Stay Warm and Safe the Next Few Days

[Flightmare]

We just got power back a few min ago... woke up to 51 degrees in the house!!!

Groceries are on the patio here too.... will be carrying it all back inside if power stays on another hour or so.

Yep. Plano is sending out emergency calls telling us this could last through Tuesday with the power outages. Mine just came back on after six and a half hours off. I am feverishly recharging all my devices. LOL. It was 53 in my house when it came back on. I may start burning furniture in my fire place.

I was fortunate and had no power loss. Hope it continues, but I'm prepared just in case.

[FrogFan]

I'm in North Richland Hills, and our power went out this morning between 0630 and 0800. We're currently staying in a hotel in Hurst -- hotel rooms are in very short supply around here; there are also few restaurants open. We left the house at 1400 and it was 49 degrees inside. My biggest concern is my pool. I cut power to the pumps at the breaker panel so the ice wouldn't chew up my pump impellers when the power came back on. I have my fingers crossed that the underground pipes haven't burst.

I hope everyone stays warm and safe. I've lived in the Metroplex for almost 40 years and I've never seen anything like this. I'm looking forward to hearing the post-game analysis of this episode -- "rolling blackouts" became quite something else. Oncor website locked up most of the day; their phone line mostly busy signals.

[03Lightningrocks]

We just got power back a few min ago... woke up to 51 degrees in the house!!!

Groceries are on the patio here too.... will be carrying it all back inside if power stays on another hour or so.

Yep. Plano is sending out emergency calls telling us this could last through Tuesday with the power outages. Mine just came back on after six and a half hours off. I am feverishly recharging all my devices. LOL. It was 53 in my house when it came back on. I may start burning furniture in my fire place.

I was fortunate and had no power loss. Hope it continues, but I'm prepared just in case.

You may be in a grid with essential customers like hospitals or police stations. They are shutting the grids off intentionally but if you are in a grid with essential infrustucture, you got real lucky. Mine was barely on long enough to half way charge my devices and shut down again. Maybe had power for an hour.

[RPBrown]

We have been rolling 5 hours off and 1-1/2 hours on. Just went into our 4th off cycle. Coldest it got inside is 48 last night

[Papa_Tiger]

Power went out for me around 3:30 AM. Came back for about an hour at 2:30 PM, then off until just now. FIL has a load manager reading the voltage and it is dipping from 108V to 104V. Not sure how long the power will last, but we are grateful for every joule we can pump into heat in the house.

Lowest outside temperature we saw was 6F, lowest it got in the house by the door we were using for in/egress was 53. We usually keep it around 68F. The people who built this house sure did a lot right!

[cirus]

After reading all these replies I guess I'm lucky . My house is 2000 sq ft and built in 83 so it's not the best insulated. I've got a LP fireplace, dryer and range. My water heater is electric and so is my central heat which I rarely use unless it's like this otherwise I use the gas logs. I also have Generac 22kw generator. I'm glad I don't live in the city.

[seph]

18 hours out and still going here. Running low on gas for the generator.

[rtschl]

I realize this is a storm like no other, but this is a leadership failure in our state. Why does it seem ONCOR and ERCOT were unprepared for this storm that was predicted for more than a week?

Our leaders need to take a hard look at ALL avenues of power generation including natural gas, coal, and especially nuclear. Wind and Solar are not ecologically friendly nor efficient despite what the left says. We shouldn't be so dependent upon "green" energy which is useless in severe weather. It also doesn't work when there is little to no wind or sunshine. It will be next to impossible in a Democratic controlled US government but nuclear energy is the most efficient and environmentally sound option that we should be actively pursuing. We're going to end up being like California with constant power failures in summer when it is normal weather here if Texas doesn't reverse course on it's current energy

[03Lightningrocks]

I realize this is a storm like no other, but this is a leadership failure in our state. Why does it seem ONCOR and ERCOT were unprepared for this storm that was predicted for more than a week?

Our leaders need to take a hard look at ALL avenues of power generation including natural gas, coal, and especially nuclear. Wind and Solar are not ecologically friendly nor efficient despite what the left says. We shouldn't be so dependent upon "green" energy which is useless in severe weather. It also doesn't work when there is little to no wind or sunshine. It will be next to impossible in a Democratic controlled US government but nuclear energy is the most efficient and environmentally sound option that we should be actively pursuing. We're going to end up being like California with constant power failures in summer when it is normal weather here if Texas doesn't reverse course on it's current energy

[BigGuy]

I realize this is a storm like no other, but this is a leadership failure in our state. Why does it seem ONCOR and ERCOT were unprepared for this storm that was predicted for more than a week?

Our leaders need to take a hard look at ALL avenues of power generation including natural gas, coal, and especially nuclear. Wind and Solar are not ecologically friendly nor efficient despite what the left says. We shouldn't be so dependent upon "green" energy which is useless in severe weather. It also doesn't work when there is little to no wind or sunshine. It will be next to impossible in a Democratic controlled US government but nuclear energy is the most efficient and environmentally sound option that we should be actively pursuing. We're going to end up being like California with constant power failures in summer when it is normal weather here if Texas doesn't reverse course on it's current energy

with and 03Lightningrocks.

