Good luck to Texans

[spider2081]

Best wishes for all the Texans that contribute to this site. Hope all of you survive this disaster and recover with minimal losses.

Living in Connecticut all my life its hard for me to imagine a state whose size is as large as Texas. Google search shows Texas is larger than France and has 1/2 the population.
Weather related power outages that last for a week are sort of common place in CT. Many homes have emergency generators to power their homes when this happens. Was electrical power so dependable in Texas that homeowners saw no need for emergency standby power?

Think safe stay healthy

[TheBender]

Hi thanks for the thoughts. I guess the issue is that we simply don’t see weather like this here. Once every 5 years we see snow that sticks around for a few days. Usually, if it snows, it’s 1-3 days a year and it doesn’t even stick. Something is wrong with the power grid, that is for sure. In my 25 years here this is the first time to experience these temperatures and snow mixture. Thankfully we are over the hump as most of the snow has melted already and headed to 60F weather quickly.

[SteinOnkel]

It seems privatizing critical infrastructure and running utilities for profit is a terrible idea. We see the consequences every year in California as well. It sucks.

These frequent weather extremes are just a sample of what's to come if we don't get our act together. I was watching a documentary the other day about the forests of Borneo. My goodness, we are taking a nice long rung up to kick this planet into the groin as hard as we possible can, aren't we?

Well, none of that helps our friends in Texas right now. I donated to the Austin Area Urban League yesterday. I did make sure the note said to remember this come fire season, because the rivalry between our two states has been less than friendly of late.

[Nut124]

It does seem that so called 100 year weather events are happening with increasing regularity.

In Texas, if my sources are correct, the peak energy demand is in Aug when everyone is running AC 24/7. The Texas energy system only pays producers if/when the energy they produce is sold. No one is being paid to maintain standby capacity for disaster. So, when the summer and peak demand ends, producers shut down excess capacity, mothball the facility, lay off workers until the next June or so.

[Franziskaner]

Reliance upon wind and Solar which don't work too good when iced up and cloudy.

Oh well, we are OK now

Lessons learned ??? We will see .... my money is on on NOPE

[spider2081]

It does seem that so called 100 year weather events are happening with increasing regularity.

First let me say my intent with my original post was to let the members who live in Texas know I wish them well, It was not to generate a political leaning agenda.
Back in the early 1980s Connecticut had 2 years of successive 100 year rainfalls, causing extensive flood damage. Many schools and businesses were closed for about a week. I don't think we have had another since.

Again I want to wish all our Texas friends a speedy recovery from these unusual weather related losses.

Let the sun shine on Texas bringing warmth and neighbors together.

[TheBender]

It does seem that so called 100 year weather events are happening with increasing regularity.

First let me say my intent with my original post was to let the members who live in Texas know I wish them well, It was not to generate a political leaning agenda.
Back in the early 1980s Connecticut had 2 years of successive 100 year rainfalls, causing extensive flood damage. Many schools and businesses were closed for about a week. I don't think we have had another since.

Again I want to wish all our Texas friends a speedy recovery from these unusual weather related losses.

Let the sun shine on Texas bringing warmth and neighbors together.

Thanks again. We hit 72F today in Fort Worth and all the snow and ice had melted yesterday. Power is back to normal. Water supplies are getting back to normal. Now it’s about houses that had busted pipes and flood damage.

[SteinOnkel]

Great news, that means AR can send me my parts I ordered last week

[TheBender]

Great news, that means AR can send me my parts I ordered last week

Haha yes. UPS started back up Thursday and FedEx on Friday. USPS never stopped.

[TX82FIAT]

It's interesting. Solar companies are not offering a good battery backup/storage system in Texas. Energy is simply put back on the failing grid. This does not help a homeowner when there are power outages and cloudy skies. The heating systems in Texas when it is below 30 degrees are the equivalent of blowing air across toaster coils consuming significantly more electricity than during peak AC use times. Wind power only works when turbines can spin not when they are frozen. Pipes in Texas have a tendency to burse with surprising frequency because of a lack of insulation and type of fixtures used. I lived in the northeast for 35 years and never had a pipe burst in below zero temps. Add to this the lack of winter driving skills and a state wide freeze for a week and this is what you get, another shutdown. We as consumers, residents, citizens get very frustrated when these type of events occur. Yet, we are the same people that fail to grasp the idea of limited Government dollars and the impact of taxes in the short and long term. Rapid population growth (increase of 12 million over last 30 years) without investing proportionately in the electrical grid. This is another example of failed government and the in-ability of government to prioritize spending. The answer can not be more government control. It needs to be more individual energy independence.
We are still boiling water at our house. Had no power or heat for a period of time. We need to be prepared. I look at this situation and point back to myself for not being prepared. We reap what we sow. As FIAT guys many of us know that every time we go under the hood of our car to fix some nuance. we manage better than anyone else could for ourselves.

