Power cut across Texas as snow, ice blanket southern Plains

The Associated Press ^ | February 15, 2021 | By JAMIE STENGLE

[Chickensoup]

The attitude is die scum.

Fools if the populace puts up with it.

[Vaduz]

Increased sales for pot bellied stoves ensues.

[Jrabbit]

My son & DIL lost power at 2am.....back on at 8am briefly & now out again.
They are in Rockwall. Son in Frisco hasn’t lost power.
So random 😑

[Cedar]

“People may not know it, but using electrical resistance heating takes FAR MORE POWER (when it gets very cold) than air conditioning in very hot weather.”

Finally! An explanation for the overly-high winter electric bills compared to summertime. Thanks.

I wonder if you can answer another question I’ve had: in a small residence that is not insulated very well, does it matter if the electric heat thermostat is set on 68 or a comfortable 73? Since the heater is cutting on and off fairly often anyway because of poor home insulation, isn’t the home losing heat at the same pace anyway regardless of whether the thermostat is set at 65 or 68 or 73 or 75?

It seems the electric bill is high even if cutting the thermostat to 66 overnight during bedtime. The heater still cuts on and off a lot. So I thought why not just leave the thermostat at 73 overnight and be more comfortable, the heater is going to run the same amount of time anyway because of the poor insulation...it’s losing the heat at the same pace regardless of what the thermostat is set on. Just curious if you (or anyone here) would know if this is correct technically.

[BobL]

You’re welcome. If you live in a place like Texas, and are stuck with electricity, you might want to consider a heat pump when it’s time to replace your AC, which will be far better than resistance heating if over 32 degrees (and can be better at lower temperatures, if you get the right kind). In fact, unless I’m doing the math wrong, a heat pump will not cost much more than natural gas for heating.

As to your question - the amount of work (electricity) needed is basically proportional to the temperature difference between indoor and outdoor...and that’s also one of the reasons why heating can take so much power. If it’s 20 degrees outside and you want 70 inside, you need to add, maybe 40 degrees to what the house wants to be (due to other heat generated along with the greenhouse effect, if it’s 20 outside, the house would probably settle at 30 inside, without running the heater). But if you can live with 60 degrees inside, then you only need to add 30 degrees to what the house wants to be...so it will always require less energy if you stay closer to what the house temperature wants to be at.

[Libloather]

...what residents might see in the wake of a Category 5 hurricane.

There it is.

[precisionshootist]

“Hang in there you’ll eventually get power back.“.

The problem is there is going to be a lot of costly damage.

This is a great concern to me and I’m sure many other residents that we have some counsel that is not generating or delivering the power but rather regulating the flow. All fine and good until you have someone with an agenda.

We have had hurricanes and storms and such with some pretty significant power outages that were clearly related to storm damage. This is completely different. These regulators are turning power off and that needs some serious oversight and accountability.

[Cedar]

Thanks so much for your reply. That helps to understand the situation. So, I guess if we use time as a reference, it still would apply? For instance, the thermostat is set at 66, and the heater cuts on after 10 minutes of being off. This happens all night long. If heat is escaping at the same rate, same timing (because of lack of insulation), couldn’t the thermostat be set at 73 and the heater will still cut on at the same intervals? Cut on after 10 minutes of being off?

So that it wouldn’t matter what the thermostat was set at, because of heat escaping, the heater always cuts on after being off for 10 minutes?

[dragnet2]

Everything is bigger in Texas, including the blowhards.

[precisionshootist]

You are correct electric heating is very inefficient but we have huge numbers of homes that use gas heat. Gas heat takes only a fraction of the electrical load of an AC unit or an electric furnace. I could run our gas furnace with a small generator that could not even start a 5 ton AC unit. I’m just doubting the load of winter electric heat which is offset by gas heat could be far greater than 100 degree summer days with every single home and structure in the state running large AC units 24/7.

[Frapster]

True! Per the usual, snow accumulation is now predicted to be 10”. We’ll se..

[Archie Bunker on steroids]

Just think of how cold it would be without global warming

[joesbucks]

Great point!

[meyer]

If you will, a small but informative chart from the ERCOT web site.

The orange line represents available generating supplies. The Green line represents customer demand. If the orange line drops below the green line, it's lights out for the entire ERCOT interconnection.

Based on the chart, load shedding was done just in time. It remains to be seen what causes exist for such a large amount of power generation to become unavailable in such a short time period. Cold weather can wreak havoc on any mechanical equipment, including windmills, gas turbine generators, coal generators, pumping stations - any number of things. Especially if they aren't prepared for an onslaught of extreme weather.

Incidentally, I watched the chart unfold in real time. I'm not in Texas nor the ERCOT area, but I am in the power industry and was on shift last night, so I took an interest in the events in Texas. Over 10,000 MW of load dropped in a short period of time - Over 10% of ERCOT's customer demand! That's pretty huge.

[The Pack Knight]

The information is a bit confusing. I’m not seeing “rotating” outages in Houston. Instead, power in my neighborhood has been out for over 9 hours, where much of the rest of Houston seems to have had no outages.

I’m glad I got that gas generator, although I’m wondering whether residential gas supplies will hold up when they are shutting down power plants due to shortages.

[Cedar]

Your comments on the thread have been interesting. In fact, the whole thread is, and I really didn’t mean to sidetrack it with my heating questions. But I thought with knowledgeable folks here commenting, I could get reliable answers.

I’m not in Texas but do have relatives living there. They still have electricity as of now.

Currently I’m in a rental and can’t change it. But I would sure love to have a wood stove like I had years ago. That’s one of the very best solutions for heat. Pellet too, of course.

[deport]

Thanks. It will take some time to put all the pieces together as
to what the causes were and how they unfolded. But most people
don’t realize the time frame of bringing back a lot of this equipment
up and online once it shuts down for any reason. It isn’t just
flip a switch and it is all back online and operating.

Take care.

[Chickensoup]

Here in our area it is becoming obvious that the out of country utility owner is not as committed to repairs and maintenance. We will become CA.