Snow in Houston
- Thread starter IReallyLikePizza2
- Start date
The news says this person won’t run for re-election. It also indicates his wife lost her job for standing up to his comments and views.
I’m more curious as to the back story as to what drove him to put this up on his Facebook. More specifically was he seeing people abuse some kind of system that impacted others?
We all know people just lose it during emergencies and many more are just not prepared for the same. Given, this is one of those hundred year (Snow) events along with a quick freeze.
There’s just going to be more crazies running around.
One thing which I was surprised to learn is Texas isn’t attached to the national grid. Thus the lack of back up, standards, and compliance to meet such events.
Stay Warm & Stay Safe . . .
It has surly been an adventure. Trying to keep my 8 and 12 year old girls warm, that has been the biggest problem. Luckily, I had two propane tanks ready to go, and multiple little camping tanks for our portable grills. We have been OK...playing board games, etc. It did get down to 50 in the house, and that was when I moved the propane fire pit into the largest of the girls rooms and designated that as the 'warm' room. Yes, yes, I am careful. Kept it at 70 in that room by only running it for a few minutes every hour. I am more concerned about the pipes bursting. Having lived in Northern VA for 15+ years, was used to this shit, and never thought twice about it. But San Antonio is NOT BUILT for 6 inches of snow, much less single digit temps. That is freak'n cold and damn dangerous here. I have not been to work all week, and I hopefully can tele-work today. Power was on for 10 hours yesterday, so we though we were good. NOPE, 20:00 last night, out again and came back on at 0300. Lets see how long it stays on now. Rolling power outages...I am good with it IF it was done correctly. We went over 24 hours with one '54 second' power on, and that was it. Hey CPS...you can kiss my old, white pimply ass and I hope the CEO and other board members get their asses sued into next year. Wanna bet their electricity didn't go out?
I typed this yesterday afternoon then the power died...didn't post.
Power has been on for 2 hours now.....thankfully the temp is in the 30's today....so it hasn't been that bad. We now have no running water, but I am surprised it lasted this long. We filled the bathtubs up, drinking bottles, etc, etc. So we are good. Ready for the second blast now....and it should be over by tomorrow.
I hope all are doing well, especially my fellow Texans. God Bless Texas and all of you!
I typed this yesterday afternoon then the power died...didn't post.
Power has been on for 2 hours now.....thankfully the temp is in the 30's today....so it hasn't been that bad. We now have no running water, but I am surprised it lasted this long. We filled the bathtubs up, drinking bottles, etc, etc. So we are good. Ready for the second blast now....and it should be over by tomorrow.
I hope all are doing well, especially my fellow Texans. God Bless Texas and all of you!
I'm still confused people are losing power. It came on for me around midnight as for a lot of people, but on Nextdoor people in the same general area as me have lost it
The ERCOT chart shows there is plenty of power (red is supply, green is demand)
The ERCOT chart shows there is plenty of power (red is supply, green is demand)
Like you said depending upon the age of home very few are well insulated or designed for extreme cold weather. I'm always surprised to see older homes with plaster, lathe, and news paper in the walls.
Then again seeing knob & tube under the floor boards is also quite a scene to see!
Yeah, well, they have been giving myself and my community the high hard one...for 3 days now.
Not sure where those charts came from but my understanding is an increased demand due to low temps is exceeding a reduced supply due to low temps. Much of the wind power is down due to icing and natural gas prices on the spot market last Friday increased 32,000%......that isn’t a typo.
Low temps make (pipeline)transportation very difficult if not impossible since they were not designed for such temps. Well heads freeze too.
I think the biggest problem is ERCOT along with regulations. No provisions for grandfathering regulations. If a provider wants to expand capacity, they must update all existing generation to current regulation levels first. This is preventing the kind of change needed to help deal with these conditions.
It isn’t rocket science but when politicians are responsible for the grid, too many outside factors get involved and we arrive at where we are today.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
These charts are from ERCOT, right on the front page of the website. It paints the picture that there is enough capacity, but millions are still without power
fenderman
Staff member
- Mar 9, 2014
- 36,892
- 21,408
They are using a numbers trick to fool laypeople. "Today, there were 45,000 megawatts offline. Of that, 15,000 megawatts were wind and 30,000 were gas and coal. " USA Today.
