This event is a good motivator for a lot of people but few will follow through. I have a nephew just like that, 3 hurricanes and now this and every time he borrows my spare generator and says I’m going to get me one when this is through. This time I turned him down and he looked shocked, he hasn’t lost power yet but he’s scared to death right now. If he does loose power I’ll rescue him and his family but I want him to sweat it out not knowing and out of options.
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Rolling Blackouts
- Thread starter Devildog
- Start date
I suppose that there is a good chance that the consumers that are screaming the loudest are also the ones that won't invest a single cent in their energy "security". Meaning; a generator. I've had one for 30 years and have used it probably 20 times because of winter storms in NW Warshington. Worst power outage we experienced was about 10 days in the late 90's.
We hear about a new storm coming in ? Other than making sure I have gas, I pretty much say "Meh". The wife has been stockpiling food, so we're pretty self sufficient. It's not that difficult and I don't really think of myself as an Einstein for doing it.
As Alpine says directly above, "Always have a backup plan, no matter what you're faced with in life". Do you really put that much trust in .gov to take care of your every need ?
We hear about a new storm coming in ? Other than making sure I have gas, I pretty much say "Meh". The wife has been stockpiling food, so we're pretty self sufficient. It's not that difficult and I don't really think of myself as an Einstein for doing it.
As Alpine says directly above, "Always have a backup plan, no matter what you're faced with in life". Do you really put that much trust in .gov to take care of your every need ?
W54/XM-388 nailed it , maybe 1 in 1000 prepared rest............
Option B is what you have right now and what Commiefornia is famous for. Even with golden grid as you called its not 100% but its damn close and , power outages are some of the easyer and cheaper things to prepare for , for many others extreme evenets systematic approach works better and yes you are right, there is considerable cost involved, more than half of the power costs are down to building and maintaining the grid infrastructure,
But on the other hand you are paying plenty extra for all the solar and wind subsidies without any improvement to the grid .
1 in 1000 prepared looks like this.
Central Texas looking like a refugee situation of sorts... suburbs with power have homes with 10 to 15 or 20 people piled into living rooms with sleeping bags.
Increasingly whole zip codes are being hit with not just power outage, but water system going down too either thru frozen or electrically damaged processing facilities or key pipes bursting.
Anyone without power/water (now going on 2 to 3 days) is begging any friends or family in area still with power to take them in.
Often multiple families are camped out in living rooms of those who still have power.
Families are dropping off young children in residences & with neighbors that still have heat.
Basically whole neighborhoods on other side of highway with no power are "moving in" to neighbors' homes on other side where power still exists.
I'm getting phone calls from friends and elderly people in the community asking desperately for firewood. People are now running out of firewood and the couple grocery stores actually open for a few hours a day are constantly out.
People are braving the iced-over roads to go looking for anyone with firewood.
Any home that still has water is filling up jugs & bathtubs in expectation of water supply cut at any moment.
The water situation is getting alarming.. especially many elderly now trapped in homes with no heat OR WATER.
Local stores (the 2 or 3 that actually open) are limiting customers to 2 gallons of water each--it's flying off the shelves
Individuals with 4-wheel drive and/or jeeps have been seen picking up stranded strangers on side of road... often people are having to hike miles to an open corner store to raid the shelves for any canned food/or still available items.
As vehicles get stuck and/or become inoperable due to extreme freeze... people have been seen hiking out of suburban neighborhoods to reach "civilization" (or any area still with power and water)
People are also now living in their work offices and/or teachers bringing their family to school classroom to live if school/office still has power/water.
In many cases schools or some churches are not yet officially "warming centers"--yet people are basically squatting--entering any public place/room they can find that's warm.
For most part there's almost zero snow plow/de-icing equipment particularly in mid- to small-sized towns and rural areas... last night's layer of ice storm means many people now trapped in their powerless/waterless homes even if they want to leave for a warming center
There's no recourse, no answers... Oncor will not answer calls or give answers for days running. Civic services not responding... also local police departments are angrily demanding answers from the large energy companies
Growing number of carbon monoxide poisonings in area and the state...people are lighting charcoal grills indoors, also running vehicles in garages
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I gotta ask if you have worked in a public utility? I'm kind of trying to figure out exactly what you are saying here. It's not as simple as what you imply.
