The funny thing about batteries is that they would significantly help EVERY electrical grid regardless of how electricity is generated. If you could store your excess electricity, and there will always be some because there has to be, then you would have nearly free ways to "generate" electricity when other systems fail. Better battery technology helps everyone and not just the renewables crowd. We should all encourage investment in better battery technology.
Absolutely; the difference between say, a coal plant and a wind/solar source is that batteries are *required* on the latter. That makes those techs not yet a viable solution. I'm happy with Nuclear, tbh.
Well, it's still sub-freezing here and I've been cutting away my dead banana tree (it *was* big enough to bear fruit) but we'll supposedly be back in the 70's (f) this weekend. Then I'll have a true grasp of how many plants I lost. I've been fortunate, we only lost power for 4 hours and so far nothing has burst. So far.Â
We keep the heat on high and the fireplace going to produce enough ambient temp to *hopefully* keep the pipes thawed. We haven't lost any pressure so I'm optimistic. The issue with pipes isn't the freezing, it's the thawing. The copper expands WITH the frozen water, but that process thins it out too much and it can no longer handle the full pressure of running water. So we're not out of the woods yet.
Roads are fine, but stores are bare and gas is hard to find, which is odd since no one is supposed to be traveling, but whatever... I guess for generators, and of course those caught up in the fear mongering.
I've plenty of food so ain't worried about that... I'm more concerned about my plants than anything.

We just bought this house, and one reason was because the yard was full of mature plants.