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Power outage BS


mack_turtle
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Austin Energy has this to say:

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has declared an Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) Level 3. Austin Energy, along with utilities across the state, have been instructed to begin rotating outages because there is not enough power available to keep up with consumer demand.

Rotating outages are controlled, temporary interruptions of electrical service implemented by utilities when it is necessary for ERCOT to reduce demand on the system. This type of demand reduction is only used as a last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole.

Rotating outages primarily affect residential neighborhoods and small businesses and are typically limited to 10 to 40 minutes – but could last longer due to severity -- before being rotated to another location.

Austin Energy's outage map currently reflects the rotating outages so there may be times where a large portion of customers are shown as out of power due to the rotating outages.

Austin Energy’s outage map updates every 10 minutes which means there may be a lag in a rotating outage showing on the map.

You can find more information on rotating outages here and at ercot.com.

My power has been out for 15 hours. Is this because AE chooses to not actually do rotating blackouts, or because the lines don't function right now? I'm mostly annoyed that they still have this statement to the public and it's false hope.

It seems like the only have access to a limited amount of energy, so places on the same grid as hospitals and other essentials get first dibs. Damn.

In other news, my Midwesterner instinct took over and I shoveled the driveway. I don't plan to drive anywhere but I could not bear to see a driveway covered in snow.

Edited by mack_turtle
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Yeah we've been shoveling too, mostly so our rat-size dog can walk and go pee.

As to the outages, work people join in on those calls so I got some info.  There are plants offline that will be coming back online, there are areas that cannot power down b/c they don't think they will come back up, there are areas that don't power down b/c they're on the grid that supplies hospitals, 911 centers, EMS/fire/police, etc.  So it seems like some large blocks are being shut off for long periods of time.  Even the ones that power back up are having problems (people not turning off their breakers then staging stuff back on).

PEC has been doing a bit better, at least in our neighborhood.  We lost power for 4 hours.  I left AC/furnace off for an extra hour and a half since we can deal with it with clothing.

People are having to be rescued by fire trucks or neighbors b/c they have no power and their house is in the 30's and they hew newborns and they can't make up the hill to go to a hotetl.

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Yeah I had read ERCOT, Austin Power and PEC saying to turn breakers off major appliances once power goes out so as to prevent a surge from everyone pulling hundreds of amps at the same time when power comes back on.  I left a single 20A circuit on so I could tell when power came back.  My oven stove and water heater are still off.  Just the heat pump indoor/outdoor units and emergency heat circuit are 300A in breakers total.

My cold weather riding gear base layers and my MSR Jet Boil have sure come in handy!

I just loaned my neighbor a halogen work light he's putting in the water meter hole and has other heat lamps pointing at water filter pipes.  I have water indoors but all my bibs are frozen.  Those little styrofoam cups can't do anything about so many days below freezing and so many hours this cold.

 

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Lost power last week for a few hours but today has been fine. We will see as the night goes on.

Shoveled sidewalks for ourselves and neighbors. Driveway is 8ft long and I have a lifted 4wd tacoma so not worried about needing to GTFO

Edited by ATXZJ
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1 hour ago, AntonioGG said:

Yeah we've been shoveling too, mostly so our rat-size dog can walk and go pee.

Yep, had to shovel a path across the patio, and into the grass so my two 6 pounds dawgs could do their business. 

This overwhelmed grid is the same one that they want everyone to charge their EV's with. I love their performance, but the infrastructure is nowhere near ready.

Edited by TheX
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1 hour ago, TheX said:

Yep, had to shovel a path across the patio, and into the grass so my two 6 pounds dawgs could do their business. 

This overwhelmed grid is the same one that they want everyone to charge their EV's with. I love their performance, but the infrastructure is nowhere near ready.

Interestingly, the other side of the coin is if you have an EV it could sell energy back in peak periods if you so desire.  We need more distributed generation to improve the grid.

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6 hours ago, mack_turtle said:

I blame e-mtbs.

I heard it was the one-wheelers charging up for an epic snow shred. 

We're going on 19 hours down. We're 1.5 years in the house and haven't even thought about the fireplace other than putting bottles on the mantle. It's a gas/wood hybrid though, so we had options. But without a ceramic insert and only a couple of hours of smoker wood available, we still had issues. Running a gas fireplace does basically nothing without something to heat up. Well I had an idea here, but that wasn't the biggest problem.  

Like I said, I hadn't even thought about the fireplace since moving in. And it turned out that we didn't have the square gas key. And it's an odd one, given that the valve is sank 4 inches deep into a 1 inch bore in the fireplace. I scoured my tools for anything that'd work and the best I could  find was a needle nose plier and I just couldn't get purchase with it on the valve. Ah well. Give up and bundle up!

Hours lata': After not so much as looking at it, @Jessica asked if my Jeep's wheel lug wrench would fit. Well, no, but an immediate light bulb went off! I ran out and grabbed my stock jack tools, and I'll be damned if the jack's square interface tool didn't fit the gas valve perfectly! So now we had a gas fire running...so part A of the plan was back on-line. We went out and collected 5 good sized garden pavers to heat up in the gas fireplace. 

Great and cozy success. We even heated up a frozen pizza and boiled some water for grits on top of the fire. 

 

Screenshot_20210215-204415_Photos.jpg

Edited by Barry
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Genius!

Gas fire place but not gas cook top? I don't understand these houses that have gas service but electric cooking appliances. Gas is so much better to cook with. 

