Rolling blackouts

[txdon]

I live outside of Austin, just inside Bastrop County, and despite all the turmoil on the grid have not had any blackout affect me. I am on Bluebonnet Coop and either they are not part of the ERCOT grid or they just never got around to me, I don't know.

I'm with Bluebonnet Coop also. ?? When the power first went off at 6A.M. yesterday they had a recording on their power outage phone line that because of ERCOT they are doing rolling blackouts. We had 3-4 blackouts and Giddings was having them well into the afternoon. We have not had one since yesterday afternoon. Maybe your circuit line is somehow connected to one of their exempt facilities. (nursing homes, hospitals, public safety offices, etc...)

Ercot told the news that they are thinking about implementing them this morning till 9A.M. After 9A.M. Texas should be OK.

 

[weldingisfun]

We had the "rolling blackout" yesterday in the AM. Saw on the news last night where Texas is buying 285 megawatts of electricity from Mexico to get us through the night. Must have worked, the power was on all night.
Hope this cold snap breaks soon. We have 15 does ready to kid very very soon.

 

[jinman]

Not as cold here last night, only 11 degrees F compared to yesterday morning's 7 degrees F. The one faucet that froze yesterday morning (hot water in my kitchen) thawed mid-day and I let it drip last night. This morning it ran fine. Due to a flaw in construction and routing of the pipe, the hot water freezes in my kitchen and the cold water is fine. Go figure!

We had no power outages last night and so far none this morning. Since it is past 9:00 am local, I'm hoping that means outages are over for now. Now, I have to go out today and attempt to start my tractor and plow my driveway since it is still covered in 3" to 6" of drifted snow. The sun was out yesterday and melted the ice off of the trees and rails on my deck, but the snow is still on my driveway. We haven't even been to the mailbox in two days. It's probably jammed with junk mail.

EDIT: Oh yes, I'm on Wise Electric Coop, but we were following the predicted blackouts yesterday. Western, who lives in southern Wise Co. had power out yesterday for several hours. I'm not sure what power company he is with, but I'm sure there was a physical problem to cause that lengthy outage. Ours have all been short and inconsequential.

 

[Bird]

The Denton Record-Chronicle this morning said the rolling blackouts had not been called for today. So, I was glad they missed us; no power outages for us. And then at 8:58 a.m. this morning, the power went off. So I called to report it, and sure enough, the lady said they were not having rolling blackouts, so it would have to be something else.

I don't know what the problem was, but the power came back on at 9:36 a.m., so I can sure live with and be thankful for only a 38 minute outage.

 

[Western]

Jim,

My well is with Wise Co coop, The house is in Tri Co. Coop. We sit right on the line so it comes down to who will run it cheaper.

My well never lost power. When I finally got through to Tri County, they said "ice on the lines, blown fuses, limbs hitting lines and a car hit a pole" I haven't seen much "ice" if any on the lines , not like last time. Drove to Springtown and didn't seem to be much ice on any lines. Since the rain fell first I think a majority of the lines wind dried before it froze.

I believe what a state official said on the news last nigh,. "Energy company's didn't fully prepare for this predicted storm" We lost 7m of power and we have the capacity to run it up.

One good thing I guess, they made sure the power was on at the new stadium.. so those "northern" players didn't get cold.

Only bad thing is my neighbors wife just had surgery, when the power went off their water also froze, So the other neighbor and I drove my Hummer to town, got them some bottled water and of course offered them all the water they need from the well for commodes and the like.

We'll get through it, Texans always do..

 

[Bird]

My wife was crazy enough to ask me to go to the grocery store this morning and I was dumb enough to do it. Our residential street is the clearest street in the area. There were some cars going more than 30 mph on I-35E, but most were doing about 20-25, but the service roads were pretty much solid ice as were parking lots and a lot of other streets. Very bad, but I did get there and back OK.

 

[jinman]

I just got back in the house from plowing my driveway with my loader and boxblade. I started my Kawasaki Mule on it's 7 year old battery; fired right off.:thumbsup: I drove the Mule in 4wd to where my tractor is parked just so I wouldn't have to walk through the snow. My plan was to start the tractor and let it warm up while I took the Mule to the mailbox. My tractor was covered in snow and ice with the dash completely frozen. The darn throttle on the dash had a frozen cable. It wouldn't move as it has done before in cold weather. I reached down and feathered the throttle by hand at the front of the injector pump and the tractor started right up and ran perfectly with my coaxing until it warmed enough to idle at 1000 rpm.

