Author Topic: Texas in a state of emergency  (Read 5926 times)

cordex

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #50 on: February 18, 2021, 03:07:13 PM »
Gas prices have been going up lately because oil has been going up, but this weather is having a big impact on energy prices across the board. I'm really glad that I heat with pellets.
Have you looked to see if pellets are still available?  I know you stockpiled in advance, but I'm curious if it's something that has gotten hit hard.

charby

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #51 on: February 18, 2021, 05:32:43 PM »
.40 increase in the last 2 days and I live by a terminal
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K Frame

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #52 on: February 18, 2021, 05:49:58 PM »
Have you looked to see if pellets are still available?  I know you stockpiled in advance, but I'm curious if it's something that has gotten hit hard.

I've been buying my pellets from Lowes. Kind of hard to find places that stock them here in Northern Virginia.

The Lowe's near me is out, but one about 10 miles away still has 1,700 bags showing up in their online inventory.

I've got between 10 and 15 bags left, so I should be good to very close to the end of the heating season, I think.
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Jim147

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #53 on: February 18, 2021, 06:29:03 PM »
I don't watch it as much as gas but propane has doubled since last fall but that normal for winter prices. At least it didn't jump five times like it did several years back.
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charby

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #54 on: February 18, 2021, 06:38:22 PM »
A lot of rural and small town residents here have propane or natural gas whole house generators. There are parts of the state that losing power for days after a strong summer storm or winter ice storm happens fairly regularly anymore. Alliant Energy (provider in my area) is moving to bury all their power, even rural due to weather issues.

Whole house generators are pretty awesome, just need to make sure your LP tank is full because it doesn't take too many days to go through 400-500 gallons of LP.
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HeroHog

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #55 on: February 18, 2021, 07:32:03 PM »
Shreveport, LA, my neighbor trying to escape. He's STILL stuck.
http://herohog.com/images/misc/210218Stuck.mp4
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Ron

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #56 on: February 18, 2021, 08:17:03 PM »
Karl Denniger:

The Bidens and AOCs of the world are literally going to kill you.

You're seeing it right here and now across the nation, including in Texas.

Texas, like so many other areas, has put up windmills and solar "farms" for the last 20 years, shutting down older coal-fired plants and not modernizing and improving their "fossil fuel" energy production infrastructure.  At the same time on a national basis the natural gas pipeline operators, in service to the woke green mob, have replaced fuel-fired pumps (that run on the gas in the pipe, therefore are failsafe so long as the pipe has something in it and is intact) with electrically powered booster pumps because, of course, you can get the power for them from "green" sources instead of all that eeee-vile carbon.

I remind you that natural gas does not freeze at other than cryogenic temperatures and as such the problem is not the gas freezing and as for machinery you have plenty of heat source in the pipe.  By putting up with and responding to the "woke mob" instead of immediately frying and eating their entire blood line these companies took an ultra-reliable and essential energy delivery system that other than by physical destruction would nearly-always continue to operate and turned it into a fragile system dependent on multiple outside elements where if any of those elements failed so does the natural gas delivery.

Winter in the south is when nuclear plants are typically taken down for maintenance as well -- since it's the middle of summer when the A/C is blasting away.  But those NatGas peaking plants and coal-fired base load infrastructure, well.... it's not green enough, so let's turn that stuff off and rely on the windmills and solar panels -- and hope it doesn't get destabilized.

Of course the "Globull Warming" screamfest folks always and forever have prognosticated that it will forever get warmer, that wind levels will rise forever and thus both solar panels and wind will forevermore continue to yield more and more useful energy.

All of that got blown up this week.

Texas is seeing wind chills in negative (Fahrenheit) numbers along with single digit or below temperatures.  That plus moisture = ice, and windmill blades are wings and not only suffer the same problem an airplane wing does when it gets loaded in addition they go out of balance and thus the windmill has to be shut down lest it destroy itself.  At the same time ice and snow cover solar panels and reduce their output to an effective zero.