In the areas that I worked in, eminent domain invoked by the state, ONLY allowed for their facilities to be installed with very little room for the utilities. I would say that in less than 5% of the projects that I was involve with, was enough room allowed for telephone, gas, h2o, cable, electric to relocate their equipment. E.D. did nothing for the utilities.
The utilities (mostly electric) then had to go back to the affected property owners and acquire the additional right of way for the relocation. What you are not taking into account is the length of xarms on the poles, guy wires, ect. that eat up a lot of space in the air and on the ground. Worst yet is transmission lines and those giant towers that you see. Then you also have to engineer the job to be in compliance with nesc/nec, and the company's engineering standards. That eats up more room...................Ya know ya can't run lines thru trees or peoples homes.
Now you have really pissed off customers that pull guns, or scream/cry, and threaten workers. They are now having to give away property and for the amazing sum of $1.00. Sign here please. This is were lawyers, law suites, and the media circus starts. The state and/or county will then blame the utilities for all of the problems...............In one case the county had not even acquired all the r/w for a road project, then blamed the company for causing the delays. Newspapers and the t.v. stations had a field day. I spent three days just explaining to three levels of management what was going on. This is what government does and I would think people could figure it out, but you just can't win as a utility. Goes along with the job. In really difficult situations, the utilities may have to invoke E.D., but it is a last resort.
As Lightman ( a lineman ) pointed out, there are a million of these kind of stories that the public could care less about.
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Exactly how cold and how much snow did Texas get this week? (In general, obv Texas is a vast place)
About three times as much.*
See --> https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a
Note that California and New York have different regulatory regimes and are outliers in pricing.
Correction: About twice as much when compared against all sectors. Thanks to Mr.Br for pointing that out.
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Great idea. If you feel strongly about it, please advocate to the Public Utility Commission of Texas to start approving the annual rate cases requested by the utility companies. They have been asking for years. Reminds me of the "Help me, help you." scene from Jerry Maguire. Unfortunately, more people show up to complain against rate increases than to advocate in favor of rate increases. Understandably, it can be viewed as a form of taxation.
This is the magic formula: R=E+(V–D)r
R: The Revenue a utility is allowed to earn.
E: Operating Expenses
V: Value. This amount represents the gross value of property.
D: Accrued Depreciation. When the Value is subtracted by this value, it defines the rate base or capital investment.
r: The amount the utility can earn on its rate base.
The mechanics are explained in this article ->https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme801/node/531
These are regulated markets. A portion of electricity price goes back into the infrastructure improvements for grid improvements. Drive down a farm to market road in Texas and look around for old wooden poles. A quick inventory will reveal that you find more wooden poles on transmission lines than steel ones. Some of those have been in place for over 50 years. A few even longer. You just don't see as much of that in the NE region.
A couple of extreme examples:
I've seen sections of line where the transmission line was holding some of the poles up. This is not an exaggeration. The poles were rotted out entirely at the bottom and were free swinging. They put that project on hold for lack of funding. If the wind blows them down, repairs will come out of a separate budget. "Patch it up and move on." As far as I know this is still the case today.
The Dyess AFB is home to 50% of our B-1B Lancer strategic bombers. It is located outside of Abilene and is serviced with two lines. The first is a single pole wooden 69 KV line that was installed in the 60's that crosses through a residential neighborhood. The other line into the base is a single pole wooden 69 KV line installed in the 50's. They are a drunken airmen and a kid with a 22lr away from shutting down the base.
Spot on. Though, I might add that the eminent domain issue varies greatly from state to state. I.E. The procedure in Kansas is vastly different from Texas where they have the Texas Landowner Bill of Rights. Likewise, I found that the NE regions, (New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont) are vastly different from the Midwest. If you don't mind saying, can I ask what region that you worked in Rady?
Not mocking those who are suffering, but I feel this is rather appropriate due to failed government/utility company policies:
So sad.
So sad.
Where do you see the 3x outside Comiefornia, honestly even us EUcomies don't have 3x Texas , with EU average at some 24 Cents (The green energy is pushing prices close to 34 cents in places like Germany ,Denmark but rest are closer to 16 cents , in that we pay cca 38 % in taxes mostly to subsidize green energy,30% for distribution and rest is actual energy)
Cents per Kilowatthour
Washington 9.84
Montana 11.22
North Dakota 10.26
Minnesota 12.92
Wisconsin 14.77
Michigan 16.43
Vermont 19.68
Maine 16.17
New York 18.91
Texas 12.20
Indeed its sad as besides the suffering through this, many will be left with considerable bills for the damage caused by the blackouts
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Not going to shut down the critical aspects of an Air Force Base down, especially one of significant strategic importance. I'm assuming they may even have 4 to 6 aircraft on alert?
