3 million without power in Texas

Here is a different summary:

"POINTING FINGERS
Although some are attempting to pin the blame on one fuel source or another, the reality is that the Arctic temperatures are hobbling fossil fuels and renewable energy alike, ...

WHAT HAPPENED?
So how did such a powerhouse get knocked so thoroughly offline?
We may not know the full definitive reason for a while, but a few things are clear:

• Obviously, Texas winters ain't usually this cold. The state's infrastructure is simply not prepared for a deep freeze.

• Critics of renewables will try to blame wind turbines, but experts note that wind makes up a small share of Texas' energy consumption.

• It's also worth pointing out that a lot of chillier places have wind turbines that don't buckle in the cold — hello, Iowa; hej hej, Denmark — they just need to be winterized, a step experts said Texas has skipped.

• The Lone Star State is ... all alone. Texas made a conscious decision to isolate its energy grid from the rest of the country. That means that when things are running smoothly, it can't export excess power to neighboring states. And in the current crisis, it can't import power either. 


In other words: "When it comes to electricity, what happens in Texas stays in Texas," said Dan Cohan, associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University. "That has really come back to bite us."
"

 

Yep.
That's why the first question I asked @jerrymildred concerned his "Hurricane Plan."

Tampa probably doesn't have much of a need for de-icing equipment for their windmills, but there is a 100-percent chance that there will be another Major Hurricane there, and in addition to protecting the cells from 150-MPH pine cones, one presumes that the mountings should be storm rated, else "going solar" might mean something else entirely.
Major hurricanes also mean that there's a 100-percent chance of a wide-spread, long term power loss.
Not a big deal if you have a plan to save your PVCs, but you're still gonna need a place to store some amps so that you can have power at night.

Like TX.....easy enough to plan for.
You just have to PLAN for it.

When I go solar....(there's NO "if") I'm going to make sure that yanking down the panels pre-storm are a part of my hurricane preps unless prevailing "wisdom" assures me that they're hardened enough to remain on the roof
(ground?)

YMMV

 

Florida has pretty extreme standards for hurricane proofing new construction. On thing I will be asking, though, is what wind loads the panels and rails are designed to withstand and when I should take them down. It's only 20 panels so not a huge job. From the pictures I've seen, they look like they should be pretty solid.

Tampa, by the way, seems to be in a spot that hurricanes tend to avoid. But if a major storm ever comes up the bay, that'll cost trillions of dollars. Many trillions. If you've been here, you can imagine why.

Our last big one was Irma a little over three years ago. It was bad to our east. At our house, the lights blipped once. Part of our 6' high wooden fence in the back yard got pushed part way over. That was it. We've had way worse thunderstorms. Other parts of the state got brutalized. Folks up in the panhandle seem to get a hurricane or two every year. Same on the east coast. If we do get an extended outage, the Prime will easily keep our food cold and run a fan and some lights at night. In fact, I recon that I could charge up the traction battery in the daytime and run the fridge and light just off battery at night if the cloud cover isn't bad. And in my experience, the skies clear quickly after hurricanes. I've been through several in Honduras and a few here in FL.

Still, you never know when a big one could take dead aim at us. But, we have no trees than can land on us. We are way above and storm surge and we are not in any kind of flood zone.

 

Somewhere in the specs for my solar panels were snow load ratings vs mounting style. Portrait vs landscape orientation on 2 vs 3 mounting rails. Most places are fine with just 2 rails, me included, but the places experiencing multi-foot snow loads need 3 rails. Rail spacings, and wind loading specs were somewhere in there too.

... and with heavier loads, the rails need more / closer roof attachments.

... and the standing seam metal roofing needs more / closer mounting clips to hold it down.

This is probably something you can ask the installers, and the more advance notice, the better.

 

From what I have read, the panels are typically tougher than the roof they are covering.
For hurricane zones, it seems the bigger issue is the lift wind underneath the panels can provide.
As such, good building practices (not to mention building codes) require additional strength in securing the panels to the roof.

 

Dominoes. Gasoline outages are a big problem in San Antonio, TX right now. One of my colleagues needs to get out to go to his mother’s funeral but multiple flights have been cancelled over the past 4 days so is trying to drive after the last snowstorm is over tonight. No gas at any gas station in the vicinity so nearby friends offering to fill up with spare gasoline. It’s a start, but it’s unclear what the gas station situation will be after the first several hours of the drive.

