How Is the Government Preparing for a Cold Winter?

American Thinker ^ | 13 Aug, 2023 | Jeffrey Folks

[Tell It Right]

One thing I did to help me is install a variable speed heat pump with variable speed air handler. That bigly reduces my load in the summer.

Another thing I did was replace my natural gas water heater with a hybrid water heater (has a built-in heat pump to use when running in efficiency mode, and normal heat strips when running in normal mode like if we have extended family over). I wouldn't get it, though, if you have a large family still living at home. (With just my wife and me, our 50 gal water tank has enough hot water for the two of us to take a shower, but after that it takes 2 hours in the summer to 5 hours in the winter to reheat the tank in efficiency mode. That wouldn't be good enough when we were raising kids.) In efficiency mode it runs at 300W instead of 4kW like a standard water heater (or 12kW like an inline one). Plus, it runs shorter in the warm months because its intake draws warm air from the attic (thanks to a duct). And it helps cool the house because it outputs free cold air (which I pull in with a HVAC air intake installed in the floor of the closet the water heater is in). During the winter I flip two levers and the water heater's cold air output is ducted to the attic. During the warm 7-8 months I use the free cold air to help cool the house. Because I have a variable speed heat pump and air handler, my HVAC is almost always running even if it's in low mode. (In other words, any time of day the water heater runs, the cold air will be sucked in by the air handler.) This keeps my variable speed heat pump from having to operate on higher speed while the air it draws in is a little bit cooler than normal (because some of the air came from the water heater).

[CapnJack]

Insulation is always a good upgrade. Up here in NH it's going to be a cold winter this year I can tell.
Acorns have been dropping since mid July and the squirrels and chipmunks have been real busy.
Our wood stove starts up in Oct. And doesn't shut off till late April or early May.

[Chgogal]

Bookmark for January 2024.

[glennaro]

No need to prepare for winter ... Global warming, y’know.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

They preparing by shutting down fossil fuels, ending burning coal to make electricity, creating a highly unstable power grid, depending on expensive and high priced intermittent power supplies, and generally making life miserable for the proles. You know, just “breaking a few eggs.”

[Noumenon]

Always be a year ahead in the wood heating business.

Roger that. I've got one more cord to lay in and we'll be good for this winter.

[suthener]

Sounds like you have a good plan going on. I live by myself and my hot water use is relatively miniscule. My killer is the a/c. When it’s 99 during the day and 82 at night that’s bad. I’m hoping when, and if, temps get back to normal I’ll see the results of the attic ventilation improvements. I’ve asked my a/c guy several times if I need to get a new a/c and basically he said your a/c if fine, it’s doing everything it can do, and replacing it would not be worth it at this point. I just put a new $900 blower motor in it so hopefully it will last a while.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

Prepper ping -- The lessons from from Texas recent "No Power" winter and Froze to Death are too soon forgotten

(From the Article):" Most of us have trouble thinking to the end of the month. This can be demonstrated by the fact that 64% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Actually, most are permanently in debt, what with credit card balances, car payments, student loan debt, and the rest.
The point is that it's human nature not to look ahead, not to prepare.
As long as we have the essentials, it's difficult to project into next week, next month, or next year."..

"That fact explains many things, including the public's lack of concern about a $33-trillion federal debt.
Another striking example is the public's fascination with what has been a warm summer.
This summer has seen record heat or near-record heat "

"What are the odds of a very cold winter in 2023–24?
Several factors are involved. First, we have not had a very cold winter in years.
The "abandoned slot machine" theory suggests that it's time to have one, if not this winter, then soon."

Metmom : “The government may not be but we are(prepped for a Cold ,wet winter).
Anyone who depends on the government to be ready for any kind of disaster is a fool.”

(My Opinion) : The government is deeply in debt to the tune of 32 Trillion dollar$
Inflation and costs of essential products has eaten up much of any emergency funds which families have saved up.
If the government under this administration wasn't able to print its own money, they too would be bankrupt.
Costs for essentials (food, fuel, transportation, electric, taxes, medical insurance, etc.,etc.) are not expected to return to pre-covid levels,
the costs only seem to keep rising, and essentials will only cost more in the future.
Renewable power generation and battery storage cannot seriously meet the nation's current need for power and heat, and now we want to add transportation ?
To believe that we can meet all the needs with renewables means a belief in Unicorns and fairy-tales.
We learned that lesson the winter before last in Texas, so get prepared now so that you can survive, if not actually being comfortable for this winter.
Preparation starts only if you make the first step, and then rinse and repeat, and then rinse ...etc.
Personally, I believe in the "Balance of Nature", and I think that with all the moisture in the atmosphere, that we are in store for a horrendous and abysmal winter of snow and cold.
Plan accordingly !

[SisterK]

southern Arizona had a very long and cold winter 22-23. It ruined a bunch of fruit crops.

[SisterK]

I agree
financially illiterate
economically illiterate
politically illiterate
drones attracted to the next shiny object

[Reily]

All you have to is watch the TV commercials to see that all of that is true!

