Sdel
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Posts posted by Sdel
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48 minutes ago, RegGuheert said:
Yes, it is expensive if you need the batteries, which is what I am proposing upthread. That said, such a system is significantly more fault tolerant than what is in place in Texas today. Massive redundancy. I wonder how many people who just took over $100,000 worth of damage will find $75,000 to be quite cheap.
On the other end, the $12,000 number is a no-brainer, IMO. No backup, but one of the best investments you can make today.
You do realize that 75k is about half the value or more of the majority houses in TX. Some areas and housing costs that is more than the value of the house. Well, I don’t know anyone who has that much to spend on it, and I don’t think your numbers are accurate for here. It’s oil and gas country here. Personal solar is very niche.....aka big price tag even with the subsidy. This event is not going to help the mentality either....except for those who are already the gung-ho want to be independent types. Until your average 50,000k/yr wage earner can afford to install or buy/rent a house ready built with one, or we decide to allow the gov’t to fully vest everyone in it....it’s unrealistic.-
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I think it’s everyone’s responsibility to do the best they can to be active participants in handling the crap life throws at us. No one can prepare for every possible disaster, but we can all do our best and have a roll-with-it- and a ready- to-pitch-in -and-help attitude.
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We have had rain since midnight and it’s expected to continue until mid afternoon. Temps to hold around 30 all day and down to upper teens tonight. Repeat for Thursday, with temps just above freezing and no rain at the moment.
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21 minutes ago, RegGuheert said:
So, yes, you can build a maintenance-free, standalone photovoltaic system with existing products today, but it will cost about $75,000 for the typical Texas house with storage. I doubt that the photovoltaic equipment will come down much more, nor will installation costs. The battery is the part which costs serious money for today and I expect massive drops in price over the next decade or so.
See, that’s exactly what I mean by “not there yet” and we won’t get there until the tech catches up enough to lower the cost naturally or a major enough event forces the money to flow there on purpose. Until it is a cost the population will/can bear it’s too far in the future to be realistic.
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As far as I know locally, yes, coal is produced and used locally. Our closest coal plants are about an hour away. We have a friend that works at one and he’s always afraid of closing/layoff being a month or two away.
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I’ll bite. Pretty conservative household here...we are pretty open to renewables and think they are great and maybe have a great future....but for todays tech are best viewed as supplements that are more akin to prepper lifestyle. Everyone should have access to enough solar/wind personally to get through in a pinch. Our future plans for our property include propane tank, solar and possibly some wind since we are the highest point overlooking a valley. Everything has it’s trade offs and honestly diversity is best. I don’t think the tech will get there without a major event spurring the money to go there. Just human nature.
There are many primary coal plants in TX. They’ve been converted to run on their backup generation that uses natural gas instead....and all newer plants are natural gas only. The coal industry in TX is probably almost dead. This is an economic decision that is being made because natural gas became very cheap and available with fracking. If you take them at their word, gas distribution went down at the well sites.....those sites and pipeline are to be maintained by the oil and gas operations.
I do have to give my local power a big shout out....they were required to drop 40% of the load. We do have areas that have damage relate outages but overall as a community I think we’ve been sharing pretty well. I haven’t been able to compare experiences. One of my stepson’s has not lost power. He’s near the hospital/high school/ govt offices so that is probably why. We had an 8 hour outage the first night, but since then we’ve had steady rolling outages of predictable length and the outage map has a consistent 1/3 to 2/3 ratio. My aunt in Ft Worth hasn’t had power since the beginning. I firmly believe the difference is that our local plant was continued as a not for profit quasi-gov’t entity and remains closely tied to our community after deregulation while other companies are run more like private businesses.
As for farm equipment on natural gas.....that is probably going to be a hard no for a long time.
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FYI: the problem isn’t the power plants....the gas pipelines are frozen at the well site. All the 7 flares near my house have gone dead....frozen over.
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11 minutes ago, Farrar said:
As I'm reading more about this, it seems like there are a lot of issues that led to what's happening in terms of government regulation or lack thereof, and which power sources were relied on and how pricing works and so forth... but that the way homes are built in Texas with a real lack of insulation is a major factor here that doesn't have to do with the grid or energy delivery and costs. Like, how cheap are the construction techniques in y'all's homes anyway? And how could that possibly not additionally be a problem in the summer with energy efficiency? I understand that it's usually not necessary to ward against this level of cold. This is a crazy weather event for sure (though we're going to have more of them). But insulation is good for cold and heat. Are people really saying that homes in Texas aren't insulated much at all?
