Originally Posted by Satilite73

In my area, they just came on and basically told us there's nothing they can do about the power outages, the grid is simply overloaded.

Wow.

But, we're all supposed to be driving electric cars in 30 yrs or less.

Putting the cart before the horse?

Speaking of electric cars........IF we were driving electric cars and this situation happened, how would you get anywhere? What if you had an emergency and you HAD to get out? "Suck it up, the battery's dead"



The biggest problem with the grid is this a perfect storm. First record cold across entire area. Everybody and their brother are finding out their heat pumps aren't up to the task and use much more amps than ac in extreme weather. Most pumps can't do much under 20 and even the northern units can only go to 0. People are buying and using portable heaters to try and help both exceeding the grids capacity. Ice and wind has taken down lines and other circuits are overloaded so they can't add any load.

I've worked as a lineman for over 40 years all over the country and it doesn't matter source of fuel used to generate the lines have to big enough to handle it. The strain caused by this storm would be like trying to run a 572 on a factory 5/16 fuel line. It just won't provide the needed volume.