What do you all do to be prepared for long term power loss?

[Hay Dude]

The "cause" of their last major issue was largely self inflicted. The reason does not help much, as it did happen. Natural gas has a bit of "water" in it, and the cold caused that water to freeze in the gas turning it into a solid. That added to the "green" push their grid had was enough to make bad things happen when that cold snap came. It is just not suppose to get that cold in TX. They learned a great many lessons, some they will heed others not so much.

Global Warming with do that. Just ask Al G@re.

 

[FPGT72]

I dont know how long stored water stays fresh and safe….

You want to keep it sealed and in the dark as much as possible. Then you can boil it and put it through a good filter. Collecting "steam" and using it for water will always be "clean", but you don't get anything else aside from a drink. It is a little like if all you ate was rabbit, it is far to lean to keep you going long term, you need the fats as well.

 

[FPGT72]

Global Warming with do that. Just ask Al G@re.

Funny to say you are right, they did say that.

 

[FPGT72]

As I stated earlier, I work for a large utility company and have my entire adult life. I'm not ill-informed, but I am concerned. An EMP or similar attack (or a Carrington event) that damages transformers and switching relays would likely cause damage to the grid that would take months to years to repair. Here's one article of many describing the lead-time issues with large transformers :Supply shortages and an inflexible market give rise to high power transformer lead times | Wood Mackenzie

The power system of today appears to be incredibly reliable and it is, until it's not. It's gruesome to contemplate no power for six months or a year. Unthinkable. This thread has sort of turned into "What kind of generator to have and solar panels." Brother, stop and think about no power for a year. Please, I implore all of you to plan accordingly. That was @Yander 's real initial question. My answer is that I'm contingency planning for no power.

In the video I linked it talked about shooting the parts at the sub station. The parts that got damaged are "easy" to replace, however other things are not.

Now this was last year that it happened, fast forward to today and ask yourself are you sure this could not happen again, and in a great many places. All you would need is a hand full of guys with a rifle and they can take down the grid for a large area, this one station killed an entire county.

Personally I think this event, and others that happened around the same time are just tests. See how we will respond.

 

[Hay Dude]

As a Custom Mowing Contractor, I do a lot of mowing around power substations and under high tension power lines.

I’ve seen where stray bullet from a target shooter ricocheted and took down a wire.

Fellas, if they want to shut us down, it would be very easy for them.
The enemy is already inside the wire. Just look at how many America-hating people violently burning our cities down there already are in our own country!

There needs to be improvements to the security of the grid.
Undergrounding, Faraday cages, building components in America instead of China, improved cyber security, etc.

 

[Hay Dude]

Diesel gen, because in the zombie appocolypes, everybody around here has 275 gallons of diesel in their basement. Who's gonna bring you propane? High priced prepper food. Guns, because civilization will break down. Coming to my house? bring the 3 F's. Food, fuel, firearms.
Short term, the community is great. Long term, the city folks will be in big trouble and come looking for your stuff.

People will be shooting each other for diesel fuel, but I agree at least it’s ”around”. For me, diesel fuel is everywhere.

 

[Torvy]

Part of the problem with the cold snap in Texas was that they scheduled maintenance on some plants during the winter (since we use much more in summer).

The wind and solar were also part of the problem.

The whole issue was a confluence of many factors that are unlikely to repeat.

The point is that since Texas is largely independent of the grid, we didn't take our neighbors down with us. That is the fundamental problem with the national grids. During that same cold snap there were failures in CA and the PNW.

What we need is upwards of 500 smaller grids that CAN be connected, but are physically separated unless needed. That way, if a failure for whatever reason, seriously damages one area, the others are unaffected.

Of course we also need a huge increase in atomic power generation and diffusion of those plants across the country. We have stupidly been reducing our capacity of reliable power generation.

 

[WinterDeere]

Omega, do those transformers by any chance have a lot of chinese parts in them?
Something tells me they do....

Transformer supply chain issues have been going awhile now, primarily related to the availability of the electrical-grade grain-oriented steel (GOES) used to wind the transformer cores. The primary producers of this material are in China, Chech Republic, Korea, and Russia. We've killed the Chinese supply with tariffs (implemented by former administration, continued by current), boycotted Russia, and Czech manufacturing affected by the Russia/Ukraine war. We used to import about 40,000 tonnes per quarter, but that dropped to ~10,000 tons in 2018Q2 (2018 tariffs), and still has never really recovered. Any wonder there's a supply chain issue?

USA used to be a leading manufacturer of this product, but we EPA-legislated and unioned ourselves right out of that business. Rather than fixing the problems that started all of this, lawmakers have been calling on the current administration to actually expand these trade restrictions, hoping it will finally restart USA production. It's a move that looks an awful lot like, "we will cause you so much pain you'll have to make it here, at any cost."

 

[WinterDeere]

Part of the problem with the cold snap in Texas was that they scheduled maintenance on some plants during the winter (since we use much more in summer).

I'll admit my memory isn't perfect, and I may not have even caught the full story. But I distinctly remember a lot of talk about Texas power plants being previously cited for not running appropriate levels of antifreeze in their plant cooling systems, and that being the cause of most of their outages, during that last cold snap. Many reports claimed things like, "despite being previously cited and fined for this violation, they appear to have once-again failed to maintain appropriate antifreeze concentrations in their cooling plants."

 

[EddieWalker]

I'm seeing two lines of thought on here. One is being ready for a weather event that can cause power loss for days, or even weeks. And the other line of thought is more severe loss of power that would affect the entire country for the long term.

For me, I'm just focusing on weather related issues with the goal of still being able to maintain a decent standard of living. During Covid, we realized how important bartering is. Having lots of eggs to trade allowed us to get things that others had stocked up on, but where not easy to find a the stores. I honestly didn't think that would ever happen, but now I know it's very likely to happen again.

Solar Cells for charging and short term use during the day might be in our future. I can see where it would be useful to charge our phones, or have another source of power if we run low on fuel. Hopefully I can get Natural Gas connected to my house before we need it and buy a bigger generator.

With the cost of food skyrocketing, it just makes sense to raise and grow as much as possible to be less dependent on grocery stores. Same with canning and having a large supply of food on hand makes a lot of sense to me. It sure seems a lot easier to have it and not need it, then to try and find it if you need it.