• Have you tried out dark mode?! Scroll to the bottom of any page to find a sun or moon icon to turn dark mode on or off!

diy solar

diy solar

Massive Texas power outage

DIYrich said:
Expensive to design a grid to be hurricane proof. Buried cable is not necessarily the answer. Transformers don't like to be flooded.
Click to expand...
Agreed. There's not a simple solution. Our local coop grid has been overwhelmed with downed trees. Thousands and thousands. I had 15 or so down on just our property. Most of the ones I've seen are not trees in the right of way so the poco has no control over them. And the major transmission lines take a while to fix.

Our line is buried from the road back to the transformer for the house - about 1000 ft or so. That's great because if they get power on the line coming down the road I'm good. But when we had all the rain a few weeks ago the water almost got into the transformer. We're relatively high here and have never had water come up that far or anything close in the past. But changes in water flow and drainage can cause a lot of change in that too. It's a multifaceted problem.

Now add in the tens of thousands of people moving here from other states and you have compounded the problem even more. Overall the pocos here are doing a decent job of handling things. Certainly not perfect, but electing the other party wouldn't fix any of that. Not that we'd ever elect the other party, but still ...
 
In house nuclear reactors...

Aside from that, we are at the mercy of the weather in one way or another.

Im in NC, pretty far inland, so it is rare we get more than rain from a hurricane.

I can recall 2 rimes in the last 40 years we were without power for extended times.
Once in 89 when Hugo blasted through here, spawning hundreds of tornadoes...

Power was out in most of the area over a month.

And once in the 90s, a freake blizzard came through, took out power for weeks... that was hard. Winter without power is scary.
 
Supervstech said:
And once in the 90s, a freake blizzard came through, took out power for weeks... that was hard. Winter without power is scary.
Click to expand...
Picture below is from the February 2021 Great Houston Freeze where it was +13F and the cart powered my furnace to prevent the pipes from bursting. At the time was using the included lead batteries. Now that I have a Lithium server rack no idea what the BMS would do.
 

Attachments

  • Houston snow.jpg
    Houston snow.jpg
    261.7 KB · Views: 8
DIYrich said:
Expensive to design a grid to be hurricane proof. Buried cable is not necessarily the answer. Transformers don't like to be flooded.
Click to expand...
This was a class 1 hurricane. We have wind and water here as well. Millions of people dont lose power. They need to do better than this!
 
Brucey said:
Distributed generation may be the way to go, community batteries supplying local area.
Click to expand...
And/or they need to remove/relax the grid feedback stipulations for "zero" export solar/battery systems. We should be able to grid tie as long as we minimize exporting to only spurious amounts. That would allow more people to build up self reliance inexpensively as they can afford to and reduce stress on the grid.

The power companies will never agree to this though, they will fight tooth and nail to prevent it. They have a gravy train and they want to keep it and as much of the profit as possible, they don't want to work towards something that is as reliable as we would like. In the words of Homer Simpson, "I'll Take Your Money, But I'm Not Gonna Plow Your Drive Way."
 
EastTexCowboy said:
Agreed. There's not a simple solution. Our local coop grid has been overwhelmed with downed trees. Thousands and thousands. I had 15 or so down on just our property. Most of the ones I've seen are not trees in the right of way so the poco has no control over them. And the major transmission lines take a while to fix.

Our line is buried from the road back to the transformer for the house - about 1000 ft or so. That's great because if they get power on the line coming down the road I'm good. But when we had all the rain a few weeks ago the water almost got into the transformer. We're relatively high here and have never had water come up that far or anything close in the past. But changes in water flow and drainage can cause a lot of change in that too. It's a multifaceted problem.

Now add in the tens of thousands of people moving here from other states and you have compounded the problem even more. Overall the pocos here are doing a decent job of handling things. Certainly not perfect, but electing the other party wouldn't fix any of that. Not that we'd ever elect the other party, but still ...
Click to expand...
Up here in the north we have chainsaws. The utility comes by about once a year and checks if our trees could take down the utility wires. If so they can cut down the trees. If a tree takes down a wire that feeds my house off the mainline, thats my problem. They will come and put the wire back up, but only after the mainline power is restored. That can take a week plus. So we keep our trees away from our lines.
 
Dave911 said:
This was a class 1 hurricane. We have wind and water here as well. Millions of people dont lose power. They need to do better than this!
Click to expand...
Is this a case of private pocos putting shareholders interests ahead of customers?
 