[SisterK]

I have not had tv for 20 years
I would probably be fuming mad to see what is airing now

[caww]

I generally have a routine set up to prepare for winter months. There really isn’t much more I can do than I already do. Winters are cold no matter what here in North West PA. ...hunkering down is standard.

[JAKraig]

We installed solar with battery back up and also purchased a couple mini split heat pumps. The Mini-splits saved us a lot of electricity this summer which is usually when I use the most electricity but I think this summer I banked electricity every month so far.
I won’t make as much electricity in the winter but the low temperatures make my solar cells much more efficient so that it won’t be horrible. Since having solar I have never had to use a backup generator and can’t even tell when the neighbors don’t have electricity until night time when we notice all the lights off around us.

If you depend on government you are unwise. Rolling blackouts will become more and more frequent in coming years. Even without a generator or solar a battery backup (large one) would keep you running during the rolling blackouts that are bound to come to more than just California.

Don’t let the government get involved in your preparations else they might decide to make you share what you have with those who were too foolish to prepare.

Prepare.

[Tell It Right]

Cool system!

Summer, too, is when I use the most electricity. Now the EV is the most power intensive "appliance" (26K miles driven in it per year, with about 23K of those miles charged at home). If not for the EV it'd be cooling the home in the summer, like you. Then the next largest battle is heating the home in the winter. After that it's the water heater. With most people around here, heating the home is about equal to running the water heater (because the water heater runs year round, while the home heater is needed for just a few months).

But in my case, the hybrid water heater (water heater with built-in heat pump) operates so efficiently it's not close to the power needed for heating the home.

I wanted mini-splits but I didn't get them for two reasons: part of the downstairs of my home is built into the ground (no place to run the condensate lines). The other reason is I use the hybrid water heater to help cool my home. During the warm 7-8 months of the year I need A/C, I have the free cold air output from the water heater get sucked in by a new air receiver in the floor of the closet the water heater is in. Thus, my variable speed air handler, which is always running even if it's just at low speed, pulls in that free cold air and spreads it around the house. That makes my variable speed heat pump for my home not have to work as hard to cool the air during the 2-3 hours the water heater is running. The water heater draws 300 watts, runs only 2 to 3 hours after my wife and I take back-to-back showers (a total of only 0.9kWh to heat the water tank), all while giving me a free cold air bonus to save power on my variable speed heat pump. That's basically some home engineering to make the various components of my energy project work better than the sum of their parts.

Since I added onto my solar, batteries, and inverters Aug 31 of last year, it's provided 81% of the power we need in our all-electric two-story home, including charging the EV, which we do most of our driving in. My last 12 power bills averaged $84. Two of those were before the solar upgrade. So after I get the next 2 power bills I expect my average to be in the low $70's per month (most of that in the winter, as you pointed out).

Here in Alabama the rolling blackouts haven't become a thing ... yet. But costs are going up bigly. Thus, the main objective of my overall energy project is to protect my retirement investments from the Dims' sky high energy costs. The project is achieving that goal remarkably well. Like you, I wouldn't notice the few times the grid goes down if my solar system didn't alert me because I'm almost always running on my own power anyway.

But if the Dims go full control-freak on energy and force a mark of the beast level requirement to get power, I'll go through the steps to make us 100% energy independent. For me that'd be adding 10kW of solar to make a total of 30kW, adding another inverter to give us a total of 27kW of continuous AC power (and also be able to take in 30kW of solar at a time), doubling my battery storage to 180kWh, and building a hydrogen room about 100 ft away from the house in the backyard in the hill (like a storm shelter). The hydrogen room would have an electrolyzer to generate hydrogen gas when my batteries are charged at least 90%, store the hydrogen gas in a tank or two, and have a fuel cell to use the hydrogen gas whenever my battery SOC gets down to maybe 30%. Not that I've already done the math or anything. LOL I already use my inverters' "smart load" feature to power a separate electrical panel intermittently whenever the battery SOC is 70%. That's how we usually charge our EV (using an outlet tied to that panel if our EV is already charged enough for the next day, we'll charge the EV even more if the power is free, which might prevent us from using the grid to charge the EV on a future day when we have less free solar power). I could use the same smart load feature to run the electrolyzer (which is horribly inefficient, so run it only on days that we have so much free power we don't have anywhere useful to utilize that power). And my inverters already have a feature to automatically start a generator when the battery SOC gets low. I don't have a generator, therefore I'm not using that feature. But I could have it start a hydrogen fuel cell instead of a normal generator.

All of that would be too costly to implement as long as we're allowed to buy power from the grid. But I keep it in the back of my mind if the Dims force us to go there.

[Ellendra]

At one point I thought I wanted to be a Financial Advisor. I’m good with money and I love researching investment strategies.

Then I tried talking to people, and realized I would be TERRIBLE at dealing with the average person’s inability to think ahead.

At one job, I had a coworker who got her entire family evicted because she kept spending the rent money on restaurant meals! How do people even do that???