 

I watched a video of an installation. They must be strong. The installers walk on the edges of the panels where they butt up against each other.

They tell me that that's the reason they keep the panels well back from the edge of the roof.

It was indeed nasty over there. In fact, we have friends who have a villa in the Bahamas. They STILL don't have electricity. The company doing my system is putting in an off-grid system right now for them.

But I think the ultimate was Andrew. A friend's son lived in Homestead. He got in touch with my friend and said something like, "Dad, don't try to come help. There are no houses, no street signs, no trees, no landmarks of any kind. Just piles of lumber. We'd never find each other."

 

When superstorm Sandy hit the NE, I was without utility power for about a week. My generator covered my needs (and those of several neighbors that needed refrigeration for meds. The problem was getting gasoline to keep my generator running as none of the local gas station owners bothered to install backup generators so that they could provide services in an emergency. I had to drive in my Prius about 30 miles each way to get gasoline.

JeffD

 

as I’ve allude to in another post the lower 50% of cars on the road would only need about 4kwhrs a day to do all their travel

That is like 3% of a homes electrical demands and completely meaningless if we include commercial loads

The bigger problem is the poor building standards in Texas (compared to a northern state)
And northern Texas over reliance on sub standard outdated resistance heating without a backup and poorly thought out grid planning.

EVs play no role in this discussion,
unless you understand an EV with a full battery could be used for a few days of emergency power for a few household items which is only a good thing not a bad.

A vehicle like my Volt can be a home backup generator for a week with $150 of parts added which is even better.

 

There are several notable aspects to this event, including a troubling number of carbon monoxide illnesses and deaths.

on the non-human side

Chimp, monkeys, lemurs freeze at primate sanctuary amid Texas power outage | WPRI.com

Sea Turtles And The Storm: Volunteers In Texas Are Saving Thousands Of Animals : Live Updates: Winter Storms 2021 : NPR

 

and people, if they count for anything

 

That's what the first-mentioned carbon monoxide is affecting.

 

In the grand scheme of things there are people who earn a Darwin Award every year due to operating vehicles in buildings and running charcoal and camp stoves indoors.
No idea how you address stopping the guy using combustion indoors like with a charcoal grill in an enclosed space, seems like that concept has been explained ad nauseum including right on the package.

More worrysome are the unintentional ones caused by malfunctioning equipment but in this case that does not appear to be the cause in TX.

 

Natural selection WORKS, but it's messy and takes a long time.
I'm thinking that this is a lawyer problem.

THEIR solution would be to get some jury all weepy-eyed and knock a generator manufacturer on the head with an 8-figure damages award. Then.....somebody will figure out that you can make generators with onboard CO detection (THEY have to breathe too) and the in-house lawyers working for the manufacturers will make the engineers put one on board.....and charge the customer an extra buck or two.

Nobody really likes scavengers, but they do serve a valuable ecologic function.

Dot.gov is messy AND ineffective.
They would just ban gasoline generators.

 

To be fair they've long been powerless; now they haven't got electricity either.

 

Too true, @Ronald Doles. Any place the wind van get into the house can raise the roof right off. And the garage door is the weakest and biggest point. My door has ribs about 3" deep and it a one car garage.

 

At the most recent word I see, Texan customers without electric power have dropped to under 400,000, less than a tenth of the peak.

Mass winter energy delivery failures are not new to the region. At the peak of the February 1-5, 2011 event that also struck Arizona and New Mexico, 1.3 million customers lost electric power, and 4.4 million lost it at some time during the event. According the resulting federal report:

"Between February 1 and February 4, a total of 210 individual generating units within the footprint of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT), which covers most of Texas, experienced either an outage, a derate, or a failure to start."

"The storm, however, was not without precedent. There were prior severe cold weather events in the Southwest in 1983, 1989, 2003, 2006, 2008, and 2010. The worst of these was in 1989, the prior event most comparable to 2011. That year marked the first time ERCOT resorted to system-wide rolling blackouts to prevent more widespread customer outages. In all of those prior years, the natural gas delivery system experienced production declines; however, curtailments to natural gas customers in the region were essentially limited to the years 1989 and 2003. "

Lack of adequate winterization was one of many issues. We'll have to watch the post-event reviews to see how well they met or followed the lessons and recommendations from this earlier event.


Not quite all of Texas is under ERCOT, several border communities and areas tie instead to the rest of the continent. Here are some ERCOT maps: