4.2 Million Texans Without Power

The website said a light dusting of snow does not affect them much and usually blows off. But they said deeper snow will stop them from working, they did not specify the depth. They did say that if the solar panels are at the correct angle the snow should slide off. But if it doesn't, and the snow is deep enough, they will stop working.

 

They have made Nuclear power systems that are very safe now days and we should be building these new plants for the future of charging all these electric vehicles they want us to switch over to....

Peace WildBill

 

Long term coverage of several inches or more of snow will in fact reduce or eliminate power production of solar panels, but professionally installed ones will be angled and pointed properly so that the snow will come off them in a reasonably short time. We get lots of snow here, and this has been true for the panels I have observed around here.

Solar and wind can act as a supplement to fossil fuels but up to this point, neither are efficient enough to rely on them completely.

In the future, who knows...... we will see what developments can be made in solar, if it can be turned into a practical and reliable replacement.

But honestly, I kind of doubt it.

I think the future of clean, reliable and cost effective energy lies with Nuclear.. the latest generation of hot burn reactors, along with reprocessing spent fuel rods, will greatly reduce the nuclear waste issue.

We just have to get over the boogeyman fear that the anti-nuke crowd in Hollywood has cast over the technology. There have been 3 accidents in nearly 70 years of producing power at over 400 plants, world wide. All of them could have been avoided, and document actual loss of life, while a bit of a moving target due to long term cancer years later, has been minimal. Well less than 200 actual document deaths.

And that is nuclear fission.. the splitting of the atom.

Nuclear fusion (the combining of two atoms) on the other hand is far safer, but because of the boogeyman effect around all of nuclear, no serious research is being done to covert the tech to a large scale reactor, that I am aware of.

JW

 

As to JW's comment - Yankee Atomic in Rowe MA was one of (if not) the first privately owned nuclear power plants to go on line decades ago. It quietly produced power for it's entire design life and was shut down without incident. Well done and operated nuclear power is a good thing (IMHO) and should not be excluded from future power source plans.

 

The news stated that the windmills had frozen. we have them in Canada, they do not freeze and we have temperatures well below zero and they keep running!! What is the deal in Texas??

 

Obviously from reading the last 3 pages we need to use all forms of energy and Not get rid of any until you make it better than the rest.

We checked into solar in NE. Ohio going to be 60 grand to keep you from using electric from Ohio Edison and you were still going to use the electric from them for 1 month to keep your rate at the residential rate. We did this about 3 years ago.

Would have been great to have but I think it was quite a bit of money to get 10-11 months of free electric.
Now maybe something for about 10 grand worth of solar and then get a small windmill for about 6 grand or so and maybe this would be enough to run small equipment and lights but would this pay for itself soon enough to get money back?

I myself like my Regency wood burner that is free.. if you want to use a ax and maul.
I used a chain saw and a wood splitter but I am warmer than you Ha

 

Thank you. I am going to save this for the time I decide to let loose with one of my liberal opinions.

 

During the last significant ice storm that we had here in Central NY probably 10 or 15 years ago, we were in the dark and the house was starting to get cold. I had no portable generator at that time and it was impossible to get one. So after that was over, I started looking into options into keeping warm and options for a small, portable generator. A wood stove and the associated plumbing was not cheap, and a portable generator would only do so much and would require a large, emergency gasoline stash that I wasn’t thrilled about. So whole-house standby generators were becoming popular, and since we have NG, that’s the way we went and don’t regret it one bit. It’s been very reliable. It’s 17kw, and my neighbors think it’s great because the power outages suddenly went way down since we got the darn thing! However, one cold and snowy winter night, the power went out and on came the generator. Yippee! Christmas lights were on, TV on, all the creature comforts, heat at 70, etc, and then the guilt started setting in. We have 2 elderly neighbors on either side of us who were in the dark and cold, and a family across the street with toddlers were in the same boat. Dang, now I was feeling guilty. So after many hours, we called across the street and they were doing OK but we offered to move them in if need be. For the elderly neighbors, we were preparing to get together some extension cords to at least get them each a light on and a small electric heater, but fortunately the power came back on.

 

There are wind turbines designed for cold climates and wind turbines for hot climates. Texas obviously has the ones for hot climates.

 

An old friend off mine, his parents once had a van they would take for go ski'ing.. The van hadn't any seats or heat in the rear, so his father took an old radiator with a thermostat from the house and plumped it togheter with the cars radiator.. Voila, adjustabel heat in the back..

 

Your right Larry, something similar happened before and the choice was made to not winterize I assume to save money. Also their grid not being connected to the rest of the country is another blunder IMHO.

 

As far as frozen pipes go, our sales rep in Houston had a flooded ground floor in his house and his wife owns a flooded business. Multiply by a few million and you might as well learn some pipe fitting skills instead of waiting who knows how long for a plumber.

I honestly can't say I truly blame the home builders on this -- it was all done to code and a freeze like this was never really anticipated. But the people running / operating / designing / maintaining the power grid should have known better.

 

It does make you wonder if anyone checked the weather forecast before shutting down for annual maintenance that maybe could have been put off for a week or so. I feel bad for the people impacted.

 

For future reference to those of you not used to weather like this: Disconnect your garden hoses from your house when the temp is going to get below freezing. I bet that simple act would've avoided millions of dollars in flood damage.

 

Yeah, another guy I know is renting a building for a business, thought about shutting off the water, but decided it was the landlord's job. Ounce of prevention...

 

My dad always said using wood for heat will warm you up 3 times. Once when you cut the tree down, once when you split it, and once it is burning in the stove.

 

LOL The best commercial my kids hate that saying maybe because they heard it 500 times

 

Interesting