[RRoller123]

I love Texas. Great people. We (Altron) bought the Richardson manufacturing plant of Hewlett Packard, back when I was in the electronics biz years ago, and I was able to spend quite a bit of time down there making the employee transition, surveying equipment, documenting the process, etc work. Rock solid people. But a little hot in July and August...... hahahahahaah!

[SteinOnkel]

It's interesting. Solar companies are not offering a good battery backup/storage system in Texas. Energy is simply put back on the failing grid.

Hmm what about a Tesla Powerwall? We've installed it ourselves at a friend's house. That being said he is very high up on the food chain at Tesla, so maybe that's why that was a possibility.

Very fun project. I did the permit drawings for the solar, they got it signed off and stamped, then we spent a weekend bolting it all together including the panels on the roof, controller etc and finally had an electrician sign off on it. The electrical code was really easy to follow and he was extremely impressed.

[TX82FIAT]

I've shopped three companies and you did it the right way. Buy the components and install yourself. These companies try to swap your electric bill for a monthly note. Can be a very expensive proposition compared to doing it yourself up front. Buying solar has become the new car, mattress, diamond ring buying experience. You need to be an informed consumer and cash is king.

[SteinOnkel]

I've shopped three companies and you did it the right way. Buy the components and install yourself. These companies try to swap your electric bill for a monthly note. Can be a very expensive proposition compared to doing it yourself up front. Buying solar has become the new car, mattress, diamond ring buying experience. You need to be an informed consumer and cash is king.

Absolutely this. My dad (for some reason, he's an engineer as well!) did the whole call up a solar contractor route with their house five or six years ago. They've since moved and mom decided to crunch the numbers in retrospect. Not worth it all. Maybe the house fetched a higher price because of the solar - it's California after all. But that's neither here nor there.

For my house (small 1bdr town house w/ detached garage) I crunched the numbers of self-built solar. It's not feasible for me that way either. My partner and I could do it for around $8,000 (no storage). But it takes too long to break even. We have electric baseboard heaters that really suck down electricity, but even so with our yearly average electricity bill at around $100, we would be looking at 80 months to break even. That's almost seven years from now, and the probability that we will stay in our starter home that long is approaching zero.

Still - when PG&E slams us with a whopping $260 bill in December, the discussion comes up again.

Also, if you have an electric car, well there's your giant battery right there. You would only need it during emergencies. There has got to be way to hack the electric car to power your house. Funny anecdote about that: a few years ago I was hanging out at my friends house and they are roommates and also work at tesla as mid-level engineers. They don't own Teslas, but they always have engineering cars and prototypes at their house for testing, research etc. Very cool; I always volunteer to be DD because the chances are high that I get to drive a pre-production model. Anyway, we were sitting around and they were bitching about their electricity bill being so high. Well, the house is 15 miles from the factory and obviously the cars can all be charged there lightning fast and for free. So I was like well why don't you use the cars to power your house? They looked at me like I was from another planet and it was the most outlandish idea ever. The electrical engineers needed the landscape architect to explain this to them lol. I don't know what became of it, but that's exactly what I would do in their situation. Fuck PG&E.

[TX82FIAT]

The idea of an electric car having a secondary use as a home battery is pretty smart. I don't know about the long term effects but it seems like you could have your cake and eat it too. An electric car gets about 4 miles per kWh. The newer cars have a range of 300 to 400 miles per charge. An electric car with a range of 300 miles should in theory be able to put out 70 kWh less some loss in transferring over to the house. Houses use 11,000 kWh/year. Let's give you a big house that uses 15,000 kWh/year. That is an average of 41kWh/day for a system that should in theory give you $70kWh. Seems like you should be able to run your house for a couple days off of your electric car battery. Electric cars already have a controller so in theory you would only need some form of inverter to convert and monitor the electricity to a suitable AC for the house and a modified control panel to run the plug in.