That's the biggie right there. I had to winterize my cousin's cabin in the fall before I left WI., it involved draining the pipes in the basement. Nothing freezes outside the house, up to the entry point.

Pipes can definitely still freeze in basement and house if heat goes off! :eek:

My cousin's in-laws used to spend a good portion of the winter in Florida and would button up their house in Wisconsin. My cousin and her husband would check on the house about every other day to see that the heat was working and everything was OK. One time, they were unable to get into town from their farm to check because of bad weather. The heat went out at the house in town and everything froze up. Not only the water but the central heating which used hot water. They had to wait till the spring thaw to repair everything. Broken pipes, shattered toilets etc.

in a really crappy old house, you stack hay bales around it in the winter BNTDT

Here’s an ASME article on Greens Bayou unit 1, the first out outdoor power plant to help understand why Texas plants don’t handle freezing weather as well.

https://www.asme.org/about-asme/engineering-history/landmarks/154-greens-bayou-generator-plant

It take little work to do this right at the design/install phase.

Impressive humidity at 50F. I can't get my house above 30% at 68F.

This can't be emphasized enough whether it's hot or cold. There are ways to deal with humidity if that's your hangup. Payback can take a while but comfort is immediate.
Utilities in cold climates push and subsidize is as it saves having to add capacity.

I'm reading reports of Texicans getting electricity bills of $1000 a day for the week of cold weather. You guys can't catch a break. I think the utility regulator in Texas should pay those bills - and not with federal money.

Most Texans have several options. They can pay more each month and get a stable electric bill. They can roll the dice and choose a plan that offers lower normal rates, but in shortages the cost goes up significantly. The folks that chose the latter are now in a bind.

The state is already holding meetings on how to help out those that chose unwisely.

The company that is responsible for most of those crazy bills sent a notice to,all their 29,000 customers advising them to switch to another provider, a few days before the grid, collapse, as they saw the spike in costs coming.
This program was not designed for individual users, but they signed up and got caught up..

Most ignored the warning
I might have ignored it too...inertia

Some had no option but to stay with the old provider. Other providers refused to take on new customers.

https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/texas-power-retailers-to-customers-in-face-of-freeze-please-leave-us

Griddy, however, is in a different position. Its service is simple — and controversial. Members pay a $9.99 monthly fee and then pay the cost of spot power traded on Texas’s power grid based on the time of day they use it. Earlier this month, that meant customers were saving money — and at times even getting paid — to use electricity at night. But in recent days, the cost of their power has soared from about 5 to 6 cents a kilowatt-hour to $1 or more. That’s when Fallquist knew it was time to urge his customers to leave.

“I can tell you it was probably one of the hardest decisions we’ve ever made,” he said. “Nobody ever wants to see customers go.”

Customers may not even be able to switch. Rizwan Nabi, president of energy consultancy Riz Energy in Houston, said several power providers in Texas have told him they aren’t accepting new customers due to this week’s volatile prices.

Hector Torres, an energy trader in Texas, who is a Griddy customer himself, said he tried to switch services over the long weekend but couldn’t find a company willing to take him until Wednesday, when the weather is forecast to turn warmer.

While I do think I get bent over because there is a monopoly, and have no choice on who provides my electricity, it sounds like I'm good. I went down for 4 hours.

The good news is that the "regulators" had thought this out and capped the rate at $9 per kwh.
https://www.ft.com/content/0e746280-e72c-4087-9c0d-df2a7af82b77

The wholesale power price was at the maximum allowable $9,000 a megawatt hour for five days from last Sunday. For a household, that translates to a $9 a kilowatt-hour electricity rate, compared with a typical cost of 12 cents.

Texas is a sort of deregulated market. You can choose your electric provider. What this really means is who you pay your bill. In my area, the electric powerline provider is Centerpoint.

So your bill has two charges, one that is fixed $/kWh from Centerpoint (transport charge) and then you pay another guy an energy charge. And that charge can be all sorts of convoluted crap.

Griddy is one of these providers. Instead of paying a fixed rate, you pay the going wholesale rate plus the Centerpoint charges. The wholesale rate changes every 15 minutes. You will supposedly save about 20-30% over a year with them. Except when this crap occurs.

Wholesale rate went to $9/kWh.

I have considered going to Griddy, but I would do it only with a Backup generator and a way to trip my main breaker remotely. If the price went over $0.15/kWh, I would switch to generator.

Normally the extremely high kWh prices hit in the summer are only for an hour or two. The home owner gets a shock August bill, but saves enough to make up for it.

5 days in the winter with high usage. I understand some people have bills as high as $10K. I don't know what to say, but they should have known what they were buying into and the risk.

A $10,000 bill over 5 days at $9/kWh = 1,111 kWh or 222 kWh/day. That is extremely high usage. I will bet that person had electric resistant heating.

We are in a coop, so we aren't going to have a crazy bill. This is our electric util for Feb 14 - Feb 20

High daily Usage: 348 kWh
Low daily Usage: 62.6 kWh
Average daily Usage: 165.75 kWh
Total Usage: 1,160.23

And I was only there for about 24hrs, then I put my heat on it's lowest setting and left.
green bars are kWh by hour and the black line in the outside temp.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1613929792.jpg

Normal weather conditions resumed here - last Sunday was freezing cold and today warm and so fuukin humid that outdoor concrete floors are slick with moisture (literally leave footprints in it) and you could hang things in the dense, thick air. This place is nutz.

Presently 60F. Heading to 70F this afternoon.

Helped another homeowner today. They shutoff their water and couldn't figure out how to turn it back on.

I expect the state will step in and limit consumer exposure on these high bills since it's definitely not what lawmakers and ERCOT envisioned when they set the $9/kw wholesale limit (which actually just increased to $9 a couple years ago because new generation wasn't being encouraged by lower limits). The idea was companies would build plants to capture that $9 for an hour or two for a couple weeks in the summer encouraging new plants to be built not have 4 days when prices stayed between $2,000 and $9,000/MWh all day.

Suppose you had a singe simple cycle gas turbine plant with one old GE Frame 7E turbine making 50 megawatts. For two weeks in the summer for a couple hours in the afternoon when everyone comes home and turns on their AC you might make $9,000/MWh x 50 MW x 2 weeks x 2 hours = $12,600,000 minus fuel and operation costs. Seems reasonable but it's also gambling and eventually more plants jump in and you're back to making pennies per kwh if that much.

Even though the engineering allows it, the operating folks didn't like the environment or logistic issues associated with outdoors, BTDT