Help Texas project

[txNgineer]

I have just gone through the 2 coldest nights in nearly 100 yrs with no power, heat, water, or cell data service. That leaves the experience fresh on my mind. So I am proposing a set of specs for a project that would have been a HUGE help and I am asking for your advice on this project. Full disclosure, I am a rural Texan so this would also help me.

What I saw was that the power company outage information was only available on the internet and their web pages were very data heavy. Often impossible to load on a cell phone. All the up to date news was on web streams or digital TV. After the first night, the cell towers ran out of backup power and went offline. The roads were iced over and impassable. In essence we were sitting 13 miles from a mall in west Houston but were as cut off as if we were in back woods Siberia.
What I am planning, and need help/advice with, is a "Will Prowse milk crate" solution for long term backup of an internet & wifi connection. I have the routers and equipment and experience to do actual load measurements and then can calculate the number of Watt-Hours of storage needed. But I would have to spend a long time figuring out the best option for recharging, solar input (although minimal in our recent storm), and BMS. Any one who can help with that design and selection would be a big help.
Based on what I saw the system would need:

• Inverter to drive a dial up or dsl modem, a firewall/router (Ubiquiti Edge Lite or equiv), an ethernet switch, and a wireless access point or two. For TV a HDHomerun OTA TV to IP adapter. Also a Raspberry Pi with a 24 inch-ish monitor and headphones/bluetooth speaker. Other than the monitor everything else on that list should run on 10-20 watts each (or less).
• Battery storage to carry that equipment for up to 20 hours continuously.
• USB charger outputs for phones and ePaper tablets.
• Charger that could add 75-80% charge to the system in 1.5 hrs. and/or be charged from a car by using clamps to connect to the battery/alternator (limited to 600w max)
• Low self discharge (long shelf life) batteries with as much cycle life as possible (LiFePo?).
• All in one or two "milk crate" containers
• Everything we do fully open source and open hardware. Obviously some of the equipment will be commercial, but open source preferred when possible.
• Needs to be equally as useful in a 100F after hurricane day as it is in a 0F power crisis.

I will be glad to host this on my Hack-a-Day project page and my github account. I really want to make this an easily repeatable project that could be built by individuals, churches, or rural schools.
Anyone out there willing to help?
Thanks in advance for thoughts and support.

 

[Frank in Thailand]

What you are proposing looks a lot like UPS.
Not to make it sound less than it is, but to keep a network up and running, loads of solution out there.

Emergency power, for longer periods, that is different.

Most simple is the blueletti LiFePO4 units that have solar and usb/ AC power and are reasonable priced.

The costs for 4 cells to ship from China, the 10 weeks wait, configuration, BMS, solar charge controller and inverter (pure sine wave lower wattage) and make it all in a nice box?
I doubt it have added benefit from blueletti.

Total installation time and configuration is quickly 8 to 20 hours...

When you go bigger, yes then it's worth the time and hassle.

 

[luckielab]

Needs to be equally as useful in a 100F after hurricane day as it is in a 0F power crisis.

I'm still new at this, but I don't think LiFePo4 batteries are supposed to be charged when their temp is below 32'F. May need to add some heating elements to the plan.

Of of curiosity, do you know if your broadband stayed up during the event? Hopefully those central sites had adequate power backup!

 

[Frank in Thailand]

I'm still new at this, but I don't think LiFePo4 batteries are supposed to be charged when their temp is below 32'F. May need to add some heating elements to the plan.

Of of curiosity, do you know if your broadband stayed up during the event? Hopefully those central sites had adequate power backup!

You are correct.

They're are different chemistry battery that can do subzero.
Will has a few videos about them.
(Cylinder type, bolts on each end)

We live off grid and use G4 router, as long as that is up, there is internet.

Most fiber optic cable have their own backup for power.

I prefer G4 or we need to dig over 30 km ...

 

[HRTKD]

Of of curiosity, do you know if your broadband stayed up during the event? Hopefully those central sites had adequate power backup!

From reports from friends in Houston, Internet access was almost house dependent. One house had it, the house next door didn't.

I lived in southwest Houston back in the early 90's when it got down to 9° F. I was one of the few people around with 4x4. We didn't lose power, but still had a pipe freeze.

• Charger that could add 75-80% charge to the system in 1.5 hrs. and/or be charged from a car by using clamps to connect to the battery/alternator (limited to 600w max)

That charge time is going to be an issue. I understand the need to get as much charge in as little time as possible, but it may not be realistic. Say the battery is 280Ah. A 1 hour charge - from 0% - requires a 280 amp charger. Good luck finding one of those. My familiarity with chargers is in the RV landscape. There aren't many AC-DC chargers over 100 amps. Now try to find an AC source that is 280 amps. Plus, low cost BMS devices aren't going to support a charge rate that high.

