Watching the fallout from the weather in Texas - lessons to be learned.

[03A3Sporter]

When was the last time it snowed in Texas? More recently than you think

Texas may be no stranger to extreme weather, but it doesn’t often get snow. 2021 has broken snow records. When was the last time it snowed in Texas?

www.thefocus.news

North Texas mostly borders Oklahoma FWIW , while there is some snow there from time to time its few and far between, that article is very misleading. I remember the last time they got snow because central and western Oklahoma got a more serious taste. The snow that north Texas gets can only be described as a light dusting in comparasion to Oklahoma, and Kansas

 

[titsonritz]

How does -265f LNG freeze when exposed to an ambient temperature at least 250f higher? I'm sure I'm missing something...just curious

Hillary was in the vicinity?

 

[41mag]

there is no problem with these alternative sources because they were never designed to work in the current weather conditions......therefore....by not functioning in current weather conditions they are functioning properly and as expected........

....leaving out the hinted at even WORSE confusion: "it's the ARCHAIC POLLUTING power sources responsible for creating 'current conditions'.....

no lie, I actually heard some of this on a previous PBS interview segment...

 

[41mag]

I never witnessed a place that panics over an inch of snow like people in the Willamette Valley do.

me either....frankly, I suspect because there's so many Socal transplants it only takes a few of these to create entire non-moving masses of commuter junkyard art.

 

[DirectDrive]

I am gonna go with you do not know what Texas winters look like 99% of the time .

Yep, that is exactly the mindset that led to the disaster.
You gamble on not doing freeze protection (power plant gas lines for example) and then you take your bitter medicine when you lose that bet.
18 billion dollars in damages thus far.

Maybe the power companies, with all their freeze protect savings, will help with this giant bill ?

 

[CountryGent]

The things that have gone down in the last twelve months — pandemic that has claimed almost half a million lives, major cities burning from riots, the capitol being rushed, the frozen chaos in the Lone Star State — all have dramatically illustrated this nation isn't prepared at all.

 

[03A3Sporter]

Yep, that is exactly the mindset that led to the disaster.
You gamble on not doing freeze protection (power plant gas lines for example) and then you take your bitter medicine when you lose that bet.
18 billion dollars in damages thus far.

Maybe the power companies, with all their freeze protect savings, will help with this giant bill ?

Your reply just proved my point entirely.. You have a distinct lack of knowledge about that of which you speak on all points, but by all means educate us on how risk impact assessments , 100 year models and building out to accommodate for the MOST Likely risks are the wrong way to do it.

I worked in the middle east for several years and on a few rare occasions actually witnessed a couple of snow falls in a decade. So when they build something there do they need to account for a blizzard with freezing temps which will never come except for part of a day very early in the morning?

Cause you are more or less advocating for the same in a lot of Texas where the temperatures year over year will never get below 45 degrees in the winter with the EXCEPTION of North Texas which borders Oklahoma .

One of us was born and raised in the area and understands the weather and one us wasn't . No business and for that matter no public utility is going to spend the money to harden infrastructure for something has a chance of happening potentially not even once in a century.

 

[03A3Sporter]

The things that have gone down in the last twelve months — pandemic that has claimed almost half a million lives, major cities burning from riots, the capitol being rushed, the frozen chaos in the Lone Star State — all have dramatically illustrated this nation isn't prepared at all.

Emergency response planning isn't designed to be respondent to what hasn't happened. It is designed around how previous emergencies were handled. If your goal is to be prepared to respond to the next disaster you are going to be sorely disappointed again and again.

There are some things we do respond to well, mostly the things we know can happen on a regular basis in a given area. Oklahoma is a great example when it comes to tornadoes, but we also know that every year tornadoes will occur and there has been 80 years of continual never ending research put into the detection, warning and response to such.

The next time an event like this cold snap occurs in Texas you and I will not be alive to argue about it on the internet.

 

[DirectDrive]

I was Googling around earlier today and found this.
It doesn't say when this was written, but it's interesting that it's out of Sugar Land, Texas.

FREEZE PROTECTION FOR NATURAL GAS PIPELINE SYSTEMS

https://asgmt.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf-docs/2011/1/T06.pdf

I saw on one news report that Texas fairly recently had a similar extreme cold weather event (2011) and after that, power companies were advised to winterize their systems.
They didn't do it.
Texas winters are mild, we don't need to do that there winterizing.

Texas leaders failed to heed warnings that left the state's power grid vulnerable to winter extremes, experts say

Texas officials knew winter storms could leave the state’s power grid vulnerable, but they left the choice to prepare for harsh weather up to the power companies — many of which opted against the costly upgrades. That, plus a deregulated energy market largely isolated from the rest of the...

www.texastribune.org

People want to turn this into the Climate War or the Regulatory War.
Lots of finger pointing going on down there in Texas.
I wonder what they'll do this time ?

 

[citizen a]

Do not rely on the grid. Have a backup. If you don't, you're at someone else's mercy.

 

[03A3Sporter]

Do not rely on the grid. Have a backup. If you don't, you're at someone else's mercy.

Truth

 

[CountryGent]

Do not rely on the grid. Have a backup.

Indeed. And done and done here.

 

[mkwerx]

8 pages! Still not as much as the local forums, but lot of "in the weeds" distractions in those.