My house was originally a self build by the original owner. We’ve had a lot of problems over the years. At least the fireplace seems to have been done solidly.
Our first year in the house we lost a pipe because there was no insulation in the wall there. None. The toilet was there on the inside and the outside faucet on the outside and it was a hollow space in between. Our windows no longer seal properly and you can feel the draft from all of them. Our house is cold.... We bought this house as a fixer upper and then other things happened.....but we deal with it.
Newer construction standards in my area are plastic pipes that flex for ice freeze but that doesn’t help the older homes. Newer homes are still cheaply built....it doesn’t stop them from costing $170/sq for low end in my area. My cousin’s husband pitched an fit to high heaven when their house was being built and they were not going to put in insulation in the wall behind the kitchen cabinets. He swears they took it back out when he wasn’t looking because it is ice cold in their counters.
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72 - 76 year round. Dh would set it at 68 in the summer except I won’t tolerate it colder and reverse in winter....I’d leave it closer to 80 but no way he’d let me.
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Yay. Got access to water. At least enough to top off horses and supply water for dishes and toilets. Warm water too.
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Well, I’m an optimist....looking at our weather update....and can’t help but think....it’s only supposed to get warmer from here on out.
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We live a cross the lake from our local power plant. It is running, but ERCOT demanded they cut the local power by 40%. They have been running about 1/3 of the city down all night, rotating. Our power went off and on last night.....more off than on, but on long enough to make it bearable. The house is was holding in about the 50s this morning. It runs two cities since the neighboring city buys it’s electricity from us.
We pulled a mattress into our bedroom and shut the door. Shut the cats into our bathroom/closet and the dogs with us. We all slept in a pile in clothes and three blankets. We are eating when the power comes up. Still have hope we can defrost the pump/pipe from the well to the tank enough to get a bath tub full.
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35 minutes ago, KungFuPanda said:
I understand power outages due to ice on the lines wreaking havoc, but I don't understand it based on usage? I live where it's cold in the winter and I generally have higher power bills in the summer because I live with people who like the cold. Do your heat sources really use that much more electricity than your ACs?
The problem isn’t a usage issue. They just can’t generate the electricity. The wind turbines are down because they are frozen. The natural gas pipelines are down so there is less production of of electricity there as well. All the coal plants shut down or convert red converted to natural gas. There is just no supply of electricity.
And since we don’t usually have this type of weather for more than 24 hours and our houses that are built to shed 100 degree heat aren’t built to keep in heat and keep cold out and don’t usually have alternative heat sources.
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I swear if I hear my kid whine one more time about not being able to play in the snow or attempt to play in the snow after being told no....I’m going to snap. We do not have the proper clothes for snow....and no way to warm up from getting wet in snow and I’m not finding it cute that my teenager is pretending to be dumb about the lack of power.
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On 2/14/2021 at 11:18 AM, katilac said:
Not really. There are typically fewer than 100 deaths per year for the entire country from falling trees and limbs, and the vast majority of those occur outside (and a significant number of those are people who were actively working on trees, as opposed to random occurrences or weather causes).
No matter where in the states you are, the chances of a tree crashing into your house and killing you are vanishingly small. +1 for building codes!
Well, I was in the room when our very large oak split in half and fell on it. If we hadn’t had a metal roof it would have come completely through. My grandparents lost their garage when a similarly large oak fell through it. And I know someone who suffered a very bad concussion just last month when a snow heavy branch broke off and landed on her head....
I’m scared of the trees....they have it out for us.
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19 minutes ago, RegGuheert said:
I hesitate to write this, but I will in case you or someone else does not already know this:
Once your pipes freeze, they are likely already broken. Unfortunately, you do not find out about the damage until they are thawed and water sprays everywhere.
I hope this is not true in your case, but it is usually the case.
The pipes aren’t frozen yet...just constricted so no pressure and no power to run the pump.