 

[txNgineer]

Thanks for all the great comments! I'll try to address them since they are worthy of an explanation:

• Yes, I thought of a Bluetti, but when I roughed out the time requirements and "back of the envelope" load I found extra batteries would need to be added. Something like a UPS with external battery capability ($$) would be ideal for a plug-n-play but the problem is the BMS part is designed for trickle and float, not quick charge. Ditto a hacked old UPS. Just hoped to get something less costly if possible. Maybe can optimize the loads a bit to get the run-time up.

• 3g and 4g went down about 18 hrs into the outages and all we could get was voice roaming (2g?), no data or internet. But we have a land line phone (no broadband out here) and I usually get service from DSL. Many of my neighbors are still dial up. In much of non-Urban Texas if you are 10 feet outside the city limits you can forget cable or fiber, they won't even talk to you. I am sure it is a mess in the city, but you can usually find a nearby link. In non-Urban areas - no options. Starlink would be a heavenly addition out here, if it ever happens down south. But in a nutshell, dial up or DSL stayed up. Just many people did not have power for a modem and router.

• Sub-zero is not yet a thing along the coast, but in West Texas where I grew up, it is likely. If you were able to use a car to charge it, then you could warm up the batteries for charging.

• Yes getting all the stuff for the future would take time and effort, but I can assure you this will be needed in the future. I have personally gone through 3 major hurricanes plus one more happen at our house after we had evacuated. Also, in twice in the 80s and once since then we have had ice storms that have knocked out the power for days. Texas weather is not for the faint of heart. But as my dad once said, "It apologizes in a few days when it gets it done with its tantrum." It is a beautiful, sunshiny day and 42F. Going to be 60-68F this weekend.

• You are right about the charge time. Once I thought about it I realized it is unrealistic. Most car alternators are about 50 a. My diesel truck had 100 a, but that is not common. So if I had a proper 50 amp BMS we could expect up to a maximum charge of about 75 AH in an hour and a half. That is about a 25% charge gain on a 280 AH pack. You could always run the car longer, but I would be a bit wary of idling for much longer. If you were lucky enough to have more than one vehicle you could use each one for that long. It would have the added benefit of keeping them all warm and ready if a need to leave arose and was possible.

Can a Bluetti be easily hacked to add external batteries? What is it's maximum charge rate?

Once again, thank you for the constructive help!!

 

[curiouscarbon]

For the DC barrel plug stuff like routers ethernet switches etc please consider a dc dc voltage regulator specific to the DC spec on the device. Soldering the barrel connector might be tedious, but it pays off a lot in my opinion in efficiency.

I often source DC DC converters from https://www.pololu.com/category/136/voltage-regulators

 

[HRTKD]

• Sub-zero is not yet a thing along the coast, but in West Texas where I grew up, it is likely. If you were able to use a car to charge it, then you could warm up the batteries for charging.

0° F isn't the problem. 32° F is the problem. The closer you get to 32° F, the lower the charge rate should be. Under 32° F, the effective charge rate should be zero.

 

[45North]

I understand the same thing happened 10 years ago and a follow-up study recommended that your utilities should winterize or it would happen again. But they chose to not bother and your government regulators didn't make them.
So, in the long term I'd suggest what you really need to do is to elect some lawmakers who will regulate your utilities!
(This isn't what you asked, I know. Sorry for going political but in the big picture I think this is what needs to happen. Otherwise it's everyone for themselves and the devil take the hindmost. And what kind of society is that?)

 

[txNgineer]

I understand the same thing happened 10 years ago and a follow-up study recommended that your utilities should winterize or it would happen again. But they chose to not bother and your government regulators didn't make them.
So, in the long term I'd suggest what you really need to do is to elect some lawmakers who will regulate your utilities!
(This isn't what you asked, I know. Sorry for going political but in the big picture I think this is what needs to happen. Otherwise it's everyone for themselves and the devil take the hindmost. And what kind of society is that?)

Yes, you are right. I spent my career in the energy upstream sector and I could recognize a root cause the minute it all began happening. The problem is the general aversion to capital investment that our tax system inadvertently encourages. I am not one for new laws or regulation. But in the case of costs for emergency planning and preparedness, there needs to be a way to "balance the scale" for the costs. I think our largely ineffectual power management system should have put in place some form of penalty clause for failure to deliver contracted amounts. If they were taxed/fined for the KWs unmet per their contract, it would go a long way to stopping that mess. The clause could be triggered if the state ever drops into a deficiency of generation below, say 8% of demand. A contract like that would "ripple down" and cause the generation companies to hold their fuel producers to the same clause.
And wind/solar should not be given a pass on that either. Wind farms in colder areas than Texas often operate in those conditions.
I would also like an after event investigation as to why South Texas Nuclear plant was offline during the first half of the issue. I don't know enough about that plant to guess, but it just logically seems odd.
I will be politely "growling" at my two state legislature members about this. Both ERCOT and PUC need to be restructured to provide more accountability. Both of them assured the governor (in writing), five days before the event that the systems were fully prepared.
Also all of the several thousand municipal water suppliers across the state should be held to a similar standard by the TCEQ.