The critical parts of the base are on backup generators, typically with weeks (if not more) worth of fuel reserves.
Many military bases have enough generator backup to support the entire load of the facility, including base housing.
Your right. I was just ball parking based upon memory without looking at the data. My information is out of context. I am more acquainted with the industrial pricing. I've seen Kwh at ~5 cents in Texas and as high as ~15 cents in New England. I'll edit my post above. Thanks for pointing that out.
Well... Now that I look at the data, it supports my statement when you compare Texas Industrial to Rhode Island. Still I agree with you, a bit cherry picked to be relevant. My Apologies.
Ha. I certainly hope not. Those airmen love their Xboxes.
As a Montanan, it took me coming to Texas during this particular time frame to wake up and prepare a little. Since building a fireplace in not really feasible in my house now, I will be constructing one on my next house. In the meantime, a generator is going to be in the very near future. I have a shit ton of water and other supplies, but I guess I never fully comprehended folks dependency (including my own) on the grid until going through this.
On the bright side, we drive around by ourselves on the roads and pretty much have the whole state to ourselves down here!
On the bright side, we drive around by ourselves on the roads and pretty much have the whole state to ourselves down here!
It depends on where you were.
Where I am, there was below freezing temperatures for a solid week, with the low being -4f
The coldest it has been in 100 years.
My area probably got about 8 inches of total snow over the week,
I'm pretty sure we are going to get some rate hikes passed after this mess as the politicians all start looking around for somebody to blame and everybody starts blaming everyone and the threats and insinuations mount and eventually everybody agrees to throw a bunch of money at the problem so that everybody can be seen to be doing something and hopefully the next crazy event is an election or two away.
If you add in all the taxes, fees and so on, in my case I'm paying an end rate of about $0.184 per kWh
They can sure tack on fees and stuff.
7.125 cents per for first 750kwh
5 cents per for over that
3.8 cents per for 'Fuel Charge'
0.1 cent 'Environmental charge'
Residential and city fees
Total final rate was 11.518 cents per for January
(we heat with gas in South Eastern Louisiana)
We have another night or two with temps in the 20s at night and I started the generator just in case that some fool will take out a power pole on a slick roadway on his way back from the bar.
7.125 cents per for first 750kwh
5 cents per for over that
3.8 cents per for 'Fuel Charge'
0.1 cent 'Environmental charge'
Residential and city fees
Total final rate was 11.518 cents per for January
(we heat with gas in South Eastern Louisiana)
We have another night or two with temps in the 20s at night and I started the generator just in case that some fool will take out a power pole on a slick roadway on his way back from the bar.
This right here. This event was a learning opportunity. If your preps are weak take notes and shore them up. It will happen again.
We got about the same as W54/XM-388.
I'm on a coop up here and we have been paying about 9 cents plus the fees. (No complaint, my Kalifornia power bill was 4 times this)
Most utilities and large customers buy there power on the futures market. The Coop's buy X amount MWh of energy from Brazos ( transmission and generation) every year at a set price. There is a overage price also. Same as the large customers, many large customers will shut down or throttle back facilities and sell there bought power back to the market when prices are high, and or grid demand calls for it.
The ones that are paying the $9000 MWh or whatever market price is are the energy traders that don't buy into the futures market or the traders that missed there projections and have to buy additional power over the amount of power they bought on the futures market.
It was most of the consumers that wanted this deregulated market which provides cheap ass power 99.9% of the time.
I have been through deregulation twice in CA and here in Texas
Would I support it again? More than likely, in the end it has been better.
From a plant perspective it's good and bad. How many plants have shut down in the last 5 years due to not keeping OM costs in the green or requiring large capital projects that would never produce a return? The original generation and transmission system was built on a regulated market where the plants knew pretty much exactly what they were going to make every year which allowed them much more security, and planning for OM and capital projects.
I bet if the state mandated a $0.01 kWh rate hike as security to ensure that plants meet additional criteria the general public would shit all over that.