What the USA has versus what we spent on it makes the whole thing a complete Joke!
The Hurricane that hit Texas would not even had an effected on 99% of the power infrastructure in Japan.
It would have been business as normal within 12 hours in Japan.
 
rhino said:
I know this keeps coming up and people keep saying "it's expensive" but you'd think by now someone would prioritize burying some of these lines especially ones going to more critical facilities like hospitals.
Click to expand...
Sure until the vote comes to add 5% to the electric bill to pay for it. Then it is no way.
 
OffGridForGood said:
Hey @EastTexCowboy !
Glad to hear from ya, and all is ok on your spread (y)
had us all worried up North here when that storm hit ya, the news sure makes it look pretty bad, glad ya ok.
Click to expand...
Thanks, bud! Yeah, it's a lot uglier than anyone expected. Fortunately we were prepared for it so it was pretty much business as usual other than all the damn tree clearing and fence fixing. But I don't even mind that so much other than the heat kicks my old ass a little.
 
45North said:
Is this a case of private pocos putting shareholders interests ahead of customers?
Click to expand...
I don't think so. At least in our case it's a coop so if they make a profit they reduce the bill the next year. I'd call BS on that but I've seen them do it repeatedly. Make a little extra and the price per kwh goes down. I can't speak to the big utility companies but the TUC comes down on them like a ton of bricks if they try anything sketchy.
 
Dave911 said:
Up here in the north we have chainsaws. The utility comes by about once a year and checks if our trees could take down the utility wires. If so they can cut down the trees. If a tree takes down a wire that feeds my house off the mainline, thats my problem. They will come and put the wire back up, but only after the mainline power is restored. That can take a week plus. So we keep our trees away from our lines.
Click to expand...
Most of the outages here were caused by trees going down on main lines, not so much the individual lines going to homes. Those have to wait until they get the main lines fixed. The one that affected us the most was a set of transmission lines that service about 2500 customers around this part of the lake. One huge tree, not on the right of way, went down and wiped out lines and a couple of poles. Then they had some damage to a substation up the road but I'm not sure what the deal was there. In any case, the linemen were out there in the heat working crazy hours with no good place to go eat or sleep or even get a shower. I check on them and offer water or anything else they might need but they rarely ask for anything. My hat's off the all the linemen out there. Yeah, I know they get paid well, but they sure 'nuff earn it.
 
Then why did the poco's drop the ball so badly? It wasn't even that bad of a storm. It weakened but it's still big - it's been raining steady for 2 days here and I'm 3000 Km away!
 
Brucey said:
Proper v2l capabilities may be one option for some as availability get better. 60-200kWh on tap in the garage assuming it's fully charged to begin with.
Click to expand...

The Riddara RD6 does 21kW V2L and up to an 86kWh pack, looks pretty too.
Possibly going to be built in Thailand, would that avoid the punitive loadings that the US applies?? BYD also just opened a factory here.

Riddara RD6: 100% Electiric Pickup Truck

Discover Riddara RD6, the first pure electric pick-up vehicle that combines the power of new energy with the thrill of diverse outdoor environments.
www.riddara.com www.riddara.com

messageImage_1720664976065.jpg
 
45North said:
Then why did the poco's drop the ball so badly? It wasn't even that bad of a storm. It weakened but it's still big - it's been raining steady for 2 days here and I'm 3000 Km away!
Click to expand...
I don't mean to be argumentative, but how did they drop the ball? The storm blew over a gazillion trees. All you can do is clean it up and fix it. Burying lines has a whole other set of problems so I don't see that as a practical solution, especially across such a huge area.
 
2 million without power including a major city after a fairly routine storm looks a lot like being unprepared.
Edit: As others have pointed out, this would not be acceptable in many other parts of the world.
 
Last edited:
I’ve never been to Texas but I hear it’s quite large, putting everything underground is a fallacy.

I’m guessing the rain over the past 3-4 months has messed up the trees, sure tops soil was dry, but root systems that are normally dry and when soaked can’t adapt as quickly.

The one solace is knowing it will take a long time for more damage trees to be replaced. So fingers crossed this type of damage won’t happen for a while.
 
740GLE said:
I’ve never been to Texas but I hear it’s quite large, putting everything underground is a fallacy.

I’m guessing the rain over the past 3-4 months has messed up the trees, sure tops soil was dry, but root systems that are normally dry and when soaked can’t adapt as quickly.

The one solace is knowing it will take a long time for more damage trees to be replaced. So fingers crossed this type of damage won’t happen for a while.
Click to expand...
Pretty accurate analysis.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

svetz
Texas Power Failure
3 4 5
Replies
123
Views
7K
Woody
Woody

diy solar

diy solar
Back
Top