Rolling Blackouts

It has been my experience that when they say 15 minutes to a hour that translates to 8-24 hours People in the business of energy tell me the 5GW shortfall is just the start and that it is going to snowball as more regional power plants are closed.

 

FJB!

 

Yep, in New Hampshire the greens have prevented us from hooking into the hydro Quebec power for many years by stopping a few miles of high voltage towers in the White Mountain forest area. In addition by stopping natural gas pipelines and thus the conversion of coal plants to natural gas or building new gas generating plants, they have limited the production of electricity. They wish to force us to use high priced renewable energy and stop using electricity. It is working well, many plants that used to produce plastic products, etc, have left the area as it is no longer possible to pay for the high priced power.

 

Cuba has been having rolling blackouts ever since the Russians pulled out all i can say is welcome to the new Cuba rolling blackouts. food shortages and the ministry of truth (sarcasm but not far off)

 

Hmm, I don't recall such shortages during the last administration.

If this is going to become SOP from now on, where are people going to plug in all of those electric cars when there isn't even enough electricity to run the every day things in your house, or to keep industry powered?

 

hadn't heard about the powerline blockage - they managed to do this during the 4 years of Trump? - this is exactly the kind of crap he loved to squash - doesn't help that it's NH and Canada - not alot of domestic help there for a GOP push ....

 

But FJB increased solar power by a record 10% this past year. How is that possible. [sarcasm]

I do know some people who work for the power companies and one of them connects solar farms to the grid. He says that most solar farms can not connect directly to the grid and are on hold doing nothing. They provide way too much power in a format that the grid can't handle without expensive regulators and converters... but hey, we're not using oil. Candles?

Solar slowdown as projects face trouble connecting to grid
Why rooftop solar is disruptive to utilities -- and the grid

 

Here is a short review of what happened when the power co tried to get hydro powered electricity into NH. Source is National Propaganda Radio so while it states the facts, it doesn't list the benefits. One of the people opposing the project, Gov Hassan was "promoted" to Senator at least partially on her "correct" view of the environment. I

After Major Blow To Northern Pass, What's Next for Hydropower In New England?

The stopping of the natural gas pipeline is described here and some of the reasons behind it are shown here.

A "Bridge" Too Far For Anti-Pipeline Movement In New Hampshire? – InsideSources

One may argue that the impact on NH in some ways has been close to that of the blue states in spite of the very red nature of the more rural areas of the state. But that is becoming the norm in this country.

It is very hard to keep the power grid in sync. If power is added to the system it has to both be in phase and the frequency in sync. If off you are pitting your added power against the generation capacity of the whole system, if lucky and done correctly, your system will not connect to the grid until it is right. If not, you will have a lot of scrap metal to get rid of. In addition it usually has to be 3 phase in order to keep the load balanced and have the proper lines and transformers to transfer it into the grid. Solar power is easy to generate with modern cells, but getting it to the right voltages, right phasing, right frequency, into the grid, and balancing the delivered "green" energy with the need for reliable sources to furnish the needed load are at this time impossible. The biggest factor, for every green source except hydro, is the inability to store excess power for times of greater need. May well be semi possible on a bright sunny day in June with a 30 mph wind blowing, but it sucks in a January 10 below zero night with no wind.

 

A lot of people are too poor to run A/C in new Mexico so it shouldn't be a problem here.

 

Never had air condition per se in New Mexico or West Texas, always used swamp coolers, water running over wood fibers or burlap, with fan blowing air thru it. Low humidity on really hot days made it work quite well and it used very little power. That and thick adobe walls etc, made the old houses not need air conditioning. Not like Florida, etc, where you have to use real air conditioners or heat pumps because of the high moisture content. The swamp coolers have their own unique smell, but you either get use to it or put up with it to stay cool. Never had the money to live in a modern house that required air conditioning because of the construction methods not suitable for the areas. That and ice boxes go back to the time of Christ and used very little power and no electricity.

One of oldest systems I have read about was the Shakers using spring water running thru a radiator and a turbine using the water to power a fan blowing over the radiator, to keep a very well insulated room cold for food storage, in low 40's as I remember.
.

