11 ms·

Currently in ATX we haven't had power for over 24 hours, wood fireplace is saving the house from completely freezing but the whole city of Austin needs to evalu

Currently in ATX we haven't had power for over 24 hours, wood fireplace is saving the house from completely freezing but the whole city of Austin needs to evaluate how they setup their critical infrastructure to allow for rolling blackouts instead of having parts of the city with power and parts without for the entirety of an outage.

jeffbee 6y ago
Rolling outages work when you need to shed 1% of your load, not when you need to shed 80% of it. If Austin is down to critical loads only (hospitals or whatever) there may not be anything left to rotate.
- epage 6y ago
  From what I hear, only about 40% are on non-critical circuits. There is room for improvement.
  - gregimba 6y ago
    This is essentially the crux of the problem, multiple friends/and coworkers are staying in islands of power that have been interrupt free due to proximity to Fire/Police/Hospitals and others have been without power for extended periods of time, if 60% of a grid is essential you can't roll non essential loads because simply maintaining the critical loads takes up 100% of capacity. More granular control could significantly help alleviate this issue which is specific to Austin Energy.
- brundolf 6y ago
  There are non-critical loads all over that were never interrupted (my neighborhood, north edge of ATX). It's pretty arbitrary. Even worse: for about the first 24h there were (largely uninhabited!) commercial buildings all over the place that were fully lit up. We're talking skyscrapers. Even some unfinished skyscrapers. I think they've finally begun to address those. The charitable interpretation is that it was simply a massive failure of coordination.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Do grid operators really have controls at that level? In California they can shut off a substation or not, and that's as low as they can go except in the special case of industrial customers with demand-responsive equipment installed. If those empty skyscrapers were on the same local circuits as a hospital, perhaps it simply wasn't possible for the electric company to turn them off.
    - brundolf 6y ago
      It's more that they needed to communicate with the owners of the buildings to shut off massive systems that weren't even being used, while the minority of residents who still have power are being asked to "live as if we didn't" and navigate by candlelight, etc.
    - sbierwagen 6y ago
      Around 2010 or so I worked for a skyscraper in downtown Seattle. There was a heat wave and the utility needed to shed load. The mechanism for doing that was someone calling our front desk and saying "Hello, please shut off your lights." (Commercial lighting runs at 277v, so it's all on separate circuits from wall outlets. You can shut off the lights in a building without killing the servers, for example) We had remote-controlled breakers, so doing that was a couple clicks of the mouse. But if nobody had picked up the phone, they would have needed cops to break into the electrical room on each floor and start flipping breakers by hand.
    - theshrike79 6y ago
      If the grid operator has deployed modern Smart Meters to their customers, they can control and measure electricity to the house level remotely.
  - salawat 6y ago
    Keep in mind: the details of how generators shed load is not ERCOT's decree. If there is unfairness in how liad shedding is taking place, you need to look at the entities generating/transmitting it. Not ERCOT. Bluebonnet has done a great, if annoying job. They converged to a near 50/50 duty cycle I think between two trunk lines. I've heard Austin Energy is epically failing some of it's customers though.
- bluGill 6y ago
  True crtical loads have backup generators up to this task, or the maintenance people should be fired for incompetence. Though they could get a break for some failures of the system, but only a handful statewide
- sfeng 6y ago
  Unfortunately Austin has not done a very good job of designing it's grid. There are many sectors which can't be rotated as they contain one or more critical services, even as they also contain many consumers who are not critical. This means that instead of being able to rotate amoungst the ~80% of non-critical power users, they are only able to shut down about 45% of the power. Unfortunately in a situation like this that means that 45% have remained off for the past 48 hours (no rotation is possible), while many empty buildings are fully illuminated. It is a technological failure of their ability to shut down specific power users.
Rapzid 6y ago
SAT going on 24 and 36 hours of effectively no power. It's 44 in room.
gred 6y ago
ATX?
- thehappypm 6y ago
  Austin Totally Xtreme?
  - geoduck14 6y ago
    Yes. Beyond a doubt, yes.
- okcwarrior 6y ago
  Austin, TX
HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
I had my wood fireplace going for the first time this weekend when the daytime temperatures were around -12F. It can easily raise the temperature of my living room, dining room & kitchen (one open space) to 80+ but that's with electricity to power the circulation fan. How are you keeping the whole house warm if you can't circulate the air? I'm genuinely curious.
- Baeocystin 6y ago
  From personal experience, a heat-powered fan helps a lot. I used one when I lived in a Franklin-stove-heated cabin in Montana, and while you wouldn't mistake its power for an electric fan, it more than did the job. https://www.amazon.com/heat-powered-stove-fan/s?k=heat+powered+stove+fan https://www.amazon.com/heat-powered-stove-fan/s?k=heat+power...
- teachrdan 6y ago
  There's some old school technology to solve that problem. For example, I stayed in a friend's ancient family home in Maine that simply had a bedroom over the living room wood stove, and an open vent between the two floors to let the heat through. There are also non-electric fans to help distribute heat from a wood stove. https://www.amazon.com/PYBBO-Improved-Fireplace-Magnetic-Thermometer/dp/B07ZKDJMFJ https://www.amazon.com/PYBBO-Improved-Fireplace-Magnetic-The...
  - benlivengood 6y ago
    To clarify, that fan is electric and powered by a peltier (thermoelectric effect) device using heat from the stove.
  - sunflowerfly 6y ago
    This is exactly why old farmhouses here in the Midwest were T shaped. There was a chimney in the center of each long arm of the T. Then vents through the floor right above the heaters to warm the second story. With good placement they did not need to blow the heat around.
- gregimba 6y ago
derptron 6y ago
Just say Austin, TX please. You aren't living in a motherboard configuration.