This was a historic storm, where the significant majority was not prepared for. These winter storms are now wreaking havok going east and giving the generation to the distribution systems hell.
Biggest advantage the nukes have is our 18 months of fuel is on-site. Were not reliant on gas lines, coal mining, sun, wind.
Just keep smashing atoms and moving electrons.
I'm on a coop up here and we have been paying about 9 cents plus the fees. (No complaint, my Kalifornia power bill was 4 times this)
Most utilities and large customers buy there power on the futures market. The Coop's buy X amount MWh of energy from Brazos ( transmission and generation) every year at a set price. There is a overage price also. Same as the large customers, many large customers will shut down or throttle back facilities and sell there bought power back to the market when prices are high, and or grid demand calls for it.
The ones that are paying the $9000 MWh or whatever market price is are the energy traders that don't buy into the futures market or the traders that missed there projections and have to buy additional power over the amount of power they bought on the futures market.
It was most of the consumers that wanted this deregulated market which provides cheap ass power 99.9% of the time.
I have been through deregulation twice in CA and here in Texas
Would I support it again? More than likely, in the end it has been better.
From a plant perspective it's good and bad. How many plants have shut down in the last 5 years due to not keeping OM costs in the green or requiring large capital projects that would never produce a return? The original generation and transmission system was built on a regulated market where the plants knew pretty much exactly what they were going to make every year which allowed them much more security, and planning for OM and capital projects.
I bet if the state mandated a $0.01 kWh rate hike as security to ensure that plants meet additional criteria the general public would shit all over that.
This was a historic storm, where the significant majority was not prepared for. These winter storms are now wreaking havok going east and giving the generation to the distribution systems hell.
Biggest advantage the nukes have is our 18 months of fuel is on-site. Were not reliant on gas lines, coal mining, sun, wind.
Just keep smashing atoms and moving electrons.
That's old news. It's climate change now. Climate change encompasses both warming and cooling. Also any winter storms, hurricanes and well pretty much anything else that they want to use for the narrative.
He probably didn't think he'd ever use or need the power outlet in his new F150. But guess what....
Texas man uses new 2021 Ford F-150 to heat home, power appliances during blackout
His photographs and experience were picked up and quickly shared by news consumers and fans of the F-150.
www.freep.com
Glad you are ok. Being from up north, that winter weather sounds so incredibly wimpy. In goddamn Fargo ND, I remember multiple winters with at least a couple of week stretches in which the high didn't break zero degrees F. This winter in MN, there have been many days with lows of -15F to -24F. A regular winter.
I think it was 1996 in which I experienced -92F wind chills up there (they used the older wind chill chart then). You read that right. Negative ninety-two goddamn Fahrenheit windchills. -40F air temp.
That fricking town has so much wind it's unbelievable. It's on the bottom of an ancient lakebed, and it's flat from Fargo clear up to the Arctic circle. The wind just rolls on down and hammers your face, your hands, your exposed flesh.
This is why you never want a metal clad rifle up north. Never. You'll feel it through your gloves.
My theory is when the Minnesota Indians saw the white man passing through on the way to settling Fargo's Red River Valley (what a joke of a word, "valley"…flattest valley you've ever seen) they looked at them with disbelief, then amusement, and finally, with raw pity.
Anyway, that winter of 1996, Tower MN set the state's coldest temp record at -60F air temp. I saw a video on the news of a fella using a banana, left outside, to pound in a nail! Hahahaha!
I guess cold weather mandates stricter code standards for insulation and such. Good luck!
This is only the beginning.
If you have solar or wind turbines of your own and a battery bank they could take your power in an emergency at no cost.
If you sell your excess power to the utilities not only does the government set the amount that you can be paid for the power.
There is also a law on the books that says that in an emergency they can legally take your power from your battery bank without paying you for it and give it to who ever they say needs it more than you.
If you have solar or wind turbines of your own and a battery bank they could take your power in an emergency at no cost.
If you sell your excess power to the utilities not only does the government set the amount that you can be paid for the power.
There is also a law on the books that says that in an emergency they can legally take your power from your battery bank without paying you for it and give it to who ever they say needs it more than you.
He probably didn't think he'd ever use or need the power outlet in his new F150. But guess what....