The problem with the power grid is that in the event you demand more of it than can be delivered it becomes unstable due to a number of factors including, in the case of A/C transmission, phase sag.  If expected resources are not available -- such as when your wind turbines ice up -- then you have no alternative but to shed load (turn off people's power intentionally) because if you don't you will get an uncontrolled collapse and possible severe equipment damage.  Further most nuclear plants cannot quickly load-follow -- if you need more power quickly you better have something else, and if a bunch of load drops off rapidly you better have some other generation source you can shut down.  Go outside the operating parameters and a nuke plant will "trip" and if they do most of them cannot immediately restart due to a phenomena called "xenon poisoning"; if the fuel has some age on it you must wait until that bleeds off because the core does not have enough reactivity to go critical until it does, which can take a couple of days or even more.

That's exactly what happened.
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MillCreek

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #57 on: February 18, 2021, 10:03:35 PM »
^^^Ron, I learned many interesting things from your post. Especially about the natural gas freezing; I was perplexed as to how the heck that could happen.
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Cliffh

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #58 on: February 18, 2021, 10:20:18 PM »
Quote
LabPadre
@LabPadre
·
1h
Wind and solar is supplemental in Texas . ERCOT won't let Texas crank the power because it will exceed the pollution threshold.  Someone needs to get their priorities straight.
https://twitter.com/LabPadre/status/1362062731734614024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5Eprofile%3ALabPadre%7Ctwcon%5Etimelinechrome&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.starshipstalker.com%2F

I'm wondering, since it is an emergency, why in the hell didn't ERCOT say "*expletive deleted*ck 'em", fire off the coal plants and just pay any fines.

snip...
The same people who advised homeowners to "drip" faucets to prevent pipes from freezing are now telling people to stop dripping faucets because of potential water shortage.

One of the DFW contractors* was being interviewed on the radio when the freezing started, he said that running the faucets wouldn't do any good - Niagara Falls freezes.  A day or two later, the same radio host (a friend of the contractor) mentioned the contractor had a couple pipes freeze & burst.

*Big local company; foundations, plumbing, etc.  He has his own radio show on Saturdays at noon giving homeowners advice.  Normally I agree with him, but not on this. 

My water has been running, not dripping, since this all started.  Except for 30 - 60 minutes prior to my shower, I really don't like cold showers.  Ten years or so ago we had a similar event.  I didn't run the water at as high a setting then.  Crawling under the house in freezing weather with snow on the ground to fix 3 busted pipes is not my idea of fun.

I hope that this episode wakes up a few of the global warming folks to the fact that wind & solar can not supply all that's needed, when it's needed.

WLJ

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #59 on: February 18, 2021, 10:20:37 PM »
Shreveport, LA, my neighbor trying to escape. He's STILL stuck.
http://herohog.com/images/misc/210218Stuck.mp4

Backup lights are on and he floors it
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cordex

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #60 on: February 18, 2021, 10:29:50 PM »
A friend showed me a text he got from someone he knows in TX after their power came back on. Their smart meter was showing a cost of $9 per kw/h.

And I thought I was paying out the nose at my new property at $0.11 per kw/h.

HeroHog

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #61 on: February 18, 2021, 10:33:30 PM »
Backup lights are on and he floors it
But it's in Drive. Wheels spinning forward.
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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #62 on: February 19, 2021, 12:51:57 AM »
A friend showed me a text he got from someone he knows in TX after their power came back on. Their smart meter was showing a cost of $9 per kw/h.

And I thought I was paying out the nose at my new property at $0.11 per kw/h.

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fifth_column

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #63 on: February 19, 2021, 09:28:47 AM »
Shreveport, LA, my neighbor trying to escape. He's STILL stuck.
http://herohog.com/images/misc/210218Stuck.mp4

There's like two inches of snow, the only way that guy is stuck is if he's trying to be stuck. It looks to me like he's in reverse and spinning on the curb.
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Ben

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #64 on: February 19, 2021, 09:48:12 AM »
There's like two inches of snow, the only way that guy is stuck is if he's trying to be stuck. It looks to me like he's in reverse and spinning on the curb.

