Snow!Snow!Snow!


Carborendum
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And power outages.

I thought I'd drop a line to let know we survived.

Texans don't know how to drive in cold conditions.  So there was a 13 car pile up last Friday at a bridge I was planning on using to get to work.  But I couldn't get out of the subdivision for all the traffic being re-routed.  I later heard of a 100 car pile up in Dallas because of bridges.

We woke up around 5:00 am Monday morning to a home without power.  (Someone later told me that it was out at 4:30.) I immediately checked the news form my phone since our router had no power.  I found that the Texas commission on electricity decided to do rolling blackouts for periods of 15 to 45 minutes.  It may go as long as one hour, but don't worry, you'll have power again soon.

The reason is that this was a record storm.  Texans don't have the equipment and supplies to weather such temperatures.  So we depend on technology.  Heaters were taken off of pump mode to emergency heat, which uses a lot more power.  That's a very bad thing if we're in the middle of a blackout. 

The hours stretched on but we still had no power.  I noticed that cell, text, and data were gone.  Text would work after multiple attempts.  It really was a disaster condition.

Luckily my wife is a forward thinker.  The had me cutting up our wood pile all weekend long.  She had bought a sterno stove to cook our food.  We shut off the well after filling up our bathtubs with water.  And she had plenty of bottled water for potable use.

So we got past the worst night, although later this week will be almost as bad.  we were amazed at how much of the house was warmed by the wood stove.

Our kids played a marathon game of Risk.  Quite the change from the constant electronics in front of their faces.  They even took a break to play with their baby sister by going out to build a snowman (she loves Frozen).

Work was cancelled yesterday and today.  We'll see about the rest of the week.

We had power restored in the middle of the night after 20 hours.  I surveyed the damage.

Our one casualty so far was the well house.  While most of the outdoor piping appears to be intact, there were a couple of valves that were closed that shouldn't have been.  So about a 1' section of pipe broke off between those valves.  Luckily there is a bypass that appears to be intact.  However the two regular valves are damaged.  I don't know if they will spray all over once I turn it back on.  And since the valves are frozen solid, I can't figure everything out until Friday.  I'll probably be spending all day Saturday doing repairs.

We also have two storage tanks in the shed.  With the 9 degree overnight low and no power, they were frozen solid.  But nothing appears to be broken.

We have yet to see how much damage there is in the refrigerator and freezer.

Elsewhere, the ward building and the stake center were both used as shelters for people who didn't properly prepare or were otherwise debilitated by the storm.

Our ward was being taken care of by the ministering infrastructure.

Edited by Carborendum
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Tangent to @Backroads post on charity for moochers...

When the news announced the rolling blackouts, they showed some social media posts:

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I realize it's cold, but over three hours without power is just ridiculous.

Seriously?!?  Talk about entitled.

Edited by Carborendum
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@Carborendum

Not sure where you are in the State, but if you are in one of the bad areas, stay safe.

I didn't get the news as quick as others probably, but I am now starting to hear horror stories of what is going on in Austin and some of the harder hit cities.  The weather this morning is not helping anything according to some.

It's unclear of the actual cause and I've heard several stories.  One is that part of this is due to the renewable energy push that's been going on and that some of the Wind Turbines they have put up are now frozen and cannot create energy, while at the same time some of the solar energy had the panels covered with snow.  However, that only accounts for 4% of the energy deficit right now (but 4% is 4%).

The bigger thing is the conjecture I've heard about Austin.  I'm not sure if some of those I heard briefly from have power yet in Austin at their houses.  Many have been bused to shelters, but I also heard of one horror story of one shelter where people couldn't get in and were freezing to death outside of it (not sure if that was a literal or figurative statement by the individual though).   The conjecture says that they could put power through, but the electrical company will not in Austin.  They were going on over two days (and some predicting no power for some parts of Austin today as well) without power.

The reason is due to problems with Natural Gas currently.  Natural gas accounts most of the lost the energy but when the cold hit a combination of people using more Natural gas and the actual gas lines freezing caused a loss of 40% of the electricity.  This caused them to try to pipe in other electricity but the wholesale cost jumped up to the maximum rate of almost $9-$10K a (kilowatt?).   Austin put in a regulation that they cannot charge people over 18x price increase, and as the price was at 11 cents, that means the maximum they could charge was around $2.  With the rise in prices, the electric company decided that to stay in business it was better to simply not turn on the electricity than to lose that much money.  As I said, that's conjecture, but I've also heard that price jumps are happening on an enormous scale all over Texas.

