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 ...
Not a whole house. Portable with a plug-in outlet on the side of my home. But I can heat the house, cook on the electric stove top, use the TV and light the house. Just can’t use the AC.
And it is noisy.
Ours is whole house and runs on NG.
Never have to worry/mess with refilling it, or the noise
Flips on, automatically, once we lose power. Which can happen, often, out where we are.
We elect stupid people because political consultants choose who they'll take and represent. You don't choose them - they 'accept' you as a client.
Perverse incentives:
What political consultants want is a person with superficial charm who can raise GOBS of money AND be pliable enough so the consultant can tell him what ad packages to buy... And since consultants are paid a percentage of campaign money spent (not a salary), they need sleek starry eyed and gullible. That's how we get idiots making decisions that could kill all of us... It's how AOC and Cuomo and Romney got their feet in the door...
I do lose power enough to justify a whole house generator, but they are great.
I’m planning on putting one in this spring... mainly because we don’t have natural gas in the area I live in... Can you give me any suggestions on things you’ve discovered? Things to avoid? What to watch for? Etc. Thanks.
"American Thinker" has some good articles but they also seem to print anything that comes along -- even with very bad writing such as this one.
Most natural gas power plants are only online during the summer when natural gas demand and prices are lower.
Agreed. Our problems in Texas include:
* really only building unreliable wind power (demonstrated by rolling blackouts every summer for the same reason)
* subsidies for wind and solar resulting in shutting down smaller natural gas and coal plants
* not building reliable infrastructure fast enough to keep the lights on despite 500K people moving here a year
ERCOT chooses to emphasize conservation, instead, despite the growing load.
There is virtually no NG out here in the hinterlands of Texas Hill Country. It’s hard to put in the lines through solid rock. In the 14 years we’ve been here we’ve never had to use the generators. I’ll take my chances with gasoline. If necessary, I’ll jury rig a way to use the car fuel pumps to pump it out. You can’t siphon it with the fuel tank designs of today.
Some did that, but they didn’t think to drain the water heater and its piping. In other cases, people had “tankless” water heaters and the residual water inside the unit froze and burst.
Also, this is TEXAS - winterizing like we live in Minnesota doesn’t come natural.
There are back up generators to run the pumps if the power goes out.
I’ll ask hubby and get back to you :-)
(I only know that it works....and, has been a true blessing, during Harvey, this ice storm, etc.)
That’s why I mentioned the butane/propane, as an alternative.
We have a family place, in the hill country, that does not have anything NG....all electric or wood burning (fireplace and stove).
We could get a Generac whole house/stand by, that runs on propane, if we were there, more often. Several propane tank refillers in the area.
That’s why I mentioned that I haven’t needed a generator once in 14 years. I just can’t imagine having an ugly propane tank, which has to be in filling range of the supply truck, in my yard, just for an unused generator. We’re all electric, have a wood burning fireplace, and more firewood than we could possibly ever burn.
Sounds like you’re all set ;-)
I thought the point he was making was that it was a cascade failure.
He explained how the sudden surge in gas consumption caused a failure of the gas delivery systems (like in 1989), but in Texas this surge was caused by people being driven to gas heating due to failure of the wind generation to supply enough electricity to power home heaters.
-PJ
American Thinker should pull the article. It has to be one of the most contradictory piles of slop I’ve ever read online.
Generac is a trusted brand as well as Onan. Keep in mind you must have a reliable fuel source. Above ground diesel tanks if you live in the country works as well as buried propane tanks. You can bury the propane tank down to the valves/regulators so as not to have an ugly tank exposed.
My MIL has top of the line diesel Cat/Onan(?) generator with an automatic instantaneous transfer switch. Unless you see lights blink you never know you lost electricity, it's on that fast.
I have the el cheapo gas manual generator and have an manual interlock to prevent backfeeding.
Go with budget, fuel reliability and overall needs. A back-up generator pays for itself when you really really need it and it ups your resale value of your house. I have mine in an enclosed poly storage housing I bought on Amazon so it's secure and looks neat.
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