DIYrich
Solar Wizard
Sure. Delivery in 6 months.
Massive Texas power outage
- Thread starter Subdood
- Start date
Q-Dog
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It is still early yet. The really crazy and desperate stuff starts happening after about 3 or 4 days of no power, no water, no hot food, no bathing.
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crossy
Solar Addict
Something similar happened in Bristol (SW UK) some years back when we lived in the area. With the lights non-functional traffic actually flowed better!! It seems we Brits are (ok were) gentlemen (and ladies) when behind the wheel.
Seriously, I feel for you guys struggling, we don't get really severe weather here in Thailand and most outages are usually just a few hours.
That said, this lot is just arriving!!
Where is info about this?
edit: NVM, found it here: https://diysolarforum.com/threads/alte-out-of-business.82455/
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Delmar
Solar Addict
Unfortunately every major blue city has been mismanaged and run into the ground. Austin is quickly following the trend.
Bluedog225
Texas
The traffic is pretty lawless. 4 lane intersections, under overpasses. Multiples at each turn. It’s like India.
Mkgough
Solar Dude
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2021
- Messages
- 217
They do, they sell EcoFlow
DPC
Solar Enthusiast
I work for a company that used to drive down the prices of our product below cost when ever we got a competitor that was a threat to our markets.
When we drove them out of business we would buy up their assets and carry on as normal...
The other side of this and when the company wanted to raise prices they had to ask the Canadian gov for permission.
Since we produced 90% of the free world supply of many of these strategic metals and alloys everyone felt the arrogance and greed of mother INCO when she twitched and moved.
There are anti trust laws in the USA...
Solution move your head office from Wall street to Bay street.
What has really changed is nothing.
Companies still do this to control markets and the world is an easier place to do it in today because of the information age and cheap easy transportation...
The whole point of Capitalism is to make money and concentrate the wealth in a Silo as quickly as possible.
Competition is not good good for bottom line.
Citlalatonac
New Member
Could be worse, could be in Jackson. Water non-potable for over 2 years now.
Also, my favorite fact from when I lived in Houston during Harvey. Houston let developers build thousands of homes *inside* of a corps reservoir. Just building in flood plains without mitigation wasn't enough for them.
:watermark(cdn.texastribune.org/media/watermarks/2018.png,-0,30,0)/static.texastribune.org/media/images/2017/10/04/BARKERADDICKSBEFOREAFTER0115_TT.jpg)
How thousands of homes were built inside Houston reservoirs designed to flood (audio)
Last year saw the most destructive Atlantic hurricane season on record. How did we get here? We investigated by wading through the damage left by Hurricane Harvey in Houston.
www.texastribune.org
Citlalatonac
New Member
Citlalatonac
New Member
Actually seems like a pretty good deal. $2k, qualifies for 25D. 2x 100w panels is kinda piddly, but having a few potable/folding panels could be nice. Just get some real panels in case you need to actually have a few days of critical load backup. Some cheap Santan panels dumped in the shed in case of emergency and you're mostly good.
Bluedog225
Texas
A big take away for me and all this is that a fan is absolutely necessary.
We can have fancy systems to run air conditioners, yada yada yada. But a simple fan will get you through a hot night.
Missing my half dozen 6 amp ryobi packs.
Still trying to get the in laws to abandon houston. No joy. No fan.
We can have fancy systems to run air conditioners, yada yada yada. But a simple fan will get you through a hot night.
Missing my half dozen 6 amp ryobi packs.
Still trying to get the in laws to abandon houston. No joy. No fan.
EastTexCowboy
Solar Wizard
Just checking in since I haven't been around here for a while. We're close to Livingston in East Texas. Lost power Monday afternoon and they're saying sometime Saturday before we get it back on. We've been fine with the solar but I have been letting the Generac run since it powers a few things not on solar like the upstairs AC. I figure I have it so why not use it. I turned it off last night and the upstairs temp this morning has gone up less than 1 degree, which is a testament to blown on foam insulation.
The water was off for almost 2 days but it came back on Tuesday night and has been on since. This is a big deal for us with the cattle, but I do have two stock ponds so not a dire emergency. Reinforces my plan to put in a water well sometime in the not too distant future.
There are a TON of trees down everywhere. Way more than I would expect from a relatively weak storm. We may have had 50-60 mph gusts here but having been through a lot of hurricanes I wouldn't classify it as much of a storm. I think part of the problem, and I've seen this in the past, is when you go a number of years with no storm all the trees are allowed to grow up and the sick or weak ones are the first to go when you do get a storm. We had 10 or more down with some of those across fences in 3 places so I spent Tuesday and much of Wednesday cutting up and moving trees then repairing fences. Not fun in this heat but you have to take care of your animals. No damage to house or buildings so I'm going to call it a win.
Although we did pretty well with solar I already knew I need to upgrade and increase both production and capacity. I had that on the agenda for after we sell some real estate but I'm thinking about pulling some money from savings and getting it done this fall. With prices on most all components down I can do it for much less than even six months ago. I know, yeah, the prices will probably go down even more but at some point you have to pull the trigger.