Texas man uses new 2021 Ford F-150 to heat home, power appliances during blackout
His photographs and experience were picked up and quickly shared by news consumers and fans of the F-150.www.freep.com
Average human: "This won't happen again in my lifetime - it was a once-in-a-hundred-year event!”.
Yes, it will happen again. And given how close this one was to creating a months-long disaster, hopefully people get the hint. But history tells us they won't.
If that were an older GM with a Harrison HVAC system, there would have been enough excess capacity to heat the neighborhood.
It's dirt cheap in the PNW - they have these awesome things called hydro-electric dams that seem to get lots of water in the winter. But the greenies are trying to get all the dams removed so eventually the price will go up and the reliability will go down. It's just a matter of time as the idiocracy of liberalism festers away at our society.
Interesting read on how the situation in Texas occurred:
garrettbattaglia.com
The 2021 Texas power outage is a nation wide problem
History is bound to repeat itself and it has almost every year
garrettbattaglia.com
this guy did his research pretty well but he missed a few things. The main one he is technically correct that nerc doesn’t have a requirement for the GO (generator Operator) to provide or have an extreme weather or winterization plan in place. The way it’s handled is nerc requires the TO (transmission Operator) to have the plan. This causes the TO to require every GO under their control to provide their own plans and the TO puts all the plans together along with the TO part in it to provide an all encompassing plan. This is a very simple explanation of the process of course. One of my job duties is to develop and provide this plan to our TO, it’s a rather long and detailed document. The problem with most plans is there not followed and no plan is full proof. All it takes is one employee to pencil whip a pm on say heat tracing and this can cause a unit to trip. A one 3 foot piece of 1/4” tubing can cause a unit to trip and there are thousands of things like that in a power plant. Another issue is management only doing the minimum necessary to meet standards because of cost. This will happen again and no regulation will prevent it. I remember once after the north east had their third or so blackout in about a 10 year time span a congressman made the statement that he cannot understand why this happened again because they passed a law to prevent it a couple years before.
I worked in the Midwest. You are correct that the E.D. laws will vary from state to state. As I said, the utilities hate to have to resort to this. Lots of heart ache for all involved, except the stinkin' lawyers.
I never pencil whipped a PM, but I had co-workers admit they did, even openly stating it. We didn't have the manpower to meet all the new inspection (compliance) criteria, and management wouldn't let us work overtime to meet those requirements. So who's at fault?
Im not saying that. The more reserve power you have the better because you can afford to loose more plants and not affect anything. Another thing is we use to have units capable of multi fuel and now through environmental restrictions we’ve eliminated a lot of the duel and triple fuel capabilities. My company Han 7 units that would burn number 6 fuel oil at times like this but not now we dismantled that capability years ago because of the cost of keeping up with the regulations.
This is basically what a company is faced with. You (the company) have a limited income set by the government. You operate a 1995 gm truck with 175000 miles on it, you’ve done the maintenance and it is in good sound shape. Now the government comes in and says if you operate this truck you need to meet all the environmental standards for today’s trucks, so you add on all the crap and now it runs like crap to. Now your mileage goes down even farther than it was before. A new regulation gets passed and there is more stuff you need to do to your old truck, so finally you say I don’t need this and all the headaches because you have newer trucks that are looked upon favorably by the neighbors and get better gas mileage. The only catch is your newer truck only burns e85 gas. All goes good until the refinery making e85 goes down and now you can’t find fuel and your old reliable truck has been setting up for a while and if you want to use it again you have to do extra work to get it running and guess what, now you have to bring it up to current standards again.
To an extent. They have also done a lot of decommissioning of nuclear plants over the years, with no replacements. The only thing that the politicians want to see in their hands and hear in their ears, is green. Look for them to double down on green as the lobbyists grease these greedy political pigs. Too many fascist companies making a whole lot of money on this green crap.
You're also going to be asked to sacrifice. Those of you that don't have demand charges on your bills, soon will..........................
You know whats green? I mean super green?
Living in a shotgun house with the wind blowing in front door and out the back for air conditioning in 98/98 weather. Heating your small one room shack in the winter by burning stacks of 100 dollar bills. Picking cotton, corn, peanuts, soybeans,wheat, rye, barley, by hand cause all those fucking combines still run on fossil fuel.
Wait till yall see the other dominos these fucking retards started.
Texas Politicians bang their chests about that on a regular basis, because it makes for great sound bytes and publicity.
They all know such a thing is never ever going to happen.
