Yeeesh ..

So ,a winter storm hits .. like they often do this time of year .. They are shutting off our power to provide electricity to the states below us .. , they can actually go into the pwr grid and not allow you to use water heaters , stoves, W/D ..etc ..

I've lost pwr at house yesterday from 2 pm to 4 pm .. didn't affect me much , Texas is rough shape ..kinda funny they were always barking at me when I lived there about being on their own pwr grid and stuff so they could leave the union and survive on their own , looks like they can't .

Your welcome SD to the rescue !

My #2 son was telling me that MISO has issued a 'must run' order for the fossil plants. No scheduled outages or load reductions permitted. All the coal plants up here are running balls to the wall. Yeah, you know, all those dirty, despicable, polluting coal plants that are going to kill us all in (fill in the blank) years? Those plants that are now saving people from dying? Yeah, those plants.

6PakBee - That " (fill in the blank) years? " I understand is 12 years. Thats what the professional said.......And she knows it all.

Seems like a great opportunity to raise gas prices while they are at it.

Don't forget to call the power company and have them reimburse you for the inconvenience.

They already raised gas prices...

Our company is one of the top five buyers of power in the US. We had to shut down several of our large air separation plants in Texas and midwest. I heard that our mil rate, which is usually about $30 to $40 per MWhr went to $9000/MWhr for a few periods. That is how utilities get us to shut down our large plants. We can have anywhere from 10MW to 40MW motors on our compressors with some plants having up to three or four compressors. Fortunately we can run off liquid backup for short durations but if the cold snap lasts more than a day or two, we will need to run to top off tanks.

Griddy says get out NOW, linky

Power supplier, Griddy, told all 29,000 of its customers that they should switch to another provider as spot electricity prices soared to as high as $9,000 a megawatt-hour. Griddy’s customers are fully exposed to the real-time swings in wholesale power markets, so those who don’t leave soon will face extraordinarily high electricity bills.

This mess even stretched south of the border. Monday our manager announced that our engineering colleagues in Escobedo were offline due to power outages. Even yesterday I was trying to get ahold of an engineer down there and his status indicator in IM showed offline all day, so I'm guessing they were still down.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ern-mexico-after-cold-snap-idUSKBN2AF1G4

Our solar panels here at the school make way less power during the winter months than the summer due to less hours of daylight and the sun being lower in the sky,

And they don't make anything when they are covered with snow....

With all the money people spend on their homes, everybody should have one of these.

You ain't seen nothing yet.... The cheaters in power are going to make the lowly peasants pay.
And to think that so many blithering idiots support the political party that has promised to rid the U.S of all coal fired power plants ...they consider cheap and reliable electric service to be a privilege that Americans don't deserve.





A must for any home. I'll be doing the Generac route once i retire to a different state

One of those whole house generators seems to be a great thing to have. However the ones installed around me run off natural gas, and in Texas the natural gas supply got disrupted and therefore if you had a natural gas fueled whole house generator you would be staring from your dark cold house at a $8-10,000 DOA monument in your yard right now. If you were off the gas line network and using propane I guess you'd be OK.
I have a Yamaha generator that is similar in size to the one John showed, and had an electrician friend install a generator panel with a outside plug to use. My friend didn't recommend trying to run too much off that generator for fear of overloading it, so it only runs the circuit with the fridge, the one for my boiler, and the one for my sump pump. Good enough to help insure against my food going bad, heat stays on, and basement doesn't flood, but not enough to live in comfort. I had the setup done 7 or 8 years ago, and since then just used it once when a summer storm knocked out power for 10 or 11 hours, but after that the only power outage I had that lasted more than a hour or two, was a early heavy wet snow storm that knocked out the power, and when I got home it was already after dark and spending an hour digging out the snow enough to get the generator out of the garage and over to the location it needed to be to plug into the house was not something I was going to tackle, so I lived without power and heat until around 4 in the morning when they finally got it back on.

That’s really lame to lose Nat Gas during a power outage. In 25 years of Nat Gas service I never had to do without. Even during a 5 day power outage. They need to fix that!!!

Just another way to screw us over

It’s strange that cold had so much to do with the issues this has caused with the grid there. I’ve read there is moisture in the natural gas lines there that froze, shutting off the flow. Natural gas is the main source of heating energy supply here and I’ve never had or heard of any weather related issues with supply. It’s been cold here for several weeks with below 0 night time lows for days, but my gas fired boiler and hot water heater are soldiering along burning an uninterrupted gas supply.
It’s been over 20 below here over the years and everyone gripes about it, but at least we aren’t griping about our furnaces and boilers out due to frozen gas lines!

Generators are great, but what are apartment dwellers supposed to do?

Get a small QUIET gen and put it out on the outside balcony ....

All my camping gear comes out when the power goes down. Butane stove, 26,800mah solar power packs and a usb chargeable lantern







Can buy everything here for $100 and boy will you be glad to have it

While I was asking in terms of backup power/generators, you made a great suggestion SRT6776.

My 'emergency' kit is a little more basic. I have two Colman propane powered single burners. I like the propane ones because propane is usually a little easier to find. For lights, I bought an Ozark Trail LED Lantern Set They're battery powered, but, I use rechargeable batteries and have a car charger for the batteries too. These lights are BRIGHT and will go for quite some time before needing fresh batteries.

And I have a huge cooler to keep things cold.

One thing I do regardless is ALWAYS keep two cases of water at both my place and my Mothers. While others are scrambling for water, I'm already set.

It was kinda funny in a sad way that people around here kicked into 'hurricane mode' when this ice storm hit. So many people complained about the loss of food due to no power, but it was 30 degrees or colder outside. Ummmmm.....hello? A majority of what I put outside, never thawed out. To my advantage though, both my Mom and I have outside closets, so it wasn't like we just set everything on the ground. Another thing people complained about was no water to flush toilets. Again, ummmm.....hello? Ice and snow everywhere out side, bring some in and melt it. It might take awhile to get a few gallons, but it can be done.

For power, and if you dont want to go with a traditional generator, you could check out a larger power bank with a solar panel like this

https://www.amazon.com/Jackery-Explorer-Generator-Outdoors-Emergency/dp/B08LD9PLQ2/ref=sr_1_10?crid=3NPKR0DEFS5FM&dchild=1&keywords=jackery&qid=1613628414&sprefix=jackery%2Caps%2C185&sr=8-10

If you really want to step it up you could buy a 200ah lithium battery, an inverter and a solar panel. From my research, a small family using this set up in a travel trailer when camping will use 30ah a day in power but with sun a 100 watt solar panel will replace the 30ah during the day, so as long as the sun is out the battery will stay topped up. RV guys will use a few more of those batteries and solar panels and can even run the AC off it and stay dry camping until the tanks are full.