jeffbee 6y ago

Rolling outages work when you need to shed 1% of your load, not when you need to shed 80% of it. If Austin is down to critical loads only (hospitals or whatever) there may not be anything left to rotate.

epage 6y ago
From what I hear, only about 40% are on non-critical circuits. There is room for improvement.
- gregimba 6y ago
  This is essentially the crux of the problem, multiple friends/and coworkers are staying in islands of power that have been interrupt free due to proximity to Fire/Police/Hospitals and others have been without power for extended periods of time, if 60% of a grid is essential you can't roll non essential loads because simply maintaining the critical loads takes up 100% of capacity. More granular control could significantly help alleviate this issue which is specific to Austin Energy.
brundolf 6y ago
There are non-critical loads all over that were never interrupted (my neighborhood, north edge of ATX). It's pretty arbitrary. Even worse: for about the first 24h there were (largely uninhabited!) commercial buildings all over the place that were fully lit up. We're talking skyscrapers. Even some unfinished skyscrapers. I think they've finally begun to address those. The charitable interpretation is that it was simply a massive failure of coordination.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Do grid operators really have controls at that level? In California they can shut off a substation or not, and that's as low as they can go except in the special case of industrial customers with demand-responsive equipment installed. If those empty skyscrapers were on the same local circuits as a hospital, perhaps it simply wasn't possible for the electric company to turn them off.
  - brundolf 6y ago
    It's more that they needed to communicate with the owners of the buildings to shut off massive systems that weren't even being used, while the minority of residents who still have power are being asked to "live as if we didn't" and navigate by candlelight, etc.
  - sbierwagen 6y ago
    Around 2010 or so I worked for a skyscraper in downtown Seattle. There was a heat wave and the utility needed to shed load. The mechanism for doing that was someone calling our front desk and saying "Hello, please shut off your lights." (Commercial lighting runs at 277v, so it's all on separate circuits from wall outlets. You can shut off the lights in a building without killing the servers, for example) We had remote-controlled breakers, so doing that was a couple clicks of the mouse. But if nobody had picked up the phone, they would have needed cops to break into the electrical room on each floor and start flipping breakers by hand.
  - theshrike79 6y ago
    If the grid operator has deployed modern Smart Meters to their customers, they can control and measure electricity to the house level remotely.
- salawat 6y ago
  Keep in mind: the details of how generators shed load is not ERCOT's decree. If there is unfairness in how liad shedding is taking place, you need to look at the entities generating/transmitting it. Not ERCOT. Bluebonnet has done a great, if annoying job. They converged to a near 50/50 duty cycle I think between two trunk lines. I've heard Austin Energy is epically failing some of it's customers though.
bluGill 6y ago
True crtical loads have backup generators up to this task, or the maintenance people should be fired for incompetence. Though they could get a break for some failures of the system, but only a handful statewide
sfeng 6y ago
Unfortunately Austin has not done a very good job of designing it's grid. There are many sectors which can't be rotated as they contain one or more critical services, even as they also contain many consumers who are not critical. This means that instead of being able to rotate amoungst the ~80% of non-critical power users, they are only able to shut down about 45% of the power. Unfortunately in a situation like this that means that 45% have remained off for the past 48 hours (no rotation is possible), while many empty buildings are fully illuminated. It is a technological failure of their ability to shut down specific power users.

Rapzid 6y ago

SAT going on 24 and 36 hours of effectively no power. It's 44 in room.

gred 6y ago

ATX?

thehappypm 6y ago
Austin Totally Xtreme?
- geoduck14 6y ago
  Yes. Beyond a doubt, yes.
okcwarrior 6y ago
Austin, TX

HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago

I had my wood fireplace going for the first time this weekend when the daytime temperatures were around -12F. It can easily raise the temperature of my living room, dining room & kitchen (one open space) to 80+ but that's with electricity to power the circulation fan. How are you keeping the whole house warm if you can't circulate the air? I'm genuinely curious.

Baeocystin 6y ago
From personal experience, a heat-powered fan helps a lot. I used one when I lived in a Franklin-stove-heated cabin in Montana, and while you wouldn't mistake its power for an electric fan, it more than did the job. https://www.amazon.com/heat-powered-stove-fan/s?k=heat+powered+stove+fan https://www.amazon.com/heat-powered-stove-fan/s?k=heat+power...
teachrdan 6y ago
There's some old school technology to solve that problem. For example, I stayed in a friend's ancient family home in Maine that simply had a bedroom over the living room wood stove, and an open vent between the two floors to let the heat through. There are also non-electric fans to help distribute heat from a wood stove. https://www.amazon.com/PYBBO-Improved-Fireplace-Magnetic-Thermometer/dp/B07ZKDJMFJ https://www.amazon.com/PYBBO-Improved-Fireplace-Magnetic-The...
- benlivengood 6y ago
  To clarify, that fan is electric and powered by a peltier (thermoelectric effect) device using heat from the stove.
- sunflowerfly 6y ago
  This is exactly why old farmhouses here in the Midwest were T shaped. There was a chimney in the center of each long arm of the T. Then vents through the floor right above the heaters to warm the second story. With good placement they did not need to blow the heat around.
gregimba 6y ago

derptron 6y ago

Just say Austin, TX please. You aren't living in a motherboard configuration.