Even worse are the burst pipes I'm hearing about.  It must be really bad in North Texas right now.  I'm hearing that water is becoming a problem now and that there are some without food (it has struck me now about how our Church leadership has at least told us to have 72 hour kits at a minimum, and if we can up to 3 months of supplies if we are lacking otherwise).

It's hard to figure out all that's going on but it is dawning on me that this is far more massive than most natural disasters recently, this is a pretty big disaster from what I'm hearing now. 

I hope you all are safe and stay safe.  We'll pray for you.

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So we had another blackout.  But this time it was for less than an hour.

Our bathtubs are getting empty.  So, I'm going to have to use hair dryers to thaw the valves and get some water going.

We've had the heater set to 60 degrees.  and it seems we're still using heat like a normal day.

I heard back from a ministering family that they had to leave their hoise and stay with a relative.  I hope they remembered to turn off their water.

One office I work at has announced that they will be closed for the whole week.  Another is still trying to take it day by day.  And as a side note, one office has also announced that (due to COVID concerns) we will be working from home until July.  They keep moving it back.  And some people refuse to believe it is "indefinitely". (SMH).

We're about half way through our woodpile.  So I hope the power holds out to the end of the week.  We're probably only going to have the fire going at night.

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Now a third blackout.  It's going on three hours, so I don't think it's rolling.  It is probably ice accumulation on power lines.  It will be another 24 hr thing.  So no pipe repairs today.

It is times like these where we realize how useful dogs are but how useless cats are.

Just sayin'.

A quick search shows that a lot of people are doing much worse.  Anatess emailed me about her relatives in Houston.  They haven't had power this past day when we did.  They are afraid of going anywhere because of COVID.  And they're afraid that by staying there, they will freeze to death.  She's really fearful for their lives. I offered to invite them into our home.  but they probably wouldn't for fear of COVID.  But... pick your poison.

So many people in Galveston have frozen to death that the hospital is asking for refrigerated trucks to supplement their morgue.

Many more are also coming to the hospital due to carbon monoxide poisoning because they don't know how to burn things properly or they are over using a poorly operating propane unit.

People are dying.  I can only take care of those in our circle of influence.  Sad days.

Edited by Carborendum
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15 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Glad you're doing ok - thanks for checking in.

I hate to ask how your garden is doing...

I still have my melons inside.  They're kind of ok.  but one sprout may be waning.

The trees I just bought are doing well in the garage.  My arborist told me that trees can get by for a couple of weeks with very dim light.  But they need to stay watered.

Mrs. Carb harvested the whole veggie garden Sunday because she knew we'd lose it all.  She had just planted some flowers.  She covered them.  We'll see how they are this weekend.

All my citrus trees in the yard are dying.  The nectarine trees may get a boost in production because of chill hours.  But a couple had already flowered, so I'm afraid we've lost all fruit from those trees.

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15 hours ago, NeedleinA said:

Someone posted this picture under the caption: "SciENcE !!!"
eeb5a7a93e52bf92.jpg.7ea3c1326e88e95ab9c1cd0bae6a14dd.jpg
Hope all is well for you and the family @Carborendum

This is more appropriate than you realize.  About 20% of Texas power is wind and solar.  the snow and freezing temperatures brought that 20% to a complete halt.

Add into that an increased demand due to heaters being turned up and we have a grid failure.

And "certain people" want to use this event to mock Texas's insistence on fossil fuels.  Hah.  Fossil fuels were what gave us enough power to get through at all.

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18 hours ago, NeedleinA said:

Someone posted this picture under the caption: "SciENcE !!!"
eeb5a7a93e52bf92.jpg.7ea3c1326e88e95ab9c1cd0bae6a14dd.jpg
Hope all is well for you and the family @Carborendum

This is more appropriate than you realize.  About 20% of Texas power is wind and solar.  the snow and freezing temperatures brought that 20% to a complete halt.

Add into that an increased demand due to heaters being turned up and we have a grid failure.

And "certain people" want to use this event to mock Texas's insistence on fossil fuels.  Hah.  Fossil fuels were what gave us enough power to get through at all.

I'd really like to see an increased usage of nuclear because of this.  It is probably the most versatile energy source we have.  And many areas of Texas are so seismically dead that there really is no danger of natural disasters.

And it would be so cheap if the feds would stop being such fear mongers about it.

Edited by Carborendum
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So, I hope that the pipe glue will cure some time today.  I was hoping that the heat lamp would be more effective than it is being.  But alas, no.

So at these temps I'm looking at about an hour for set then another 12 hours for cure.  So we probably won't have water until morning.  Then we can hope to still have power so we can take showers.

Imagine a family my size cuddled together in a small room (picture the pioneer homes) for a week without bathing.  Yeah, we don't like togetherness as much as we normally would.

