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telophase ([personal profile] telophase) wrote2011-02-03 10:40 am
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Power outages

We haven't had any, but there are various blackouts throughout the city, probably from overloading the grid as the last I heard there are no planned rolling blackouts here. I've been following the various @oncor and #oncor tags on Twitter, and as always musing on how little it takes, in this modern world, for people to start screaming when their modern conveniences vanish.

Nobody screaming quite seems to understand that the power grid isn't built to cover extremes that rarely happen--the occasional ice storm isn't much compared to the daily high temps we get in summer.

Someone was complaining that they lived in Minnesota for ten years and never had an outage due to cold. Well, DUH.

Also, if you have someone in your household whose health will be negatively impacted by an extended outage, maaaaaybe you should own a generator instead of complaining about it on Twitter. Just sayin'.

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[personal profile] lnhammer 2011-02-04 03:30 pm (UTC)(link)
No blackouts here, but a natural gas shortage, to the point that parts of the city are without service and several schools are closed for lack of heat. Many panicked calls from the gas company to conserve as much as possible.

---L.
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[personal profile] telophase 2011-02-05 12:03 am (UTC)(link)
Ah, lovely. We had many calls to unplug extra appliances, etc.
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[personal profile] lady_ganesh 2011-02-05 02:37 am (UTC)(link)
I live in New England, which is only marginally warmer than Minnesota, and we've certainly lost power due to ice before, which is basically just a consequence of cold (+ water). (Not to mention the grid overloading sometimes during heatwaves.)
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[personal profile] chomiji 2011-02-03 05:26 pm (UTC)(link)

I keep reading the subject as "Power Outrages."

The Mr. reports that some of his colleagues (who are in TX this week for the same reason he is) have no power at their hotels.

How's your head today?

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2011-02-03 06:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Entirely apropos for the amount of outrage on Twitter!

Of course they don't, as Oncor is making sure that the Cowboy Stadium has power for whatever pre-Superbowl things are happening there NO JOKE. One of the tweets being retweeted is complaining about how some hospitals may have their power cut while the stadium is remaining full of power. (Which does seem odd until I realize that hospitals *do* have emergency generators, which is probably why the priorities are that way.)

Head: woke up with mild migraine, took Relpax, seems to be fine for now. :)

[identity profile] longshot14.livejournal.com 2011-02-03 06:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, for those who say that the grid in Texas should be built to accommodate these rare occasions, I'd respond "Great! I'm on board. Using *what* money, exactly?"

My heater's not working anywhere near as well as I'd like. But I'm holding off on calling apt. maintenance to fix it, because their asses have been run RAGGED for the last 2 days trying to make the driveways more friction-y, wrapping and fixing pipes, and probably tuning the heaters in apartments with children and the elderly. I'm uncomfortably cold and I don't care for the bundling-up I'm having to do, but I can manage until they've put our more critical fires.

I do wish my lease agreement allowed me to have a space heater, though :(

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2011-02-03 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Exactly - instead of complaining about the outages, they'd be complaining about their power bills.

There's something very very nice about being in a house, even a rental. Not that the house is built to conserve energy - it's from 1953 and isn't insulated too well, and the heater heats the front rooms reasonably well, but leaves the back rooms cold in winter and hot in summer. We've got a space heater with a timer on it that we set to run for 2 hours just as we're going to bed. :) (And microwaveable heating pads for the cats to keep them off of US.)

[identity profile] longshot14.livejournal.com 2011-02-03 07:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Finally called it in, just now. There's a list, so I've got some more waiting to do.

And TRUST me, I want a house like WOAH. I'm just taking care of financial stuff first so I'll be well-positioned to get a house I'll like, in a neighborhood I'll like, without getting gouged on interest/payments. I can wait.

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2011-02-03 07:57 pm (UTC)(link)
We're renting a house, not buying. :) Couldn't take neighbors that close any longer.

[identity profile] longshot14.livejournal.com 2011-02-03 08:04 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't want to rent a house - I've never really been comfortable with the idea. Wish I was. The fact that I'm a smoker factors heavily in that. With apartments, I factor that into whether I can reasonably expect a security deposit return and the complex just accepts that in some units they're going to have do to more cleanup between tenants. But rent houses are usually owned by people who may, at one point or another, want to live in it again, and my feeling is that they'd take it more personally if they have to deal with a smoky-smelling place that they own. If it's MY house, though, that's a different matter entirely!

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2011-02-03 08:06 pm (UTC)(link)
I figure that if they're willing to rent to smokers, they've already thought about that. :)

[identity profile] rurounitriv.livejournal.com 2011-02-03 08:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, but cats are furry little space heaters in and of themselves. My plan for surviving any extended power outages during the winter is to bundle myself and the cats into the master suite (a new addition, therefore better insulated than the 1958-built main section of the house) throw on a few blankets, and cuddle with kitties until the Angels of Electricity return power to my humble abode. Haven't had to do that so far, not even when the power was out for a few hours after the ice storm last month, but the option is there if I ever need it.]

[identity profile] telophase.livejournal.com 2011-02-03 08:15 pm (UTC)(link)
If the power goes out, I'll take it, but with the power on, the cat sitting on me in the middle of the night and hurting my back is not what I want. :)

Nefer spent most of yesterday sitting on the router, and Sora spent most of yesterday sitting on me.

[identity profile] tygerr.livejournal.com 2011-02-05 04:19 pm (UTC)(link)
My understanding is that the GRID isn't the problem. The overall demand during winter freezes isn't near as high as the demand during a typical summer day when everyone's AC is running full tilt. The problem is on the generation side of things--several of the generators brought on-line to handle short-term peak power incidents can't handle the cold and their pipes freeze--which means they can't be relied upon for short-term peak power incidents brought on by cold. Even more oddly, I am told that the generation equipment in question in in NORTH Texas, which gets more of that sort of weather than placers further south. ISTM that some power-company systems engineer missed something pretty darned obvious during top-level requirements definition (but that's water under the bridge at this point--as so often with engineering of complex equipment, stuff that would be cheap and easy to account for during initial requirements definition is enormously costly to retrofit after the hardware is built).

As a not-unrelated aside, Texas still has some of the highest electric rates in the country--and the most profitable power *generation* (there's that word again) in the country.

Using this data to brainstorm for candidate solutions is left as an exercise for the reader.
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