www.the351cforum.com

Gonna be a long three days here in Tx - daughter just got an email from the co-op that they are going to mandatory rolling blackouts. Whether it'll hit us here - unknown.

The CEO of Texas' Electric Reliability Council of Texas, better known as ERCOT, announced Sunday that the supply of natural gas to power plants was limited, and half of the system's wind turbines had frozen, keeping at least 12k megawatts offline. ERCOT has a grid condition alert system that is now in 'conservation alert' status as consumption spikes across the state.

The system's outlook predicted very tight conditions, including the possibility that demand could exceed available power sometime Sunday evening, according to ERCOT's website. A spokesperson confirmed the outlook, saying emergency conditions may be activated as soon as tonight. That could eventually lead to rolling outages through at least Tuesday, according to ERCOT's Dan Woodfin.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/14 ... blackouts/

The blackouts typically last about an hour. Last night when our house t-stat rolled back from 69 to 66, we hit the 66 mark in about 40 minutes.

_________________
Chris - Merkel, TX
http://raceabilene.com/kelly/hotrod
"Owner built, owner abused."

And everyone can thank all the morons that voted biden in office.

That sucks for sure. But at least when it goes out you know it's not something that was unplanned.
I keep talking about installing a transfer switch on my fuse box so I can plug my big generator in to the house, but havent done it yet.
I dont envy those cold temps at all, and so much for the stereotype it's always warm in Texas.

Good luck.

Biden didn't cause this, neither did trump. It's the sad reality of going with "green" electric. The electric becomes unreliable, unless you're self sufficient at making your own. Granted, the current admin is going to do nothing to make it better. We've needed to upgrade our power grid for decades now, maybe with half the country frozen and without power it might actually happen

We're supposed to get 12" of snow tonight and 35 mph winds, all at near 0°F. Needless to say, today's work day will be spent ensuring the snow blowers and generators are ready to perform. I'm fortunate that I'm capable of being self sufficient and prepared. But I'm already dreading the phone calls, begging, and pleas for help we're about to receive from those that aren't.

Best of luck to all of you.

We're outside design parameters here. Diesel trucks won't start because we don't spec block heaters this far south. It was -2F this morning at 6:30, only 2F now in the sun shine. Bird kills in the back yard, frozen pipes, etc. We're not set up for this. Note that as far as green goes, some of the NG plants are offline too. We're got power, they are rolling the blackouts around the major cities where the power demand it highest. Our work data center is backed up with a 50kW diesel generator - it won't start.

More coming Tuesday.

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Chris - Merkel, TX
http://raceabilene.com/kelly/hotrod
"Owner built, owner abused."

I'm back on line. You want to talk about some not so fun times. So I worked Saturday night to Sunday morning. During that time our power was off from 10:30pm-11:30pm. Ok no problem an hour here or there. Hell no! Sunday morning it went off at 1:30am-3:30am. Then on for 2 hours. Then off at 5:30am-8:20am. Then off at 8:45am (only 35 mins to do stuff) House was 58 degrees at the 8:20 time and warmed up to 64. So off again on again at sporadic hours and for all different times on/off. There were many times the power would cut off - then on for 10-15 mins then off for 30 mins then on 10-15 mins then off for hours. So Tuesday at 12:30 pm (lunch time) the power goes off. And off it stayed until 3:20am Wednesday morning. That is 15 hours strait and we were in the -6 degree range. Then It was turned right back off at 3:50 am (30 mins to get my house from 54 degrees to 60) and was not turned back on until 12 lunch time so around 8 hrs. Then off again around 2pm. Then on again around 5pm and knock on wood still on till I'm writing now. Mind you, every time the power was off we had no cell signal so no updates of progress or anything until power was on.

Luckily the gas water heater I put in does not require A/C power to warm the water so we had hot water. Basically all we did (Wife,2 girls 15,11 and I) was pick a spot in the house with what ever cloths we wanted and 2-3 blankets and slept or hung out. No work for me seeing I'm a delivery driver. I took my wife to work every morning and pick up so she didn't have to drive. She is the personal chef at our Hospital for the doctors and nurses so she was defiantly needed. Everything closed in town (Winco - walmart most gas stations) for the exception of Tom Thumb - Taco Bell Home Depot/Lowes.