After all the power ups and downs, we've now had power for about 19 hours.  That's longer than any up we've had since this began.

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37 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Hope you guys stay well and safe, Carbs.

My understanding was that wind/solar is more like 4-5% of the Texas grid and that most of the current issues are due to natural gas infrastructure freezing.  Is that not correct?

Basically, the state energy authority never expected a blizzard of this magnitude going for this long, and so didn't take the proper precautions to ensure that the mechanisms to keep the wind turbines and natural gas systems going were actually in place and functional. 

Because of this, when we needed those mechanisms the most they weren't working. Cue blackouts over much of the state. 

The governor is furious, and is demanding an investigation.

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4 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

My understanding was that wind/solar is more like 4-5% of the Texas grid and that most of the current issues are due to natural gas infrastructure freezing.  Is that not correct?

I keep hearing that.  But I don't know where that came from.  Here's where I got mine.

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Renewable energy sources contribute nearly one-fifth of the net electricity generated in Texas and account for one-fifth of the total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation from all nonhydroelectric renewable sources 

https://www.eia.gov/state/analysis.php?sid=TX

My comment was primarily directed at the fact that people are mocking Texas for relying too much on fossil fuels. They obviously don't have the facts. 

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The state has encouraged renewable energy use by authorizing construction of transmission lines to bring electricity from remote wind farms to urban market centers. Wind accounts for nearly all of the electricity generated from renewable resources in Texas, and the state leads the nation in wind-powered electricity generation, producing almost three-tenths of the U.S. total In 2011...

... the state was the country's sixth-largest producer of solar power in 2019

So, yeah, Texas has been heavily dependent on solar and wind.  I don' think it is possible for hydropower to work in Texas.  There simply isn't anywhere with sufficient drop to make it viable.

Renewables were a big part of why we the grid failed.  And, yes, there were other factors as well.

Matural gas lines also gave us problems as did coal.  But all these were "spot" failures.  Whereas solar and wind were almost completely wiped out.

While Texas uses the largest amount of petroleum products in the country, very little of it is used to generate electricity in the state (somewhere around 1% to 2%).

Surprisingly, the most practical and unbiased report on the grid failure happens to come from a surprising source.

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These events triggered by weather extremes can overwhelm energy systems, even for those that face such spikes and dips on a regular basis. It’s too reductive to blame any individual factor like intermittent renewable energy, fossil fuel generator shutdowns, decrepit infrastructure, or inadequate planning, though such events often become a political Rorschach test.

Rather, it’s a combination of multiple cascading failures that leaves millions of people in the dark. The hope now is that the power outages in Texas will provide important lessons and help avoid similar problems in the future. “I think this is an event that people are going to be looking back at for years,” Cohan said.

https://www.vox.com/2021/2/16/22284140/texas-blackout-outage-winter-storm-uri-ercot-power-grid-cold-snow-austin-houston-dallas

I believe 8% of our electricity comes from Nuclear.  It really should be more.  It is much more dependable, predictable, and scalable for emergencies above the baseline usage as well as lower than average usage.

Edited by Carborendum
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23 hours ago, Carborendum said:

This is more appropriate than you realize.  About 20% of Texas power is wind and solar.  the snow and freezing temperatures brought that 20% to a complete halt.

Add into that an increased demand due to heaters being turned up and we have a grid failure.

And "certain people" want to use this event to mock Texas's insistence on fossil fuels.  Hah.  Fossil fuels were what gave us enough power to get through at all.

My understanding is that the Governor and government are now officially saying that it wasn't due to lack of energy from Wind/Solar but the Natural Gas lines freezing up.  That's  probably a LARGE reason why people are stating it was for other reasons than the wind/solar problems that have been noted by some.

Texas relies on Natural Gas for Power, wasn't ready for the extreme cold

Quote

By some estimates, nearly half of the state’s natural gas production has screeched to a halt due to the extremely low temperatures, while freezing components at natural gas-fired power plants have forced some operators to shut down.

“Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin. While he said all of Texas’ energy sources share blame for the power crisis at least one nuclear power plant has partially shut down, most notably the natural gas industry is producing significantly less power than normal.

Texas relies on natural gas for power, it wasn't ready for the extreme cold

Sorry, it's behind a paywall, but here's a portion of it

Quote

Officials for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages most of Texas’ grid, said the primary cause of the outages Tuesday appeared to be the state’s natural gas providers. Many are not designed to withstand such low temperatures on equipment or during production.

By some estimates, nearly half of the state’s natural gas production has screeched to a halt due to the extremely low temperatures, while freezing components at natural gas-fired power plants have forced some operators to shut down.

