Posted on 02/20/2021 4:12:59 AM PST by Kaslin
How would your family, and a hundred thousand other families, like to be stuck in your cars for days at minus 16 degrees?
The death toll would be huge. It almost happened in New England in 1989.
And in Texas this week.
I was part of the 1989 Freeze and have some hopefully interesting insights.
In 1989, the weather just before Christmas was terrible. Cold temperature records were set from Texas to New England.
That year, I was responsible for a midcontinent gas gathering system that normally produced about 500 million cubic feet (MMCFD) of natural gas a day. That could supply up to 2 million New England homes. During the 1989 Freeze, we produced 30 MMCFD, roughly a 95% decline. Similar results were happening throughout the Oil Patch. Supply cratered.
Meanwhile, demand for natural gas was exploding, almost literally (more on that below). While the midcontinent temperatures were low enough to freeze gas wells, New England had dangerous arctic temperatures of minus 16 degrees. This created huge natural gas demand for home heating in a major New England town.
The city ultimately weathered that crisis through luck.
Several years later, I was fortunate enough to get to know some of the city's gas utility personnel who were operating the gas grid during the Freeze. They gave me invaluable insights into what really happened. (I promised the operators I would not name the city.)
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
“I’ve taught my kids that too...”
In the winter I carry a shovel, tow strap, chains, sleeping bag, camp stove, water, food, etc. in the back of the truck. If traveling over the mountain pass I double down on supplies. My one daughter does as well (lives in Montana). The other kids are city kids - I don’t think they are as well out-fitted.
If you lose power, it doesn’t matter what furnace fuel you use (for electric-controlled furnaces, of course). You’ll need a generator to run it.
If you have oil, propane or coal, loss of NG pressure doesn’t render your furnace useless. (That NG furnace is useless without NG flow, regardless.)
With propane, though, you can have non-electric, catalytic, oxygen-monitoring indoor heaters for emergency heat.
A big honking propane tank is the functional equivalent. But the "centralized infrastructure" is still there..just at one remove. The place where I lived in Washington (state) had a 100 gal propane tank and propane fireplace..all electric otherwise. That fireplace saved our asses more than once (electric service VERY unreliable). And, having come from south Louisiana, I already knew the value of backup for lights and cooking from hurricane preparedness.
We moved from Washington to San Antonio last year, and haven't had a chance to fully "prep up" for the new place...yet!
Typical oil furnace draws up to 12 amps (2 amps for burner pump/blower and 10 amps for duct blower); that’s about 1,500 watts. (Same as a typical space heater.)
“Many people have backup generators hooked up to natural gas. Reading the article, it sounds like that is not as reliable in the scenario described.”
If you don’t have it stored on your property, when you really need it, you might be able to get any. Prepperthink.
It all depends on the design of the system. Here in the Pacific Northwest we have gas storage sites strategically located within the grid. These sites are designed to maintain the required pressure of the system and inject additional gas into the grid as needed.
My understanding is that the designers of the system in use in Texas did not anticipate the need and consequently did not build in this redundancy.
One advantage of propane. Our propane fireplace had a pilot light of which the flame impinged on a small thermopile, which supplied JUST enough electric energy to open the fireplace valve at the "flick of a switch". Very convenient, very reliable.
Depends on the type of oil furnace. Is it forced hot air which requires a blower for all the heating vents or is it hot water based (boiler) pumping water. Either way you need power.
Having gas makes more sense. You have a gas stove it serves two purposes, heat and cooking.
Some folks have no common sense.
“You have a gas stove it serves two purposes, heat and cooking.”
Hope your life insurance is paid up.
“Some folks have no common sense.”
Our pubic schools and fatherless families have created that situation.
They didn’t know how long the electricity was going to be off. In our case we were notified that the rolling blackouts would last 15 to 45 minutes. that did not happen. Instead it was turned off for days. empty buildings like schools and businesses had no idea it was coming. People in homes never dreamed they would be left in this nearly 0 temperatures with no heat. In their panic I suppose they never thought of turning off the water.
And therein lies one of the biggest problems with wind and solar power.
I believe the high pressure systems are dependent on electrical power. No electricity, no pressure, therefor no gas distribution. Correct me if I am wrong...
Bookmarked.
You know what happens when a space-time fissure explodes?
Think two orders of magnitude worse.
Yes! You nailed it. It’s the liberal tendency to destroy everything. Billions spent on “green energy” could be spent on improving and hardening existing systems.
Similar to my thoughts about cars. We can continue to improve on internal combustion (135 years of proven technology) or we can throw out the gas engine and start over with engines powered by sparks from magic wands
No, the solution is natural gas for heating, AND a small electric generator or battery + small solar panel + inverter to power the 120 VAC circuit that runs the heater fan, thermostats, and natural gas ignitor. NOT the whole house, just the heater fan do the natural gas or oil heater can run.
Now, I personally have an outside generator (which I use for jobsite welding) AND a house-connector separate power panel to selectively energize circuits when the neighborhood power is off. Gas water heater. And a small battery inverter as a silent backup for recharging cell phones, PC's, tablets, etc when I don't want to run the generator out back.
In ADDITION TO the absolute and sudden failure of virtually all of the 8,000 MegaWatt nameplate rating (dropping in only hours the equal of 8 medium-sized nuclear plants!), the natural gas available was (deliberately and by law) diverted FROM the natural gas combustion turbine electric plants to the houses and buildings for heat. THAT diversion of their fuel caused the electric grid to fail.
As they say in the military: "The battle plan goes awry upon first contact with the enemy". I'm in Texas right now, in the midst of the cold, though it will be much warmer and sunny today. I don't have a single backup generator, I have TWO of them. One to run the heat pump, the other smaller one (4KW) to power the lights and refrigerator. I also have a 4WD SUV. It's a great plan, right?
The problem is that there are no snow plows around here, either, and it's 'Hill Country'. There have never been this many days in a row with snow on the ground. The roads were filled with solar melting, then frozen ruts and clumps of ice. The gasoline delivery trucks couldn't get to the gas stations, so many ran out of gasoline, and others were closed since workers couldn't get to the stations. I hadn't considered that.
The generators need gasoline to run. In the 100+ degree summer temperatures here, stored gasoline goes bad in one summer. So you either have to have a complicated storage cycling routine, or not store very much. This was the worst storm considering both temperatures, snow falls and duration, for over a century. People rarely plan, then continuously execute it for an occasion such as this one.
I’m in Upstate. I would crack a faucet if our utilities shut down. We’ve been without a week. One of the differences here in NYS is that service lines to the house are below the frost line. But occasionally, there are still problems in a deep freeze.
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