Rolling blackout in Nashville as well. Suggestion was made to postpone NFL game, but it was just delayed by an hour.

What has changed that we now have so many more blackout all across the country than ever before.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by chongosuerte:

I DO have a generator.

By secondary I meant gas or wood stove (though my heat is natural gas, it’s no bueno without power).

[/FLASH_VIDEO][/QUOTE][/QUOTE]That's great temporary solution, but the better long term solution is a portable generator transfer switch. The first time I lived in Houston, I DIY installed a 10-circuit one for my portable generator. No running extension cords everywhere, no windows open for extension cords to pass through, etc. You can chose any 120V circuit and from what I remember I chose main refrigerator, beer fridge, microwave, bedroom lights, kitchen lights, bathroom lights (I chose a circuit with a bathroom fan on it), bedroom electrical outlets for portable AC, etc. If I lived in the North, I would've chose the 120V circuit for the HVAC so squirrel cage fan and controller would work. [FLASH_VIDEO]

quote:

Originally posted by 1s1k:
What has changed that we now have so many more blackout all across the country than ever before.

The internet. The fact is that this has happened before in unusual cold/warm snaps, but we didn’t hear about it in real time.

The power is on better than 99.99% of the time, but when it isn’t on, then it’s a vast conspiracy with the EV, solar, wind, nuclear, etc. people.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:

The power is on better than 99.99% of the time, but when it isn’t on, then it’s a vast conspiracy with the EV, solar, wind, nuclear, etc. people.

Maybe where you are. I'd be shickled titless if we could keep the power on more than half the time during wind storms. It's been out for over 24 hours here and I'm not counting on it being restored before tomorrow morning, if then.

God Bless Mr. Kohler and his generator elves! Not quite so happy about the propane bill I'm going to get whacked with when I refill tho...

It’s about 3 degrees here in the tropics of Michigan. I installed a ventless wall heater that runs from our lp tank years ago. It will keep our house at 65 degrees when it’s 15 below outside. I pay $9 a month extra to not have a smart meter. If the local grid is up, I have power. And if the grid goes down, I have a generator
We have food for a year. It’s cold outside but it’s really just an inconvenience

Is there any reason this can’t be avoided? Outages from failures or acts of God are one thing. But to have enough supply should be something we can do, including accommodating some level of redundancy. If people are inconvenienced by an outage, shame on them. If people are dying because of an outage, it’s outrageous. Maybe some of the laundry we send to the Ukraine should be spent to shore up our power system.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
Several years back I acquired a nice cast iron pellet stove. It does require electricity, but not much. Even a small generator would run it with power to spare. I was surprised with how much heat it will put out.

In my previous house I had a pellet stove. I absolutely loved it, for its ease of maintenance and the fact that I could boost the temperature in the house by ten degrees in under an hour. I'll caution, though, that the control board on a pellet stove (at least on the one I had) doesn't like the ugly (square wave) electricity coming at it from a generator. If you've got a nicer gen than I had (sine wave output), then perhaps it's not an issue.

Rolling black outs also here in Nashville.

Rolling blackouts end in East Tennessee for today, but may return tomorrow

I get that electricity can go out in extreme weather events, but this is the first time the power company did it purposely.

quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:
This should be a wake up call to ALL about the insanity of forcing people out of fossil fuel energy, and directly related, the push into EV’s. If the grid is vulnerable during a cold snap, what will happen when multi-millions need to charge their cars, AND heat/cool homes?

The people being affected already knows to some degree; the people driving the change already knew this was going to happen from the get go.

Duke cut the power to my neighborhood about 7:30 this morning. Turned it back on a little after 3:00 PM. It got cold in the house.

The power never goes out in the neighborhood due to weather related causes because the substation is very near and all the lines are underground from there to my house. I knew when the power went out this morning that it was intentional.