“Texas is a gas state,” said Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas at Austin. While he said all of Texas’ energy sources share blame for the power crisis — at least one nuclear power plant has partially shut down, most notably — the natural gas industry is producing significantly less power than normal.

Natural gas supply is critically low in Texas, are rolling gas outages next

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“Natural gas supply constraints may lead to service outages for some Atmos Energy customers. If service is interrupted, restoration may take an extended period of time. Once supply is restored, Atmos Energy technicians will need to visit each home to safely restore gas service,” the Dallas-based utility said in a statement on Wednesday night.

More than 24 hours earlier, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that natural gas is freezing in the pipeline and freezing at the rig.

“The Texas natural gas infrastructure is not winterized and protected against the cold like some of the others are, and that’s just for cost reasons. If you don’t expect it to get that cold, you’re not going to want to spend the money to protect your systems. That is now biting Texas hard,” said Ben Ruddell, a professor, data scientist and director of the FEWSION Center at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Ariz.

Regardless, however one looks at it, the primary cause of this (whether one blames the renewable resources, or Natural Gas) is that Texas simply wasn't prepared for a cold snap.  They had a warning that such could happen in 2010 but apparently no one took it seriously.

There's a WARNING going out to some regions of Texas that you need to take a look at your next electricity bill.  Due to the Natural Gas difficulties, the price has risen exponentially.  Some cities and counties restrict how much the price of energy can rise in a month and people in those areas should be reasonably protected to a degree against massive cost increases.  However, a few areas are giving out warning that the price may rise over 9,000% so people need to make sure that they keep an eye on what the costs are running for their electricity that they do get...when they get it. 

If it DOES rise that much though, I expect there will be a lawsuit and legal action to stop it from costing people so much, but something to keep an eye on after this entire crisis is over.

AS pointed out, other states and even Canada (which relies much more heavily on Wind/Solar than Texas or any other state in the US) has not had these problems.  Kansas did not have these problems.  Oklahoma did not have these problems.  Most of it seems to stem (at this point), NOT on whether it is fossil fuels or renewables or even Natural Gas, but whether they were prepared to handle the temperatures that hit Texas.

HOWEVER...this is like a one in every ten year event.  The reason Texas went independent for it's energy is because the cost to secure against the cold for something that only happens once in ten years was seen as unfeasible.  That's still a good question.  This WAS a hard snap of cold, but it might not occur again until ten years more have passed.  Last time was 2010.  Prior to that I think was 2003 or 2004.  There has been a cost in lives though which is more significant than last time this happened, so it may change the dynamic and how it is viewed.

Edited by JohnsonJones
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An alert that has come through.  There is a Boil order (boil your water) that's come out for the following areas of Texas.

Boil order noticies issued for central Texas Towns.

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  • 439 WSC PWS ID #0140076
  • Bellmead
  • Bell County WCID #5, PWS ID 0140024
  • Bell-Milam-Falls WSC, PWS ID 0140007
  • Bruceville-Eddy Water Department (Including Conserve Water Order)
  • Central Texas Water Supply Corporation
    • Armstrong WSC, BMF WSC
    • Buckholts
    • Bell County WCID #5
    • Belton (Small Portion)
    • Dog Ridge WSC
    • East Bell WSC
    • Holland
    • Jarrell-Schwertner WSC
    • Kempner WSC
    • Little Elm WSC
    • Lott
    • Mooreville WSC
    • O & B WSC
    • Rogers
    • Rosebud
    • Salem Elm Ridge WSC
    • West Bell WSC
    • Westphalia WSC
    • Salado WSC (Portions of)
  • Cross Country WSC
    • China Spring
  • Gatesville Regional Water System PWS ID 0500002
    • Gatesville
    • Mountain Water Supply
    • Fort Gates Water Supply
    • Flat Water Supply
    • Coryell City Water Supply
  • Gause WSC, PWS ID 1660008
  • Gholson Water Supply Corporation
  • Killeen (All Properties)
  • City of Lampasas PWS ID 1410001
  • City of Lorena
  • Levi Water (East of Lorena, Falls County)
  • Little Elm Valley WSC, PWS ID 0140025
  • Marlow WSC, PWS ID 1660014
  • McLennan County WCID #2 (Elm Mott Water) in Elm Mott (PWS ID #1550002)
  • Mooreville WSC
  • Multicounty Water Supply Corporation
    • Coryell
    • Hamilton
    • Lampasas
  • North Milam WSC, PWS ID 1660011
  • Tri-County S.U.D.
    • Falls
    • Robertson
    • Limestone
    • McLennan
  • West Brazos Water Supply
    • Chilton
    • Golinda
  • Windsor Water Supply

 

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Wow, what a day!

