is of course that the value is quite low. They, intermittently, displace gas generation. But that gas generation is still depended on to deal with periods of high demand and so yes, when those gas plants and their JIT supply chains aren't adequately hardened against potential rare events like these, they and their operators shoulder the majority of the blame but we don't get to avert our eyes from the fact that wind didn't show up either just because it wasn't expected to, that's still an issue and highlights some of the folly with the "renewables can do everything" narrative being spun when clearly, that's not the case, and grid operators don't even plan on them providing meaningful capacity during high demand periods for that reason.

Yep … already seeing oblique writings in the news … megs and gigs instead of percentages of the whole to start with - and what percentage of that fraction survived the weather - wind/sun being pretty low and may be more difficult to fortify compared to instrumentation just needing heat trace and/or insulation etc …
Perhaps more waste heat recovery could be used on the GTG plants …
Bottom line is that it’s costly having to backup unreliable sources … and direct heat from gas has been awesome