My wife just got me to buy a gas log for our fireplace five days ago. Unbelievably good timing. We've been really enjoying it. It was also reassuring to have when our power went out for a few hours Friday morning. Knock wood we've been on since then.

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2 hours ago, The Tip said:

Gas is so much better to cook with. 

I was in this camp until a few years ago.  It was the one big perceived drawback this house had.  No gas service at all.  It had a coil range and it sucked.  Upgraded to ceramic top, not much better.  I don't know why I balked at spending a few hundred more.  Eventually a few years later I upgraded to induction.  I can boil water faster (really important for that first pourover! in the morning!) than any gas stove.  It's alsso instant off like gas and the top only gets as hot as the pan is.   Maybe the MSR Jet Boil comes close.  The big drawback is times like these with no power, but I have alternatives.

Up this late b/c power turned on so I'm up to stage the HVAC and water heater on.  We were only down about 3 hours this time.

 

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Up here in Waco it isn't much better. We have several areas without power. My house hasn't been without power yet but we lost water sometime yesterday morning. The local water dept had their well freeze. This is the first time I can recall this ever happening here. My poor kids had to suffer with no internet for part of the day. Oh darn. I'm up early and I'm about to head into work. Leaving extra early for conditions and hoping to take a shower up there.

 

I did get to ride my bike in the snow yesterday. Six inches was pretty deep and gave me a good workout.

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9 hours ago, Barry said:

 

Like I said, I hadn't even thought about the fireplace since moving in. And it turned out that we didn't have the square gas key. And it's an odd one, given that the valve is sank 4 inches deep into a 1 inch bore in the fireplace. I scoured my tools for anything that'd work and the best I could  find was a needle nose plier and I just couldn't get purchase with it on the valve. Ah well. Give up and bundle up!

 

Twelve point socket😉

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No power going on 30 hours straight. Got a lot of reading done. Slept on top of the bed in my sleeping bag last night with a puppy to help keep me warm.

Currently 53 in the house. We left it as 65° before the power went out, so our house is pretty well sealed! New windows a few years ago really paid off.

We moved all of the worthwhile contents of the fridge/ freezer to the back porch this morning.

If we don't have power by this evening, we're going to my SiL house. Only five miles away but we have to bring two dogs, a cat, and some essentials with us on the snow and ice.

We have a gas stove that we light manually to cook. We can still make tea. However, the gas fireplace (no wood, just fake logs) is a mystery. I got it burning last night and it didn't do a damn thing after an hour of flame. I opened the flue. Are we supposed to shut the glass doors to radiate heat? Seemed like just a big waste of fuel.

Lastly, how did this happen? All this money and brainpower in the fastest-growing residential area in the country and no one has thought to build infrastructure to keep up? It seems that if you shout "I'll make jobs" into the wind, Texas politicians line up to give you tax breaks and blow jobs, but no one thinks to get money for life-sustaining infrastructure to maintain it? Get off my lawn!

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7 minutes ago, mack_turtle said:

. However, the gas fireplace (no wood, just fake logs) is a mystery. I got it burning last night and it didn't do a damn thing after an hour of flame. I opened the flue. Are we supposed to shut the glass doors to radiate heat? Seemed like just a big waste of fuel.

 

I just installed a new one so I know about this. They come with a device to permanently keep your flue open, as required by law, so guessing that's important. When the fire is on the glass doors HAVE to be open. Close them when not on to prevent air loss.

They aren't designed for heat, so it won't throw a lot of heat, but it does help some sitting in front of it.

Edited by The Tip
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10 minutes ago, TheX said:

I have a normal fireplace that we converted to gas and *stone/concrete/whatever* logs 10 years ago. looks almost like regular logs burning and throws off a lot of heat.

Does yours have the little pieces of fluff that glow like embers? It really makes the fire look real.

Edited by The Tip
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Just now, The Tip said:

Does your have the little pieces of fluff that glows like embers? It makes the fire really does look real.

Yeah, and after more than 10 years it still glows. All I do is use a spray cleaner for the logs that has to be used while they're hot.

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1 hour ago, The Tip said:

I just installed a new one so I know about this. They come with a device to permanently keep your flue open, as required by law, so guessing that's important. When the fire is on the glass doors HAVE to be open. Close them when not on to prevent air loss.

They aren't designed for heat, so it won't throw a lot of heat, but it does help some sitting in front of it.

This seems different from the one that came with our house that we bought in 2006. On ours the glass remains permanently closed except when we take it off for cleaning or to light the pilot. We have gas logs and the fake embers. Together they radiate an immense amount of heat that will warm up our entire living room. Even the mantle is made of a synthetic material that gets warm to the touch and radiates heat. Ours was designed to operate like this as we have no chimney - just a metal vent box on the back wall of our house. The pilot burns constantly with gas to the burner tube ignited with a regular light switch next to the fireplace.  

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15 hours ago, Chief said:

I have Pedernales was without power for 12 hours. Just came back on an hour ago. Also without water. 

We have Pedernales as well a few miles from you, and haven't lost power or water yet. Guess we're among the lucky ones! Can't even remember the last time I checked my SUV's antifreeze level, but decided it was worth cranking it up to run out for some milk this morning. All good! 

Curious for those with gas furnaces, can you run the heat without electricity? I'm thinking my thermostats have backup batteries, but are there are there other required electrical components in play? 

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10 minutes ago, throet said:

Curious for those with gas furnaces, can you run the heat without electricity? I'm thinking my thermostats have backup batteries, but are there are there other required electrical components in play? 

Fan to move the air.

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