I got back on the Mule and went to the mailbox and returned to find the throttle still frozen. I figured I could do a bit of work even at 1000 rpm and reached over to lift the FEL. The engine groaned and the FEL didn't budge. So, I cleared ice off my 3PH lever and raised it up. The boxblade popped up normally for only the 1000 rpm engine speed. So, I reached down to the throttle lever in front of the injector pump and raised the engine rpm up to about 1500 rpm and touched the joystick. The tractor groaned again and the front tires squatted a bit. I realized my toothbar teeth were buried in the frozen ground and they were not letting go. Oops!. So I climbed into the seat and touched the throttle lever again. It moved some and the engine speeded up a bit. I put the range lever to low and rocked the tractor forward and the toothbar teeth popped up out of the ground with frozen ice chunks around each tooth. Note to self. Don't park the tractor this way in cold weather.

With a bit more warmup, the throttle lever worked normally again. After scraping snow off my drive for about 1/2 hour, I was done. I'm back in the house now and all warm. All in all, it could have been a lot worse. It was a great feeling to turn the keys and have the equipment start right up even if it took a little coaxing to get things working normally. :thumbsup:

 

[ustmd]

I'm with Bluebonnet Coop also. ?? When the power first went off at 6A.M. yesterday they had a recording on their power outage phone line that because of ERCOT they are doing rolling blackouts. We had 3-4 blackouts and Giddings was having them well into the afternoon. We have not had one since yesterday afternoon. Maybe your circuit line is somehow connected to one of their exempt facilities. (nursing homes, hospitals, public safety offices, etc...)

Ercot told the news that they are thinking about implementing them this morning till 9A.M. After 9A.M. Texas should be OK.

I am on Bluebonnet as well.

Tuesday we lost power for about 8 hours, but that was due to a transformer.

Wednesday, I got hit with rolling blackouts twice.

My wife works in downtown Austin and they were getting hammered with blackouts every 2 hours or more.

 

[Pilot]

When we lived in Montana, everybody knew that when it got cold, the little electrons in the wires got cold and sluggish, slowed down, some even hibernated, and the wires contracted in the cold reducing their capacity to carry electricity. To make matters worse, the atoms in the wires started eating up the electrons in order to have enough energy to keep themselves warm, leaving fewer electrons to travel down the wires to our house.

More seriously, in '85 I spent the night in a motel in Iowa in December. Woke up about 6:00, couldn't sleep, so decided to get back on the road. Went out to start up the little VW Rabbit pickup and the key barely turned in the door lock. Got in, again the key turned with resistance in the ignition switch, but the battery was good, cranked the engine, it fired up. Had to turn the key back to the run position, the spring in the switch didn't have enough strength to overcome the cold lubricant in the switch. When I let the clutch out, the pedal came up slowly and when it engaged, the engine died from the load of the thick oil in the trans. Had to sit there with one foot on the clutch and the other on the throttle for maybe 5 minutes to warm it up before it would idle with the clutch engaged and the trans in neutral. Started down the road, hit the turn signal which moved with some resistance and after my turn it didn't cancel--I had to pull it down.

Down the road a piece, the heater couldn't heat the car. I had insulated coveralls on and a down jacket and was still cold. When I stopped at a grab & run store to get a Pepsi, I got some cardboard to put in front of the radiator and finally got some heat. Decided to drink the Pepsi later, put it in the back under the canopy and 20 minutes later when I went for it, the can was frozen solid.

I saw -17 degrees when I lived in Montana and it sure wasn't as cold then as it was that morning in Iowa.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

There was only one large transmission line in or out of Texas in years past. We could not send power out when it was needed elsewhere. Now we can not get it when we need it. Nobody is building new power plants because of cost and environmental concerns. I guess the old "Drive 75 and freeze a Yankee" bumper stickers are not quite so funny anymore.

If the Federal Government would spend its money building a national electrical grid instead of stimulus bills that don't stimulate anything, Texas could have had all the spare electricity from the PNW. It's sunny and mild here, and we have several gigawatts of wind power in the Columbia Gorge that could power lots of Texas houses. You just can't get the power from here to there.