I waited until the snow on the roofs were melting.  I turned the water on.  then someone noticed the toilet was overflowing due to a poor valve.  So I turned the toiltet off and we spent about an hour sweeping water out of the house.

Then I realized that there was no way that the toilet could have leaked that much in thefew minutes between when I turned on the water and when I turned off the toilet water.

Long story short: a pipe had burst inside the exterior wall.  I had to turn off the water to the house again.  I bashed the drywall open.  I found the broken pipe.  As per usual incompetence, they placed the pipe outside of the insulation.

I spent much of the day cleaning up the mess and traveling from hardware store to hardware store.  As you can imagine, there has been a run on plumbing supplies.  I spent some time figuring out some cajun engineering with the parts available.  My $7 project ended up being about a $50 project because of a run on plumbing supplies.  And it's not completely done.  I had to get a third set of supplies because there was more damage than I knew about.  I can only hope that tomorrow the repairs will actually work.

Now I'll probably have to spend about $100 or more on supplies to repair the wall.

And the stuff I have in the wall can't be permanent.  It's just a mess and will likely only last a few years.  So, I'm going to have to redo it in a month or so when supplies have restocked and.prices have gone down.

All told this will be about a $400 job or so, including the repairs at the well house.

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6 hours ago, Carborendum said:

Wow, what a day!

I waited until the snow on the roofs were melting.  I turned the water on.  then someone noticed the toilet was overflowing due to a poor valve.  So I turned the toiltet off and we spent about an hour sweeping water out of the house.

Then I realized that there was no way that the toilet could have leaked that much in thefew minutes between when I turned on the water and when I turned off the toilet water.

Long story short: a pipe had burst inside the exterior wall.  I had to turn off the water to the house again.  I bashed the drywall open.  I found the broken pipe.  As per usual incompetence, they placed the pipe outside of the insulation.

I spent much of the day cleaning up the mess and traveling from hardware store to hardware store.  As you can imagine, there has been a run on plumbing supplies.  I spent some time figuring out some cajun engineering with the parts available.  My $7 project ended up being about a $50 project because of a run on plumbing supplies.  And it's not completely done.  I had to get a third set of supplies because there was more damage than I knew about.  I can only hope that tomorrow the repairs will actually work.

Now I'll probably have to spend about $100 or more on supplies to repair the wall.

And the stuff I have in the wall can't be permanent.  It's just a mess and will likely only last a few years.  So, I'm going to have to redo it in a month or so when supplies have restocked and.prices have gone down.

All told this will be about a $400 job or so, including the repairs at the well house.

Ah, that stinks.  It's happened all over Texas with many people.  Some say it's a worse problem than the blackouts.  I hope that you got the only problem and the plumbing works after this.  Plumbers probably have it made for a few years after all the burst pipes the past few days.

Hope that this is the worst of it and everything is going back to  normal.  Hopefully things will look up from here on out.

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So, it appears to be fixed.  I had to call my BIL for advice on how to remove a sharkbite connector that didn't seal properly.  Apparently a properly sized crescent wrench will do the job.

I spent about 30 minutes shoving as much rector seal into that joint as possible.  So far, so good.  I'm concerned that the rector seal is only a temporary solution.  So, I will need to get real parts when they become available.

The carpet is still drying from the burst pipe.  I got the fan and the dehumidifier right next to the wet area.  Slowly but surely.

Everything seems almost normal.  Laundry machines, dishwasher, showers.

Oh! blessed showers! Wow that felt so good.  I just felt so grimy from head to toe with all the physical labor I had to do this week.  Cutting and splitting oak is not an easy feat, especially for a guy my size.

Luckily, my ministering brother is quite a bit on the large side.  "Brawny" is a perfect adjective.  He brought over a truckbed (About a 1/4 chord) of oak and we spent some time taking turns with the axe, and the sledge/wedge combo.

I'll tell you what.  I'm very happy I invested in that all steel 14 lb maul.  We hit the wedge with the handle about as often as we it it with the head.

Adjusting for our relative sizes, I think I carried my share of the load.

One really cool fun fact: If you spend about 10-20 min. with a 14 lb maul, an axe seems like a toothpick afterwards.

After all is said and done my wife really saved our lives this week.  She keeps downplaying her role.  But I analyzed all the basic necessities and how we managed to have them throughout this week.  She was responsible for every single one of them.  Half of them were things she got a year or more ago.  If it hadn't been for her, I honestly think we would have frozen to death or died of dehydration.

I keep thanking her.  And she keeps rolling her eyes at me.

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