A couple people have mentioned overhead pipes here. Almost all the houses you see down here will have that. Its' incredibly rare to see a stick built house sitting on a brick or cement wall foundation like you would in the PNW. Stick built homes *not* in a flood plain are slab-on-grade type foundations. Those in areas prone to flooding are built on stilts. My neighbor 3 houses down has his house 12' in the air - he parks his bass boat and F250 under his house. His house is lower in elevation than ours, because we're more or less at the top of a little hill, and they built up an earth pad for our 'manufactured home' to be sited on, and then of course they built up brick piers for the house to sit on, on the earthen pad.

When we get around to building a site-build home on the property, I really want to go with a foundation like you'd see up north. I'm not the biggest fan of overhead pipes, even though the homes I"ve seen here are pretty well insulated in the attics. With slab on grade they have to run the pipes thru the attic, otherwise you're burying your pipes in your slab, and God help you if you have a breakage or blockage there. Fixing that would mean tearing your flooring out, cutting into the slab, then repouring the slab after the pipe is fixed, then reflooring over that.

I might even see if a basement would be do-able here, since we're not in the flood plain, and we could build a storm shelter room into the basement. We're far enough inland that we're not going to take the brunt of a hurricane, but we could still get some nasty wind damage, and tornadoes are a real concern here.

 

[Bat-S-Crazy]

Tell that to Alaska, Greenland and any of the Scandinavian countries with green energy. No, this was totally a failure resulting from the Texas state government not wanting to tell their power companies to prepare for cold weather (i.e., deregulating). Isn't it odd that the power grids regulated by the federal government don't seem to have these issues? The rest of the South (the Eastern Grid) isn't seeing this. El Paso, served by the Western (federal grid), is doing just fine. For some reason only the Texas grid is crippled by this unusual cold weather.

Here's an interesting fact about Sweden.. They do not have success with solar for 6 months of the year. They are about to become number 1 in the world in pricing for energy. So they went towards alternative methods to supply their power. Wind is one.Their cars are power by human waste, and a whole bunch of different methods to see for alternative fuel They have had great issues with their power grids as well, just a quick check on the web will lead you to stories... Ercot knew of the upcoming event and have had their generators going offline. The State has an energy commission in place and has been very active and involved with all of the power companies involved in power generation. In 2018 Texas' grid did very well in severe winter conditions but it wasn't of this proportion. Interestingly enough, Texas uses about 25% wind-generated power... What do you want to bed Biden tries to call for Texas to join into the Federal grid? LOL

 

[jbett98]

100 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit filed today in Texas.

$100M lawsuit alleges negligence by power company, grid operator led to Texas boy’s death during winter storm

The family of an 11-year-old boy who died in the freezing Texas weather last week has filed a lawsuit against the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), and…

thehill.com

 

[Xaevian]

Never let a tragedy go to waste.

Ka-ching, yeah that'll make it all better.

 

[bolus]

Serious question - what would be the better solution for a solar system for a house? The thing that boggles my mind is that a lot of the solar setups down here do *not* include a battery bank, so when the grid goes down, you're still without power because the way its connected, you don't disconnect from the grid and the systems shut off so they don't feed power into the lines. Makes no damn sense to me to sink tens of thousands into a solar power system, only to lose power when the grid goes down. My grandparents and great aunt both got roped into such systems, the pitch they got was "it doesn't cost any more than your power bill would" - which, okay, I could understand *if* the system met or exceeded your power demands *and* worked when the grid was offline. You're trading one utility cost for another, and increasing the resale value of your home at the same time.

What we'd like is to have a system that still provides power when the grid goes down, which would more likely happen due to a major wind storm / hurricane than another freak snow storm. With the solar setup the price would be fixed and not subject to increases, so that's a bene. The increase in home value is another bene. The con is that if you buy the system vs long term lease, you're responsible when those units break or age-out.

A generator is also in our future for emergency needs, because even with solar, the sun doesn't shine all the time and so the panels wouldn't be in peak production constantly.

Mine has a separate plug socket for when the grid is down. I have a generator backing it up.

But as I've "Heard", China really loves our investment in solar power?

I specifically got US made panels and a German inverter when I put solar on my house. Guess who didnt document anywhere on their website that they moved manufacturing to china? Yeah, the frickin Germans.

My invertor had so much trouble the first 3 years. It would literally trip a fault and shut off when the sun came out. You cant fix faults remotely, you have to manually reboot the machine while is takes 7 minutes to load up. Company denied the problem for 3 years and then magically found the issue.

 

[jrd541280]

Energy return on investment - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

hydro is the only "green" energy that works for us now... and that doesn't work in the middle of a desert...

we could zap it to you in seconds, 8 hydros churning non stop and a nuc in the back yard, if only our governors weren't such idiots.

 

[coop44]

Water power is the only way to go, just got to find the right site to build on. It isn't high tech unless you want it to be, K.I.S.S.

 

[DirectDrive]

When we get around to building a site-build home on the property, I really want to go with a foundation like you'd see up north. I'm not the biggest fan of overhead pipes, even though the homes I"ve seen here are pretty well insulated in the attics.

Insulation is nice, but it's no replacement for a "heated space" or heat tape.

With slab on grade they have to run the pipes thru the attic, otherwise you're burying your pipes in your slab, and God help you if you have a breakage or blockage there. Fixing that would mean tearing your flooring out, cutting into the slab, then repouring the slab after the pipe is fixed, then reflooring over that.

Not necessarily.
Here in the Northwest (commercial) we run the majority of the main plumbing lines under-slab.
Some have to be in walls or overhead but they have to be freeze-protected.
Most modern commercial SOG buildings are built this way. The piping is well-protected and well below slab.
If I was building a slab-on-grade home in Houston I would definitely entertain this method.