[2farnorth]

Many of you are not going to like hearing this.

It's a little hard for the power generation and distribution system to flex fast to an ever increasing demand. Especially with the difficult process we have allowed to happen in getting new generation plants approved. There should be excess capacity but it comes at a price. Nobody wants the big power distribution line towers in their neighborhood.
How many totally electric new homes were built in the last 6 months. How many new pools with heaters and circulation pumps were added. How many new eco vehicles are setting there plugged in to the charging system. Individual items are not big but when you combine a few thousand together it's serious load.
The system is built to handle extreme summer temps. These winter temps, when you include the ice damaged generation and distribution, is a 100+ year event that has caught the whole nation. The whole midwest distribution system is quivering on the edge of failure.
This is the future for "green energy". All those solar panels covered with snow on cloudy day become useless. Many of those ugly wind turbines are iced up and non-functional.

Blame the politicians, educators, and media that push this kind of stuff down our throats without listening to industry leaders.

edit to add another perspective. I'm sitting here with 4-8 inches of snow in my driveway with 8-12 more coming tomorrow. I got rid of my 4 wheel drive because I didn't need it couple years ago. I don't own a snow shovel. I'm not prepared for this once in a life time (hopefully) event.

[03Lightningrocks]

I really do understand why demand is outpacing supply. I even understand the rolling blackouts. What is making me madder than a wet hen is the uneven way the morons are doing it. Some folks are having 12-16 hours of nothing with an hour of electric while others are getting an hour and a half every 4 hours. Some folks are having no outage because they happen to be on the same grid as a police station or a hospital. The utility company knew this would be a challenge but yet they are handling it like complete idiots.

[03Lightningrocks]

One issue I am noticing is defenitely affecting grid selection for shut downs. Areas with a high number of heat pump/electric heat seem to be having longer down times. I think this is due to the large demand these areas create. Take for example a home with a three ton heat pump and 15KW of back up electric heat. When that system comes on it will draw as much as 80 amps at 220 volts. Convert that to Watts (W=VxA) and it is staggering. A home the same size with gas heat uses a blower pulling 1-10 amps at 120 volts with most being the average 5. It is easy to see why turning on a grid with 90% heat pump homes would put extreme demand on the available KW. Another way to look at it. To turn on a grid that is mostly heat pump homes, they have to turn off 8-10 grids with majority gas furnaces to keep demand at same level. When they turn on the power to a majority heat pump grid, the systems all have to run full on heat pump with all heat strips calling to heat the home back up. This creates a huge spike in demand.

My daughters home is gas heat but she is in a neighborhood/grid that is at least 75% heat pump homes. I am five minutes away and right across Legacy but my neighborhood/grid is 95% gas heat. Her grid has been shut down far longer with fewer on cycles than my grid.

Some "victims" on Twitter are crying that selection is being made due to income levels. LOL. Selection is being made based on your heat source. It just so happens that larger homes are far less likely to have heat pump systems because a heat pump would never heat a 2500 plus square foot home. I get so tired of everyone looking to be a victim. Next thing we will see is morons playing the race card.

[Grayling813]

Tucker Carlson: The great Texas climate catastrophe is heading your way
Green energy means a less reliable power grid. Why do our leaders deny that?
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker- ... atastrophe

The Green New Deal has come, believe it or not, to the state of Texas. How's it working out so far?

Well, the good news is all that alternative energy seems to have had a remarkable effect on the climate. Sunday night, parts of Texas got the temperatures that we typically see in Alaska. In fact, they were the same as they were in Alaska. So global warming is no longer a pressing concern in Houston.

The bad news is, they don't have electricity. The windmills froze, so the power grid failed. Millions of Texans woke up Monday morning having to boil their water because with no electricity, it couldn't be purified.

The ironically named Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees the grid, had no solution to any of this. They simply told people to stop using so much power to keep warm. So in Houston, hundreds of shivering Texans headed to the convention center like refugees to keep from freezing to death. Some Texans almost certainly did freeze to death. Later this week, we'll likely learn just how many more were killed as they tried to keep warm with jury-rigged heaters and barbecues and car exhaust.

Rather than celebrate and benefit from their state's vast natural resources, politicians took the fashionable route and became recklessly reliant on so-called alternative energy, meaning windmills. Fifteen years ago, there were virtually no wind farms in Texas. Last year, roughly a quarter of all electricity generated in the state came from wind. Local politicians were pleased by this. They bragged about it like there was something virtuous about destroying the landscape and degrading the power grid. Just last week, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott proudly accepted something called the Wind Leadership Award, given with gratitude by Tri Global Energy, a company getting rich from green energy.

[RoyGBiv]

The power generation issue is not about wind. Coal, Nuke and Gas plants all went down. Likely line issues or issues related to the freeze affecting controls/sensors. Not in my lane, just internet quarterbacking.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02 ... -the-cold/

Since wind in Texas generally tends to produce less during winter, there's no way that the grid operators would have planned for getting 30GW from wind generation; in fact, a chart at ERCOT indicates that wind is producing significantly more than forecast.