Years ago Duke had an arrangement where you got a break on your power bill. You agree to have your power cut at peak demand times. A lot of people agreed to it. I am sure there are some people who would go along with this or is it too big of a problem now?

Yes, this is similar to what happens during high demand to run A/C in the summer.
The positive from this could be to show some of the fools that don't realize a power cord doesn't generate electricity, the power plant at the other end of that cord does.
The most efficient electric car or other device is still powered mostly by hydrocarbons.

I am not questioning anyone's experience here as our power service here in KBHM has not been an issue but natural gas supply has. Spire Energy that supplies most of Central Alabama has been encouraging reduced use during this cold snap as they feed their reserves from the same pipeline networks that feed up into GA, the Carolinas and up the eastern seaboard. I can speak for our local power co in that we use natural gas in a few of our plants. These plants are combined cycle (using natural gas and latent steam through heat recovery steam generators to drive electrical generators) or direct gas boilers while many are still burning coal. I expect that Duke may have a number of natural gas or fuel oil powered generators that they use for meeting their grid demand.

Sidebar for those who may not know --- electrical power generation is essentially the meeting of an instantaneous demand and can be a challenging effort. There is no stored electricity. Batteries of the scale that would be needed are decades away and will only store for a short period of time anyway. So if anyone here wants to jump on the green energy bandwagon go right ahead..... but I wouldn't.

There have been generation facilities in a major metropolitan area in the Southeast that have allowed for a combined cycle unit to be frozen and inoperable. I appreciate how ridiculous this sounds but combined cycle units have all their piping, steam lines, and appurtenances exposed to the atmosphere unlike a coal driven steam plant which generally has a series of exterior walls which allows for latent heat to be retained and eliminate any freezing problems.

Going forward it is important that many of us understand that large electrical generation facilities are needed and that solar, wind, geothermal, et al. are only gap sources of energy while coal, natural gas, and nuclear are really the way to go.

Chongo...my best to you and your family and hopefully you all can warm up quickly or at least the good Lord sends some warmer weather soon.

Merry Christmas ya'll!

So the right/responsibility to disconnect load from the power grid has always existed for the responsible grid operator. It is a responsibility, because if they don’t, their entire power grid will likely collapse (blackout), as well as many of the neighboring grid operators power grids. These actions have become routine in California (CAISO). It definitely sucks to have your power turned off. It would suck even more to have no power for multiple days due to all the power plants losing power.
The fact that these grid operators have allowed their power generation fleets’ capacity to become less than their total potential load is another issue (a political one).

^^^^ He's right, ya know.

Grady has a great video about the Texas grid and how close they were to the grid going cold. The NC grid operators are trying to save the grid, not screw you.

quote:

Originally posted by sigcrazy7:
^^^^ He's right, ya know.

Grady has a great video about the Texas grid and how close they were to the grid going cold. The NC grid operators are trying to save the grid, not screw you.

[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/08mwXICY4JM" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

Yes, but why now. Because .gov is investing in a fantasy of everything electric. They didn't allow time for the grid to expand.

Fuck them. And this comes from someone who grew up worshiping electrical storage in the form of AA Romper Stomper toys and later RC cars.

If they were to let free market do it's job the electric revolution would be much more smooth.

Fuck, why didn't we kill and outlaw horses when ford was mass producing the model T?

Because that shit does not fly.

quote:

Any one see holes in my proposed load out?

A bottle to pee in.
(and them hold to warm your hands lol)

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Years ago Duke had an arrangement where you got a break on your power bill. You agree to have your power cut at peak demand times. A lot of people agreed to it. I am sure there are some people who would go along with this or is it too big of a problem now?

I tried it and had them take it off. The few dollar savings wasn't worth it. They'd cycle or cut the power at the worse time on the 100 degree days. The house would get hot, and then once peak time was over the A/C would struggle non-stop for hours just to get back to where it was. In my opinion it's more efficient to maintain the temp rather than let it get hot and then try to recover.