How are Texas members doing?

[Sower]

9 hours ago, teddyv said:

There are wind farms in many cold climates like in parts of Canada that are designed around cold weather. With Texas rarely getting freezing temperatures those type were deemed unnecessary I suppose. 

As far as bird and bat kills, I think cats kill close to a billion every year in the US. Loss of birds and bats is of course not desired, but this is not a big component to such concerns.

Thanks teddyv, I hadn't considered cold/frigid weather wind turbines that function up north, and places like Antarctica.
 

From Mashable;
"The reality about wind turbines is they regularly operate in frigid conditions and can be weatherized to perform in wintry extremes. (or not) That's why they work in places like Sweden, Antarctica, and Iowa (over 40 percent of Iowa's electricity comes from wind). At times, some turbines (particularly those that aren't weatherized like many in Texas) are temporarily shut down during excessively icy conditions, wherein other energy sources, be it nuclear, solar, gas, or hydro power, are meant to pick up the slack."  **Also, Coal plants here are slowly being shut down unlike their usage up north. They are more reliable in extreme cold.

"As far as bird and bat kills, I think cats kill close to a billion every year in the US. Loss of birds and bats is of course not desired, but this is not a big component to such concerns"

Cats;
As an invasive species^[1] and superpredator,^[2] they do considerable ecological damage.^[2] In Australia, hunting by cats helped to drive at least 20 native mammals to extinction,^[3] and continues to threaten at least 124 more.^[3] Their introduction has caused the extinction of at least 33 endemic species on islands throughout the world.^[2] Feral and domestic cats kill billions of birds in the United States every year, where songbird populations continue to decline.

We cannot blame the cats, who were created by God to be predators.
Man has 'domesticated' them, bred them  by the bazillions, for profit/pleasure,
and them dumped them when little lovable kitty became pregnant and a hassel.
Living in the country, I have to shoot feral cats and dogs, pig and hogs.
We have lost livestock because they have learned human presence offers food opportunity.
There are more wild cats in America than domesticated. And the number is growing.
 

[Starise]

Glad to hear Texas is back on the road to recovery.

While wind power probably has a few drawbacks if the turbines are not weatherized, I would take it over nuclear power any day even though I'm sure nuclear power is far more powerful and dependable. It only takes one mistake or failure with nuclear to have BIG problems for public health.

[teddyv]

I was reading that some Texas residents were getting saddled with outrageous electricity bills because of the nature of the regulation of electricity producers and marketers.

[other one]

10 hours ago, teddyv said:

There are wind farms in many cold climates like in parts of Canada that are designed around cold weather. With Texas rarely getting freezing temperatures those type were deemed unnecessary I suppose. 

As far as bird and bat kills, I think cats kill close to a billion every year in the US. Loss of birds and bats is of course not desired, but this is not a big component to such concerns.

It went beyond the wind farms Teddy.   Some of the Natural Gas wellheads also went down due to the cold because they were not winterized to these kinds of temperatures.   Once some of the Natural Gas generators went down the system didn't have enough of a base load to control so others tripped off of the state wide grid and the whole system became unstable and and the grid and state wide sharing failed.   Some places still had power and other didn't.   And some had to do rolling outages to keep the generators from overloading and tripping even off the local grid it serves.

The problem is that none of their system was protected from these temperatures

Conservatives are going to blame it on the wind generation, and while that was a huge part of the overall problem, it wasn't the whole problem.  Actually it shouldn't have been the problem at all.   Wind and solar is not reliable generation.  When the wind doesn't blow and the sun isn't out it furnishes nothing to the grid....   and the grid should be designed to work without these supplemental sources....    and it wasn't.     And when the Natural Gas wellheads started failing the whole system crashed.

Question now is, do they point fingers and play the blame game or do they look at the reality of the system they have created and fix it for the next disaster.

[other one]

10 hours ago, teddyv said:

There are wind farms in many cold climates like in parts of Canada that are designed around cold weather. With Texas rarely getting freezing temperatures those type were deemed unnecessary I suppose. 

As far as bird and bat kills, I think cats kill close to a billion every year in the US. Loss of birds and bats is of course not desired, but this is not a big component to such concerns.

It went beyond the wind farms Teddy.   Some of the Natural Gas wellheads also went down due to the cold because they were not winterized to these kinds of temperatures.   Once some of the Natural Gas generators went down the system didn't have enough of a base load to control so others tripped off of the state wide grid and the whole system became unstable and and the grid and state wide sharing failed.   Some places still had power and other didn't.   And some had to do rolling outages to keep the generators from overloading and tripping even off the local grid it serves.