The power grid is interesting and a little frustrating. 2 of my co-workers live about 6 miles south of us and had full electricity start to finish (but right across the highway from these guys is our work and no power there) . My daughters coach lives 5 miles north of me and had full power the whole time. Co-worker lives in North Dallas and had full power all the time. An ex co- worker also lives in North Dallas and no black outs. All these people not one minute of a black out. My ex boss lives 5 miles south in Flower Mound and he said he had the power off for 27 hours strait. I don't understand how that all works.

Well today our company will be going on line again. We along with Dallas and other surrounding cities have also had city and home pipes busting. Luckily not us or anyone I know. As Im writing this novel I seriously just got a call from our police department informing us we are now on a water boil alert because the water pressure has went below 20psi.

I hope everyone and anyone effected by this is ok!!! This was pretty rough. Our power has been on for the better part of yesterday evening until now. I'm sure its not completely over with but that was defiantly a challenge. My body aches from laying and sleeping so much. I think I slept in 4 days the same amount I typically sleep in 6 months- no lie!!!
-Matt

At least it sounds like you didnt get any damage from frozen pipes or anything.
We've been without power for 4 days straight, but that was several years ago. The last few times it was for no more than 5 hours at the most. Several days of it was not fun. I've upgraded generators since then, so if it happens again we wont suffer quite as much. I really need to get a transfer switch installed so I can plug my big generator directly in to the house. Then we will have running water, which makes a huge difference.
We had work cancelled today because of the forecast. They were saying we could get up to half an inch of ice, even more north of here. So far this morning there is barely a coating on the trees. It can stay that way as far as I am concerned. The ground is too wet for them to tolerate much extra weight without falling over.

12 inches of snow monday, and we're supposed to get another 3-6 today.

Luckily, the wind they were predicting never showed up, otherwise we'd have been in a real world of hurt. Thankfully, we've also had power the whole time. We've got generators, so if it's out for any significant amount of time, I'll rig up something through to get it to work.

Weeks like this really has me considering running a neutral to that outlet. It wouldn't take anything to do, and then it would be relatively easy to power the house with a generator. Granted, it won't be full power, but if we can run the necessities and get by, it would make it a whole lot easier. You can buy dryer cords that have a 4th prong for a neutral, although the drier wouldn't use it.

I'm not jealous of any of you. Loosing power sucks, and ice is worse then the snow we've gotten.

Yes the ice is no good. Sat/Sunday it started as a freezing mist. Apparently that froze all the wind mills and water generators and shit snowballed (no pun) from there. Sunday/Monday was a shit show of ice already on the ground then 6-8 inches of snow on top of that with the regular temp hovering the 0 to 24 area. Galveston beach is not sand, it all snow and ice. I saw some damns were froze solid. Wind mills froze to a stop. It gets cold here, not the accumulation like in northern states but it will make your piss freeze here a couple weeks a year but this was plain uncalled for . Sorry but this "green new deal" junk of not having any natural gas or nuclear is only a way for government to control us more. I just witnessed 1st hand what happens when the windmills stop and the water generators stop and no sun for 4 days for solar panels. Wake up Joe and other suckers falling for these AOC/Sanders lies.

I've thought about using the dryer outlet, but getting to it is almost impossible.
I really think a 6 circuit transfer switch wired in to our electrical box would do the trick for us, and probably not even need to use all 6 circuits. Our house is small, and given we have a gas stove, gas water heater, no lift pump for the septic field, I really think my 6800 generator would run most everything. Maybe not all at the same time, but I think it would make things fairly normal plugged in to the house instead of having drop chords run every where like I do now when the power goes out (and no running water.)

We're starting to get a little icing, and some branches are starting to hang low, but so far it's not as bad as what I've seen folks not very far north of us have already gotten.