 

[45North]

Yes, you are right. I spent my career in the energy upstream sector and I could recognize a root cause the minute it all began happening. The problem is the general aversion to capital investment that our tax system inadvertently encourages. I am not one for new laws or regulation. But in the case of costs for emergency planning and preparedness, there needs to be a way to "balance the scale" for the costs. I think our largely ineffectual power management system should have put in place some form of penalty clause for failure to deliver contracted amounts. If they were taxed/fined for the KWs unmet per their contract, it would go a long way to stopping that mess. The clause could be triggered if the state ever drops into a deficiency of generation below, say 8% of demand. A contract like that would "ripple down" and cause the generation companies to hold their fuel producers to the same clause.
And wind/solar should not be given a pass on that either. Wind farms in colder areas than Texas often operate in those conditions.
I would also like an after event investigation as to why South Texas Nuclear plant was offline during the first half of the issue. I don't know enough about that plant to guess, but it just logically seems odd.
I will be politely "growling" at my two state legislature members about this. Both ERCOT and PUC need to be restructured to provide more accountability. Both of them assured the governor (in writing), five days before the event that the systems were fully prepared.
Also all of the several thousand municipal water suppliers across the state should be held to a similar standard by the TCEQ.

Either way deregulation allowed the utilities to disinvest in the interest of reducing costs for themselves and the users. But a downturn in the weather (not entirely unexpected any more, it seems) resulted in the current "humanitarian crisis", if that's not too strong a term.

Luckily the feds stepped in to bail you out (FIMA). But, if you think about it, it shouldn't have been necessary for the taxpayers of the whole country to pay when the residents of one state were too cheap to take the necessary precautions to take care of themselves.

This isn't my field but it seems to me that in most of the developed world governments are directly involved in the ownership and operation of essential infrastructure, like this. Financial incentives can only go so far. When things go south you need political transparency and accountability. Theoretically, if the situation was bad enough, a private company could "walk away" and leave everyone stranded if their liability became large enough and there was no more profit to be had.

 

[Delmar]

This was my gateway drug project. Warning – the drug is very addictive.

Keep everything 12VDC for simplicity, and no inverter losses.

I use a trash-picked Belkin UPS for regulated power to my sensitive router and modem. Output and charging is 3A. Everything else in my office (fan, lights, USB ports) I connect direct to the battery as they are unaffected by the swing in voltage. Easy to find used & cheap units on eBay.

One might do, otherwise use a pair of Harbor Freight 35AH AGM to last 20 hours and will operate in freezing conditions. You can add an external 12V wall charger to speed the charging process. And add a single solar panel.

You may want to ditch the TV, and use a laptop or tablet with car charger. You are in survival mode during grid down.

 

[Guido1]

Yes, you are right. I spent my career in the energy upstream sector and I could recognize a root cause the minute it all began happening. The problem is the general aversion to capital investment that our tax system inadvertently encourages. I am not one for new laws or regulation. But in the case of costs for emergency planning and preparedness, there needs to be a way to "balance the scale" for the costs. I think our largely ineffectual power management system should have put in place some form of penalty clause for failure to deliver contracted amounts. If they were taxed/fined for the KWs unmet per their contract, it would go a long way to stopping that mess. The clause could be triggered if the state ever drops into a deficiency of generation below, say 8% of demand. A contract like that would "ripple down" and cause the generation companies to hold their fuel producers to the same clause.
And wind/solar should not be given a pass on that either. Wind farms in colder areas than Texas often operate in those conditions.
I would also like an after event investigation as to why South Texas Nuclear plant was offline during the first half of the issue. I don't know enough about that plant to guess, but it just logically seems odd.
I will be politely "growling" at my two state legislature members about this. Both ERCOT and PUC need to be restructured to provide more accountability. Both of them assured the governor (in writing), five days before the event that the systems were fully prepared.
Also all of the several thousand municipal water suppliers across the state should be held to a similar standard by the TCEQ.

Hello, txNgineer
I believe the "renewable" energy systems should be considered additional buffer systems only, not calc'ed as a reliable commodity.
From what I've heard, NatGas fueled power facilities were getting pretty slack in their commitments to stay on-line and fulfill contractual obligations, 'cause the wind/solar group was always available to pick up the slack.
Pretty strange about STNP as well, I just chalked it up to the entire plandemic fiasco.
We're currently west of Houston in the Katy area, but shortly will pull up stakes and be in our ranch outside of Athens (WSW of the booming metropolis of Tyler) That's how I found myself on this blog, trying to assemble an off-grid system for the ranch.
I sense we may be stepping-off fairly soon.....But, there's nowhere I'd rather be in that event than Texas!