Jost Amman
Hunter
After what's happening I guess we can say the snow biome is the most difficult to survive.
Keep up the heating (if you can) and stay safe guys! :smow:
Keep up the heating (if you can) and stay safe guys! :smow:
PC Hope you guys in Texas hold tight!
- Thread starter Jost Amman
- Start date
- Status
Agreed, I've got a few friends in Texas, although this morning we, (Oklahoma), were below the temps in Siberia, and Alaska according to the national news.
7daysexpert
Refugee
see maha this is where us mole people would be nice and cozy as we would be below the frost lineAnd keep an eye out for big bearded lumberjack zombies running around your neighborhood.
They'll be coming down from Canada.
ElCabong
Survivor
It has been a disaster in Texas. I live in Houston. Our power infrastructure is not set up for this cold weather. Hardening was not put in place for natural gas delivery to generators and even a nuclear power plant has gone offline because of the cold.
My power has not stayed on longer than 6 hours at a time for the last two days. Interestingly enough, sometimes it has been off for two hours. Sometimes eight. Sometimes four. There's no rhyme or reason to it.
At present people are dying of hypothermia. Many people have died from carbon monoxide poisoning using whatever to heat their houses. Water pipes have burst in the thousands. Water pressure is low throughout the system and firefighters are finding it difficult.
I'm very lucky in that my while power has gone off, the temperature in my house never got below 56°. Other people have been out for days. There's no rhyme or reason to it.
I'm fixing to go start up a game. I generated a new world yesterday and I managed to get self-sufficient in food yesterday. Now I need to finish building my base. I don't use anything but glass for my walls. That means I have to mine a lot of lead and sand. I'll get some time in for the power goes out again.
One thing I would recommend if you got a PC is a UPS, uninterruptible power supply, it's a battery backup for your PC. If the power goes down it gives you enough time to exit out of the game and shut your PC off gracefully. Put your PC on it and your monitor. It you have a spike in the power, your PC stays up and you keep playing. I recommend cyberpower. Never had a problem with them.
My power has not stayed on longer than 6 hours at a time for the last two days. Interestingly enough, sometimes it has been off for two hours. Sometimes eight. Sometimes four. There's no rhyme or reason to it.
At present people are dying of hypothermia. Many people have died from carbon monoxide poisoning using whatever to heat their houses. Water pipes have burst in the thousands. Water pressure is low throughout the system and firefighters are finding it difficult.
I'm very lucky in that my while power has gone off, the temperature in my house never got below 56°. Other people have been out for days. There's no rhyme or reason to it.
I'm fixing to go start up a game. I generated a new world yesterday and I managed to get self-sufficient in food yesterday. Now I need to finish building my base. I don't use anything but glass for my walls. That means I have to mine a lot of lead and sand. I'll get some time in for the power goes out again.
One thing I would recommend if you got a PC is a UPS, uninterruptible power supply, it's a battery backup for your PC. If the power goes down it gives you enough time to exit out of the game and shut your PC off gracefully. Put your PC on it and your monitor. It you have a spike in the power, your PC stays up and you keep playing. I recommend cyberpower. Never had a problem with them.
Yes! For sure. I myself have several of them and highly recommend them to anyone reliant on city governed hydro. CyberPower is great, but so is APC, or at least that's been my experience with them so far.
This is just my guess, but power outages there could relate to the increased demands in electricity to heat ppl's homes and being too much for the grid to handle. If it creates heat, it consumes a lot of energy. Also, power lines could be flexing and breaking due to the sudden changes in temperature. Happens in Canada all the time.
Last edited by a moderator:
Guppycur
Hunter
We lost power for only about 4hrs, but luckily we are prepared. Gas is still on but we're on a boil notice for water. Or we aren't. News isn't very clear for our MUD district. Meh. Lowest it's got in the house is 65' so I'm lucky.
I'm an insurance adjuster and yes, lots of pipes busting... And yes, people are dying because they're burning things they shouldn't. Just had a mom and kid die because they are in a car in a garage warming up. Sigh.
Centerpoint (main power people here) say they're 60% without power.
Wind turbines frozen, solar panels covered in snow, traditional plants frozen over... It's interesting.
People are at home depot buying lumber to burn. It's raining now, so that'll make the roads fun again when it drops temp again.
I'm an insurance adjuster and yes, lots of pipes busting... And yes, people are dying because they're burning things they shouldn't. Just had a mom and kid die because they are in a car in a garage warming up. Sigh.
Centerpoint (main power people here) say they're 60% without power.
Wind turbines frozen, solar panels covered in snow, traditional plants frozen over... It's interesting.
People are at home depot buying lumber to burn. It's raining now, so that'll make the roads fun again when it drops temp again.