 

Wish swamp coolers worked well here but its 50/50 at best due to our fairly consistent high humidity. On a humid day they just make you even more miserable but the one in the shop is nice on the not so humid days. LOL my swamp cooler consist of a 25 gallon stock water tub, burlap potato sacks stretched over a PVC pipe frame anchored down with a couple of cinder blocks, a 10gpm ornamental pond pump that pulls water from the tank feeds into the top pvc pipe with about 2 dozen holes drilled in it that trickles the water down over the potato sacks and 48" RK fan pushing air through the contraption. Not particularly pretty to look at but works very well when the humidity is lower. Higher humidity days it is best to just crank the fan up to high and use high speed air circulation.

My Mike Cave/Camper/Office/All purpose hide out........ I got this camper in large part because it has two doors, 8 large windows and so that I could put it in a deep shade spot with the rear end angled to the SW to let the prevailing wind from the SW come through the back window and make it a breezeway of sorts. Stays fairly comfortable up to about 90 degrees with average humidity. High Humidity and 90 degrees the windows have to close and the AC has to come on, just no getting around it even in the deep shade on those days. Did enough waking up boiling in my own sweat through life, I will run the AC now days if I need to

 

I used swamp coolers, until 2014 and 2015, the last time the rains came (last solar maximum). Then we had east coast like humidity all summer.
Then I added insulin and installed split air conditioners so I could cool one room at a time.
The splits use about 1/2 the electricity as a window unit for the same amount of cooling, then the split has zero air leakage so there's less warm air getting in and only cooling 1 or 2 rooms most days and for most of the day.

 

Yes we had to synchronous our 3 ph generators before swapping power from one to the other.
Can be a tricky balancing act if one's governor is hunting. Long time synchronizing? I can see where one will kick the other one off-line, Houston we have a problem.

 

Got a link to this shakers cooling system?

 

Well, i actually went out and bought a generator on our recent road trip down south.
I hadn't anticipated buying a generator but we hit a rural king store in Knoxville and there it was .. 3600 watts for just over a buck a watt. Locally, it's about 2 bucks a watt.

Next home is going to have a standby propane generator and a great big propane pig. But not this house.

Granted it's not going to run the entire house but all i need is the fridge, chest freezer, a fan and a portable ac unit for one bedroom. I don't need it to run the well or the hot water tank .. just don't want to lose the food .. or mommas sanity.

Summer time thunderstorms are the only time i worry about losing the beef, chicken, pork in the deep freeze as that stuff is expensive to replace.
Winter time i can toss it in one of the outbuildings.

 

It's already converted to run on propane?

 

Nah, this one is a gasser. like 14 hours per 5 gallons of gas. Not great but only need to run it like 6hrs a day to keep stuff frozen in the deep freeze and in the fridge. Doesn't need to run full time.
Next house will have a new standby generator that is propane only and probably be between 6-10k watts. and it will be fed by 500 to 1000gal tank what ever is available.

 

Bought a 5600watt generator after the last power outage and wired a transfer bow into the main panel. Power goes out start the generator and flip the wired breakers. Wired the well (only water supply), TV, microwave, refrigerator, chest freezer, and 2 bedrooms have ceiling fans and lights. Next will be a whole house generator when I get a spare $10K

 

We used to sell a lot of generators and gas powered compressors, only sold Honda of Japan, not Thai ones. They used them in construction before the power was in. Cheap US type, Briggs or such, and most Chinese stuff would last about 1,000 hours if taken care of and 600 or so if abused. At 60 hours a week in summer, that's a few months, good US or Japanese engines with care would go 2500 hours, if taken care well, a good Honda would last at least 5,000 hours. I still fix a few with 20 year old date codes. With new fuel, seems best bet is propane and capability to also run gasoline. Propane stores so well that it is a no brainer, but gasoline is easier to get and transport under bad conditions. Nothing beats a slow speed diesel like the old ones that weighed a half ton and ran at 6 or so hundred rpm and would run on diesel or cooking oil or whatever.

 

We are going with either Kholer or Generac 20KW propane back up and a 1000 tank. Both brands run in the $5000-$6000 range for 20KW. With diesel prices and probable shortages I am going to keep the diesel gen and the last 500 gallons of fuel as the "It is REALLY a Emergency back up." Or just park the diesel and keep the diesel for emergency use in the trucks. Leaning more toward Kholer simply because more service options locally and better parts availability. My last Parts order for the Generac portable gas jobs took 3 and 4 months to arrive and 5 months in still waiting on oil a oil filter for one of the old ones. Checked the same parts with the Kholer dealer/service shop and could had everything in hand within 72 hours.