I feel bad for all the folks suffering through this. Considering how weak the storm was I doubt if many were expecting it to be so bad for so long. Which just emphasizes the need to do some prep work when things are good so you don't have to scramble when things go south. We're not doomsday preppers but we do have a focus on being as self-sufficient as possible and being prepared for at least a month or two with limited or no services. It's funny. I've had a lot of people make fun of me for being a prepper type person. Then a pandemic or storm comes along and those same people say, "You're so smart!". LMAO
Hope everyone in the affected areas come through this fine. I suspect a number of us will be doing upgrades again after this mess.
The water was off for almost 2 days but it came back on Tuesday night and has been on since. This is a big deal for us with the cattle, but I do have two stock ponds so not a dire emergency. Reinforces my plan to put in a water well sometime in the not too distant future.
There are a TON of trees down everywhere. Way more than I would expect from a relatively weak storm. We may have had 50-60 mph gusts here but having been through a lot of hurricanes I wouldn't classify it as much of a storm. I think part of the problem, and I've seen this in the past, is when you go a number of years with no storm all the trees are allowed to grow up and the sick or weak ones are the first to go when you do get a storm. We had 10 or more down with some of those across fences in 3 places so I spent Tuesday and much of Wednesday cutting up and moving trees then repairing fences. Not fun in this heat but you have to take care of your animals. No damage to house or buildings so I'm going to call it a win.
Although we did pretty well with solar I already knew I need to upgrade and increase both production and capacity. I had that on the agenda for after we sell some real estate but I'm thinking about pulling some money from savings and getting it done this fall. With prices on most all components down I can do it for much less than even six months ago. I know, yeah, the prices will probably go down even more but at some point you have to pull the trigger.
I feel bad for all the folks suffering through this. Considering how weak the storm was I doubt if many were expecting it to be so bad for so long. Which just emphasizes the need to do some prep work when things are good so you don't have to scramble when things go south. We're not doomsday preppers but we do have a focus on being as self-sufficient as possible and being prepared for at least a month or two with limited or no services. It's funny. I've had a lot of people make fun of me for being a prepper type person. Then a pandemic or storm comes along and those same people say, "You're so smart!". LMAO
Hope everyone in the affected areas come through this fine. I suspect a number of us will be doing upgrades again after this mess.
Brucey
Solar Wizard
Glad to hear you made it thru relatively unscathed.
Judging Hurricanes just based on sustained wind speed is an error. Beryl spawned many tornadoes that had much higher wind speeds. Gusts and shear winds also exist that can cause extensive damage. The big problem though is storm surge and floods. Drop several inches of rain in a short time and even a mild wind will topple trees.
I also have sympathy for all the folks suffering through the aftermath of Beryl.
Dave911
Solar Enthusiast
Wasnt Beryl just a cat 1 hurricane? What happens when they get a cat 3?
Quattrohead
Solar Wizard
Glad you are doing well EastTexCowboy, farmers are so under appreciated. Did my time as a kid, knew it wasn't for me.
EastTexCowboy
Solar Wizard
Exactly what everyone else is saying. I don't have the answer but I'm pretty sure it's not good. By the time it reached us it was a tropical storm. Maybe 50-60 mph winds. But I have a lot of trees down that I wouldn't have expected so I'm going with part of the reason is that it's been almost 20 years since we've had a high wind hurricane. Now that's it's cleared out most of the marginal trees another one wouldn't likely be as bad. Not that I want another one. Another 20 years would be okay with me.
EastTexCowboy
Solar Wizard
The strange thing here is we didn't get that much rain. I measured 4.5 inches over more than a day. And we were dry. The first two inches didn't even puddle. When Ike came in it dumped a lot of water then hit us with the winds and there were trees uprooted everywhere. Oh well, whatever the reason we still have to deal with it. My advice is to get solar and batteries and get plenty! And a generator for backup!
Q-Dog
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I just want to remind folks, this thread was started in May after severe thunderstorms (not a hurricane) knocked out power for many of the same people who are sitting in the dark today.
Brucey
Solar Wizard
Hopefully the ones that could afford it took some steps after last time.
EastTexCowboy
Solar Wizard
The subject line still applies! Which sucks because there's no guarantee we won't have more of these this summer so this thread may go on and on and on.
Dave911
Solar Enthusiast
I'm just an outsider, with several cousins in Texas and it appears that the power grid in Texas is very poorly managed.
What can your average Texan do to improve the power situation?
How much crap are Texan's willing to put up with !?!?
You guys still have elections, right?
Its not like Texas doesn't have energy resources!! Most of West Texas seems to be covered with wells. The suns burns brightly and there is some wind. I think Texans need to raise their expectations a bit.
DIYrich
Solar Wizard
Expensive to design a grid to be hurricane proof. Buried cable is not necessarily the answer. Transformers don't like to be flooded.
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