Last edited by a moderator:
Boidster
Refugee
Thanks for saying this. My company is nationwide (mostly) and in the supply chain for energy production. Today we had a sort of conference going on. Wind turbine shutdowns are a contributor (the turbines ought to be retrofitted for extreme weather), but the contribution from natural gas supply constraints is far greater.
I live in the SPP (the dark purple plus I think most of the aqua blue above it; map is out of date) and we had rolling blackouts yesterday to balance supply and demand. But since we are part of a very large interconnect the impact was minimal. Reboot the PCs, set the clocks, etc. House maybe dropped 3-5 degrees (F) during the 1-hour outage, and we were sleeping so didn't really notice.
On top of having their own independent interconnect (green area), TX as I understand it has privatized delivery, meaning you can choose from several 3rd parties to resell grid power to you. To me that is bizarre. Several of those private companies are looking at bankruptcy as supply prices are skyrocketing. Like 100x normal. I saw a blurb yesterday (did not confirm) that at spot prices yesterday it would cost $900 to recharge a Tesla. One of the companies directly told its customers that they should change suppliers because costs were going to go way up.
Where I live electricity rates are governed by a public utilities commission, not by a private company.
Last edited by a moderator:
ElCabong
Survivor
Some wind turbines did freeze up but for the most part the wind farms have generated the amount of electricity they were required to. Another problem with our system in Texas is there is no incentive to have excess capacity. Suppliers are not paid to have generators in backup that might only come on once or twice a year.
Last edited by a moderator:
Jost Amman
Hunter
The big problem I see everywhere though, is in the distribution infrastructure. That will always be the weak link in the chain, since often you have hundreds of miles of either cables or pipes that need to be working to ensure distribution of energy/gas/oil. With the crazy temperatures we're seeing here most of the net is at risk. That being said it sound very strange that a nuclear plant will stop working at very low temperatures... maybe THOSE specific plants weren't built with that in mind, but they could be "upgraded" in the future, just in case this happens again.
Last edited by a moderator:
Guppycur
Hunter
As only a consumer it's my understanding that CenterPoint is still the delivery guy and the third party companies just act as resellers, purchasing based on futures.
... It's not like we actually have a couple of hundred companies generating electricity, it just seems that way.
Then you have companies like energy ogre that basically track your usage, then shift you around to the different resellers based on your usage so that way you always have the cheapest price. It works for us.
... It's not like we actually have a couple of hundred companies generating electricity, it just seems that way.
Then you have companies like energy ogre that basically track your usage, then shift you around to the different resellers based on your usage so that way you always have the cheapest price. It works for us.
Last edited by a moderator:
I read that CenterPoint has no natural gas storage and rely on the constant flow of the pipelines to keep things running. I’m no expert but that doesn’t sound so smart to me. Any disruption in supply will cause problems. Have some on-site storage in case of pipeline issues. I read also that natural gas provides 67% of Texas electricity while wind turbines provide 7%, forget how much nuclear provides. All have contributed to the loss of power but natural gas has hurt the most.
Jost Amman
Hunter
I don't know, probably there's different models of turbines then.Regarding wind turbines - Greenland has wind turbines for power generation and they run them all the time......I expect they get colder more often than Texas does.
Maybe the ones that don't freeze cost too much? Just saying.
Last edited by a moderator:
Astronomical
Refugee
Regarding wind turbines - Greenland has wind turbines for power generation and they run them all the time......I expect they get colder more often than Texas does.
Greenland has a population of about 10 people in it's largest city.
Not sure it's the best example of how to run an energy infrastructure for a large country.
Aldranon
Refugee
The newest nuclear plant in Texas (Over 2 GW) wasn't "hardened" for cold like the older ones were, cuz its cheaper... Heads will roll for that one.
The biggie was gas powered plants failing because gas lines froze which provide the most power to Texas. That's probably a wash, no heads rolling.
The bigger biggie was Mexico was cut off from all gas from the US which caused them say FU to Texas gas in the near future. MANY heads will roll on that one on both countries.
The biggie was gas powered plants failing because gas lines froze which provide the most power to Texas. That's probably a wash, no heads rolling.
The bigger biggie was Mexico was cut off from all gas from the US which caused them say FU to Texas gas in the near future. MANY heads will roll on that one on both countries.
Last edited by a moderator:
Jost Amman said:
How about a practical example: Renewable energy provided 50% of the net electricity in 2020 in Germany. And there are practically no power outages at all.
Now that doesn't mean everything is wonderful, for example power is relatively expensive. This is quite logical though, you get what you pay for. No redundancy means it is cheaper but also has more chance for outages or breakage. Also Germany is changing the way to generate power in the space of a few decades and that costs money.
Without going in too deep there are simple reasons why it can work: You need a mix of renewable energy sources and you need a huge area from which you get your renewable energy. Germany can get energy from the whole european continent (and vice versa they from Germany) and the north sea. Usually somewhere the wind is always blowing.
Last edited by a moderator:
- Status