Notice how Cohan carefully uses his words about wind energy production, "1.5GW less than ERCOT expected for a winter peak event" So essentially they lower their expectations to imply l relatively low loss percentage. Considering that wind energy production is 1/3 that of gas and coal combined 23.3 vs 68.3 (52.8+15.5) its failure is much more significant than the gas failures.
sebastiantombs
Known around here
From the numbers I heard coal and gas lost about 50%, nuclear lost about 25% while wind lost over 90%. Based on percentages I think it's clear that wind crapped out totally despite the tax advantages it gets to "encourage" alternative energy. Bottom line is the system needs to be able to meet demand from any one source, wind, carbon based or nuclear, just to have a backup for the backup. The losses in carbon based and nuclear happened due to frozen sensors and frozen gas lines/valves. They cheaped out on proper insulation trying to remain profitable and competitive and it was all, basically, mandated by the Texas State Legislature. What could possibly go wrong with politicians dictating what has to be done in major infrastructure when they haven't got a clue past flipping a light switch?
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I think that is 50% of the total combined power from coal and natural gas which was 67.3%, that yields a loss of 34%.
I think that is 25% of the total power from nuclear energy which was 5.1%, that yields a loss of 1.3%.
I think that is 90% of the total power combined wind and solar which was 25.5%, that yields a loss of 23.6%.
Of the total combined power sources of 97.9% (excluding misc. energy), natural gas and coal are the greater losses compared to wind and solar. So, the 90% energy loss from wind/solar, percentage wise, is not that dramatic when you look at the actual losses.
During good times which is about 90% plus of the year, wind and solar are great sources of energy without pollution.
I think that is 25% of the total power from nuclear energy which was 5.1%, that yields a loss of 1.3%.
I think that is 90% of the total power combined wind and solar which was 25.5%, that yields a loss of 23.6%.
Of the total combined power sources of 97.9% (excluding misc. energy), natural gas and coal are the greater losses compared to wind and solar. So, the 90% energy loss from wind/solar, percentage wise, is not that dramatic when you look at the actual losses.
During good times which is about 90% plus of the year, wind and solar are great sources of energy without pollution.
BORIStheBLADE
Getting comfortable
Sorry I'm late to this thread. I'm up north in Celina Texas. We got about a total of 8" of snow... 6" Sunday night and 2" Tuesday. Got down to -4 over night on Monday. I've been very fortunate to have running water and no power outages through all of this.
Attachments
I saw an article about Mattress Mack, there are still some good people in the world:
‘Mattress Mack’ opens Texas furniture stores as shelters amid storm | One America News Network
Breaking News, Latest News and Current News from OANN.com. Breaking news and video. Latest Current News: U.S., World, Entertainment, Health, Business, Technology, Politics, Sports.
www.oann.com
sebastiantombs
Known around here
As long as you don't consider the pollution created to produce those "green" sources in the first place or how the raw materials are mined/obtained or how the wind mills and solar panels are disposed of at the end of their life cycle. The bottom line is that wind/solar are not 24/7/365 capable power sources. Fossil/carbon based/nuclear will be required for a very long time despite the empty promises of the "Green New Deal". Producing batteries for storage, and the converters to make battery power useable, is even more costly in terms of pollution, energy and mining operations that are inherently very polluting and occur in areas of the world where people are exploited to do that manual labor.
Jessie.slimer
BIT Beta Team
Yep, we are a long way from reliable "green" energy, and even longer way away from ONLY "green" energy.
iwanttosee
Pulling my weight
Once a century storm comes by Texas and everybody is surprised by all the havoc.
Answer is simple, Texas hasn't winter-proof its power grind infrastructure because it hasn't been this cold since early 1900's.
www.baynews9.com
Answer is simple, Texas hasn't winter-proof its power grind infrastructure because it hasn't been this cold since early 1900's.
A Full List of All The Record Cold Texas Temperatures
And there are a lot of records.
www.baynews9.com
mat200
IPCT Contributor
- Jan 17, 2017
- 15,655
- 26,415