The problem is that none of their system was protected from these temperatures

Conservatives are going to blame it on the wind generation, and while that was a huge part of the overall problem, it wasn't the whole problem.  Actually it shouldn't have been the problem at all.   Wind and solar is not reliable generation.  When the wind doesn't blow and the sun isn't out it furnishes nothing to the grid....   and the grid should be designed to work without these supplemental sources....    and it wasn't.     And when the Natural Gas wellheads started failing the whole system crashed.

Question now is, do they point fingers and play the blame game or do they look at the reality of the system they have created and fix it for the next disaster.

[teddyv]

2 minutes ago, other one said:

It went beyond the wind farms Teddy.   Some of the Natural Gas wellheads also went down due to the cold because they were not winterized to these kinds of temperatures.   Once some of the Natural Gas generators went down the system didn't have enough of a base load to control so others tripped off of the state wide grid and the whole system became unstable and and the grid and state wide sharing failed.   Some places still had power and other didn't.   And some had to do rolling outages to keep the generators from overloading and tripping even off the local grid it serves.

The problem is that none of their system was protected from these temperatures

Conservatives are going to blame it on the wind generation, and while that was a huge part of the overall problem, it wasn't the whole problem.  Actually it shouldn't have been the problem at all.   Wind and solar is not reliable generation.  When the wind doesn't blow and the sun isn't out it furnishes nothing to the grid....   and the grid should be designed to work without these supplemental sources....    and it wasn't.     And when the Natural Gas wellheads started failing the whole system crashed.

Question now is, do they point fingers and play the blame game or do they look at the reality of the system they have created and fix it for the next disaster.

Yes, I did read that there were some issues around the natural gas wells as well.

As to what to do next, that will be a matter of risk analysis. This type of weather pattern is very unusual. Will they be expected to continue in the future? Or is it 1 in 10, 1 in 50, 1 in 100 year event? Hard questions to ask with lots of potential costs associated.

[other one]

Just now, teddyv said:

Yes, I did read that there were some issues around the natural gas wells as well.

As to what to do next, that will be a matter of risk analysis. This type of weather pattern is very unusual. Will they be expected to continue in the future? Or is it 1 in 10, 1 in 50, 1 in 100 year event? Hard questions to ask with lots of potential costs associated.

I agree.   I sort of fixed my problem by buying a generator.  I live in Oklahoma and we have both summer storms and winter and ice that causes us problems.   So I got something that can carry our whole house.   Right now it's running on gasoline, but soon will be modified to run on natural gas also.    Problem with gasoline is keeping enough to get one though most outages and the gasoline getting old.   Best fix for that is to keep it ready to run on avgas.   Gasoline for airplanes does not get old and gunk up.   so you keep that in the tank and regular car gas that can be cycled into our vehicles monthly so it stays fresh. 

The last ice storm we had before this snow, we were out of electrical power for 8 days.   Then a month ago they changed a pole that our transformer was on so it was down for a whole day.    We lost power three times last week ranging from an hour to most of a day. And when the temperature outside is -10 degrees. being out of power for the heating gets spooky.    A lot of things can happen at those temperatures.....    one of my neighbors has a freezer in his unheated garage.    It got so cold that the freezer thought it was over cooling and defrosted itself.  Didn't even know that could happen.

[teddyv]

Genset makes a lot of sense if you get lots of intermittent power outages, especially in the summer but for an 8-day outage, that might be a bit much for a small genset that most people might consider as backup.

As for a  freezer defrosting itself, that's a new one to me as well!

[Starise]

I live in the north east US. I keep a 5500 watt generator that thankfully I haven't needed in at least 5 years. I used it maybe a half dozen times mostly in the summer if a storm knocked out power. As @other one mentioned, it's gasoline powered so even if I don't use it I have to run it periodically and make sure mice didn't chew the wires. I usually add  gasoline stabilizer. After a few years though, it's probably time to drain the fuel and maybe run it empty until needed again. My generator will run my well pump, fridge and a few lights. IOW gets me by in a short outage.

For heat, I'm sure lots of people in Texas will be looking at stand alone heat in the future. If they aren't they should be just in case. I have used coal, wood and most recently a 500 gallon propane tank with two stand alone heaters that don't require electricity. I highly recommend propane if you want to stay away from anything labor intensive and time consuming. I can get a battery hookup for my main furnace since it takes very little electricity to run it. I haven't seen the need to do that yet. The other two heaters would be enough.

[other one]

1 hour ago, Starise said:

I don't use it I have to run it periodically and make sure mice didn't chew the wires.

Smear some jalapeno pepper juice on the wires and they will leave it alone.     The mold release they use when making the wires is peanut oil.    Rodents think peanuts and chomp down.