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11 minutes ago, Selkie said:
Oh no, I hope you can get enough water for your horses! We have harsh winters and I'm paranoid about making sure my horses drink enough, because impaction colic is such a risk. I hope your well is working again soon.
They are fine for now, still have half. We filled three troughs to the top before all of this and I’ve seen them eating the snow too. My riding instructor had to get the volunteer firefighters come out and fill a tank for her (she has almost 50 horses at her place) since their ice was to thick to break.
And we’ll, for one, I think this was going to be the last spring anyway.
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Ugh....
We lost our well water. We were fine until they turned off the power for hours. I got the vast majority of the laundry done yesterday. DH didn’t do the dishes like he should have and so we are stuck.....I would have done them....but I’ve got a broken hand and it’s literally the one chore I can’t do. We had to completely unwrap my hand just so I could get a sweatshirt on (can’t do a regular long sleeve anything either). DH is hospital worker and was working leading up to, so not much prep could get done.
Praying that now that the power is up we can thaw the pipes enough to fill a bathtub for the horses but not hopeful. DH is braving town (yay 4 wheel drive) to try to find a few more water jugs. It’s supposed to get just above freezing tomorrow, so maybe then we can get the water back.
Currently running to oven for extra heat and so we can crack the door and it’ll stay a bit warmer for a bit longer the next time we lose power.
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1 minute ago, Not_a_Number said:
This conversation is getting hard to watch for me 😕 . I’m not a fan of the “stay in your lane” messaging, but there’s so little listening going on here.
QFT
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2 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
By neighborhood, maybe, I can believe that. But I would guess you'd have to be religious to have that kind of split in a city. Most cities are quite blue.
I think I know where prairiewindmom is talking about. It’s not a totally religious split. The university draws and keeps a very large multicultural community and the dominant religious voting block is catholic (which is hit or miss on being red or blue). There is no real Democratic Party so it looks much more red the lower down ballot you go where there are no opportunities to vote blue. Most of the surrounding area is similar in that it has only recently in the last 10 years or less gone red at the local level. The university vote tends to swing either red or blue depending on the election and where the wave is going in that particular cycle.
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13 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
Interesting. I guess I have greater faith (or greater distrust, depending) in individuals than that 🙂 . People are such interesting creatures... I can't help feeling that the specifics matter.
I start with the presumption that all candidates are already corrupt or will be so shortly after being elected. All that is left is to vote for ideals.
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2 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:
But we all know that parties do shift. A party that represented your ideals 20 years ago may not represent them anymore. In the long term, that's quite clear.
They change every 4 years, as the parties make their platforms at their conventions. We each make our determinations at every individual election. Of course they may change over the years, and some people definitely spend more or less time in analyzing their decision process than others. But I certainly don't feel like any potential shift in the ideals 20+year in the future has anything to do with anything. Either my opinion will shift with it and they'll keep my votes....or it won't. Either way, I'll still vote my ideals.
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4 minutes ago, Frances said:
People who live in my state rarely have any say in who wins the primary, as it is almost always decided by the time we vote.
Can you not imagine a scenario where you thought the candidate who won your party’s primary would be so bad for the country that you couldn’t vote for them? That you would abstain, vote for their opponent, or vote third party?
Honestly, no. The only time I've abstained, or even voted outside my ideals is because the particular candidate wasn't actually from my party or voting district and I didn't feel they had any business representing me.
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Just now, Not_a_Number said:
And the ideals don't change depending on who's in charge of the party, is that correct? We would expect the country to be run similarly regardless who's on top of the party?
We should expect the country to be run similarly regardless of who is on top of the party; that is the purpose of a political party. The ideals expressed by the party are not formed at the top, they are formed by the electorate at the bottom. There may be stylistic or policy focus differences between the individuals, but yes, generally when you see a Democratic or Republican politician you expect a certain amount of similarity in how they are going to run things in keeping with the current ideology of their electorate.
Preparation: Your responsibility?
in The Chat Board
Posted
I think city living contributes to this honestly. City utilities/services are fairly stable compared to more rural areas. Just because you are told to prepare doesn’t mean you really get it. Someone who lives more rurally is probably a bit more accustomed to being without a few days than someone who is doesn’t face the possibility of an extended outage every few months.