Texas Fall/Winter thread!

[Hay Dude]

Scroll down the blog to 11:10 Am to see the Costco line that goes around the store, through the parking lot and onto the freeway feeder - incredible.
LIVE BLOG: Watch as Austin city leaders give update on water, power crisis | KXAN Austin

Uh yeah, that is incredible.

 

[rswyan]

Well, there's the main issue.

Properly installed and maintained as to who's standards? Up north, where it regularly freezes, nuclear, NG, coal, wind, solar, etc... are installed to deal with that. Down south, even with major catastrophic failure every 10 or so years, and all the costs associated with it, it's still cheaper to go without systems designed to operate in extreme cold. Imagine the shock consumers would get if those systems in Texas were cold proofed, as those costs would get passed on to them.

I don't imagine that it could be much worse than the shock some Texans got from multi-thousand dollar power bills they received that I recently read about ... for a couple of days of electric usage ...

Have to think a $10,000+ bill for a few days of use would be a real stunner. I know it would be for me.

:laughing:

Nothing says they have to upgrade all at once either ... which begs the question:

Have their been any cold-proofing upgrades since the last fiasco in 2011 ... or even the one before that ?

Here's a good read I found earlier today. The problem was mainly the inability to get NG to the generating plants. Not a lack of NG, but the ability to move it. NG, coal, nuclear, solar, wind, all froze up because they weren't designed to operate in those conditions as opposed to the same types of energy sources that do operate well in the cold.

:thumbsup:

No, frozen wind turbines aren稚 to blame for Texas power outages | The Texas Tribune

Anyhow, I hope people recover from this ASAP. But they're going to have to pay for it if they want it to not happen again.

:thumbsup:

 

[Bird]

The USPS truck came this afternoon; first time this week. Brought me 5 pieces of trash.:laughing:

One of my brothers told me he and his wife went to their HEB grocery store today. He said there was NO bread, except what is made in that store, No bananas, No eggs, No milk, the frozen food displays were nearly empty. and customers were loudly complaining (as if that would help).

 

[txdon]

The mail came today. It was Tuesday's mail. Still waiting on the next three days mail. I saw a UPS truck in the neighborhood. Garbage said they were going to start pick-up at noon but they were probably delayed because of ice in the streets. You could drive but it was hazardous walking on it. One neighbor's nice patio cover collapsed under the weight of the ice this morning. Another neighbor was having his water heater replaced and I went to one neighbors house and re-lit his hot water heater that has been out for 4 days. Slowly getting back to normal. 35˚F now heading to 21˚F in the morning.

 

[txdon]

I don't imagine that it could be much worse than the shock some Texans got from multi-thousand dollar power bills they received that I recently read about ... for a couple of days of electric usage ...

Have to think a $10,000+ bill for a few days of use would be a real stunner. I know it would be for me.

:laughing:

That was for a few customers who have Griddy Electric and opted for the "so-called variable or indexed electricity plans in Texas the only state to run its own unique stand-alone electricity grid are partially controlled by market demand." They gambled and lost. A shocker for sure, I bet they get on a different plan quickly.
Homeowners hit with massive electric bills amid Texas winter storm
This has not been verified with the electric company and it is a headline that does sell clicks for the NYpost. The bill is now up to $17,000.

 

[MossRoad]

Yeah, I read about that two options to pay for electric, 1 fixed rate or 2 variable rate. Watching the evening news they showed someone that had a $9000 electric bill. Geeze! When I worked for the newspaper our electric bill was $12,500 a month and that was running a printing press with 36 twenty five horsepower motors, lots of packaging equipment, lights and HVAC for 30,000 feet of offices and warehouses. Yikes! There's something wrong there.

They said supposed to go up into the 60s rapidly next few days, thawing pipes and more bursting. Good luck peoples down there.

 

[Steppenwolfe]

My son leaves tomorrow for Austin. One of our clients has asked we come down and help them out; most likely will end up hitting a few cities while he's there. Motel say's come on down, after that we don't know what he'll run into. He's driving his diesel truck with a 55 gallon tank and bringing lots of food and water for at least a week if need be.

 

[bcp]

Global warming? Climate change? Snowmageddon? Arctic blast?

A dash cam photo from Texas shows what really happened to the grid.





Bruce

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Scroll down the blog to 11:10 Am to see the Costco line that goes around the store, through the parking lot and onto the freeway feeder - incredible.
LIVE BLOG: Watch as Austin city leaders give update on water, power crisis | KXAN Austin

Wow, that will teach people to be prepared

 

[bindian]

We gotta treat these storms like a hurricane. I did forget to fill up my 55 gallon drum with water used for hurricanes. Had enough bottled water and had pond water to flush toilets.........and 68 gallons of off road diesel.
hugs, Brandi