Yeah, I still consider myself a snow newbie and I can't figure out how he could be stuck, besides smacking down the accelerator, maybe with bald tires or something.
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K Frame

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #65 on: February 19, 2021, 10:20:02 AM »
Snow crushing down into ice the second you put any pressure on it.

I've seen it happen before with a pick up truck.

I've had it happen to me with a pick up truck.
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Fly320s

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #66 on: February 19, 2021, 10:25:49 AM »
I got stuck in my driveway because my wheel rears were on ice and the traction control system wouldn't let me spin the tires.  I had to turn the control completely off to get moving.
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charby

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #67 on: February 19, 2021, 11:26:03 AM »
Worst is a 1/8" of freezing rain followed by a 1-2" snowfall. I don't care what kind of 4x4 you have, you're not getting anywhere unless you have chains or studded tires. Thankful ly usually those events where I live at most melt off with in 24hrs with salt/sand mix and heavy street plow trucks.
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K Frame

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #68 on: February 19, 2021, 12:06:06 PM »
Worst is a 1/8" of freezing rain followed by a 1-2" snowfall. I don't care what kind of 4x4 you have, you're not getting anywhere unless you have chains or studded tires. Thankful ly usually those events where I live at most melt off with in 24hrs with salt/sand mix and heavy street plow trucks.

Yep, new snow on top of ice is a HUGE pain in the arse.

Ice on top of snow usually isn't too bad.
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Larry Ashcraft

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #69 on: February 19, 2021, 12:08:00 PM »
Quote
My water has been running, not dripping, since this all started.  Except for 30 - 60 minutes prior to my shower, I really don't like cold showers.

No reason to run hot water in this instance.  The pipes freeze before they get into the house, when the water is cold.  Letting the hot water run is just running gas down into the sewer.

Ron

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #70 on: February 19, 2021, 12:25:44 PM »
Texas can blame ChiNah for their electrical woes  :P

Large windfarm in Texas is owned by the Chinese.

https://foxsanantonio.com/news/yami-investigates/chinese-wind-farm-in-texas-its-the-greatest-national-security-concern-said-hurd
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Ben

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #71 on: February 19, 2021, 12:26:47 PM »
No reason to run hot water in this instance.  The pipes freeze before they get into the house, when the water is cold.  Letting the hot water run is just running gas down into the sewer.

Another Winter thing I need to learn. I think it's generally colder where you are than where I am. I'm assuming you already have well-insulated and well-placed pipes. At what temps are you turning the water on?

It's not gotten colder than ~6deg since I've been here and I've never run the water. Are you doing it at neg temps? The only Winter prep I do here for water is blow the sprinkler pipes and put one of those insulating caps on the frost free valve that sticks out of the house. I never touch the frost-free yard hydrants. Oh, I also close the crawlspace vents.
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K Frame

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #72 on: February 19, 2021, 12:50:43 PM »
Given that you're in Idaho my guess is that your water lines are already pretty well hardened against the cold -- buried below the frost line and insulated where they come up into the house.
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Ben

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #73 on: February 19, 2021, 12:52:50 PM »
Given that you're in Idaho my guess is that your water lines are already pretty well hardened against the cold -- buried below the frost line and insulated where they come up into the house.

They are, but the fact that Larry turned his water on got me wondering about out of the ordinary temps here where I might need to do the same.

Oh - nevermind. Dummy me just realized he was replying to someone else. Geez, and I already had three cups of coffee this morning.  :laugh:
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K Frame

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Re: Texas in a state of emergency
« Reply #74 on: February 19, 2021, 12:57:46 PM »
If they're below the frost line the only real problem will be where they come up into the house or where they branch to different fixtures. Especially problematic are pipes that run on exterior walls. That's the one thing I love about my house. With the exception of the two hose bibs, all of the pipes for the house run up the center core of the structure. No chance of them freezing unless the entire house goes below freezing.

The only ones that MIGHT be an issue are the pipes to the laundry sink and the washing machine in the basement, but those don't travel inside the walls -- they're in the conditioned part of the basement (but partially hung on the exterior (below ground) basement wall, so I don't worry about them, either.
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