There is at least one utility company that passes on the rates they pay directly to their customers. They are actively telling their customers to find other companies, the way their arrangement works the customers will be paying some really steep bills for a few days of electricity.

Texas is a little more strict with respect to building permits and inspections than surrounding states, as they have requirements that other states don’t. In most areas of the US, building codes are up to the discretion of whatever local jurisdiction is in place to administer them. There are areas in the country where building permits or inspections are not required, but the vast majority of them adhere to variety of national standards.

Hal Weaver is natural gas. Was coal and transitioned to gas. Those commies in Austin would have nothing to do with a nuke plant.

Hell, when we go to our property in upstate New York, which is a 250+ year old farm house with no electricity or running water ( best spring water though) that is how we stored food, the front porch..
Those where the days. Heater with a pot belly stove, cooking on another wood stove.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1613652935.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1613652935.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1613652935.jpg

I spent my grade school years in a similar house. We had a free standing oil stove that did most of the heating and a Warm Morning pot bellied stove in the kitchen. Our kitchen range was propane. Dad had to manage supplies of 4 kinds of fuel to keep everything going.

To this day, when it’s cold enough in the winter time, if I make a large quantity of something like chicken stock I will store it outside rather than cool it off in the refrigerator.

Up here in jersey land building codes vary from town to town in general. Of course there are some common codes like framing etc, but geography comes into it too. I live on a rural waterfront so I have some restrictions/ requirements that wouldn't make sense in an urban setting. I would guess that the Texas panhandle varies greatly from Houston.

The generation numbers on wind turbines is misleading because wind turbines will always be first online and last offline since they have no fuel costs. They also get wind credits for every megawatt they generate that they can sell. So they can bid into the market at a negative price meaning they pay their customer to take the power when there's a low demand. So the megawatt-hours they produce is not comparable to the megawatt capacity they have.

There are many peaking gas turbines that may only run a week or two a year. The turbine may have a 50 megawatt capacity but hardly generate any megawatt hours. But they'll get paid handsomely for those few hours they generate.

So a 3 megawatt wind turbine might generate 6,000 or more megawatt hours a year while the 50 megawatt peaking gas turbine may not even make 1,000 megawatt hours in a year.

Our ranch didn't get power till the late 40's. There was three homesteads on it. Basically the same as you off grid. I barely flinch when the power goes out doesn't matter if its summer or winter. Pretty much everything we had before is still sitting around ready for use. I do prefer hot showers to a bathtub, and not having to walk the fifty yards to the outhouses (plural we were upscale boys and girls shiiters:D) is nice also. I'm blessed for sure.-WW

The entirety of Switzerland is a tiny little 15,940 square miles. Texas alone is 268,581 square miles. So just Texas is 16 times bigger. Utility poles are way cheaper than underground.

For years in summer when the heat was on Texans bragged they had their own grid and did not have to worry about rolling blackouts. It just seems strange to me that making heat uses more energy that cooling things off from the Texas heat.

Oklahoma is all part of the Southwest Power pool, which is a misleading name in that the "pool" goes all the way to Canada's border. Montana and North Dakota are not southwest in my mind, but maybe to Canadians it is.

Oklahoma has had a few rolling blackouts and "they" say it was all from the Power Pool people calling a level three power shortage. We have been lucky, and had not power outages so far.

We may well get above freezing tomorrow and be back to 60s next week. We have been on average 51 degrees below the normal February temperatures. 51 degrees!

I am at a balmy +10 right now.

We had 43 straight hours of no power (but a gas log fireplace which was a life saver) Below freezing for nearly 48 hours and lowest temp was 13. Very lucky... we never lost water pressure and I dripped every faucet for over 48 hours and no frozen pipes. Most of our fridge/freezer ended up on the back porch in coolers with the lids open to keep frozen or closed to just keep cold.

Neighbors on either side both burst pipes and had to turn water off days ago . no water and no power for days..

Did come up with one solution for how to keep 3 cell phones charged without tromping out to the detached garage and trying to use cars: battery from lawn tractor and an old 300 W inverter.. worked great but not very portable:




http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1613659718.jpg

Lots of cities are now advising to boil any water you use to cook or drink.

If you venture out, don't be surprised if the grocery stores are closed or running limited capacity and hours. Fresh meats and perishable vegetables and other items aren't getting resupplied, so are hard to find, if not impossible.

And North Texas probably varies from Corpus Christi.

The Aggies over in College Station do have a nuclear reactor but it does not produce electrical power, only used for research and producing some isotopes for medical uses.

Sleet started at 7am, snow came at 8am. Power and water are fine.

From Oregon media:
“The prolonged outages mean many people are being forced to discard spoiled food. The US Department of Agriculture says some perishable items such as meat and dairy products will start going bad after just four hours in a fridge without power.

A full freezer can generally keep items cold enough for at least two days. But with some Willamette Valley residents losing power for four days or more, the agency says it’s best to follow the old adage: “When in doubt, throw it out.”

The Oregon Department of Human Services says if discarded food was purchased using food stamps, recipients can apply for replacement benefits. The request has to come within ten days of the food loss.”

The teasippers would have no part of that. Too dangerous. I had a nice chat with the Chancellor at TAMU (current) years ago about a nuke plant on lake Texoma. Interesting conversation, but we needed water at that time. One plant could solve some current problems.

Yes, we have been told to boil water. The various towns in the country that in tracking on Facebook because they are near our property, if they have water (many don't) are on boil orders.

Pic our daughter took at a grocery store yesterday.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1613661446.jpg

Help me understand the problem...

As I read it, TX power demand is typically low this time of year, bringing scheduled maintenance shut-downs of gas-fired power-plants, with the idea being that the "Green" solutions can handle the typical demand.

Now the Greeners are saying Wait wait, the problem is not frozen wind turbines, the problem is those gas generators are not producing.

Que the index fingers, it's pointun time. The new Texas state critter is the scapegoat.