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A recent cold snap left East coast with rolling black outs across a number of states. This is not California where you put on a warm jacket. You heat the hom

A recent cold snap left East coast with rolling black outs across a number of states. This is not California where you put on a warm jacket. You heat the home, find shelter somewhere or die. I kept getting notes to hold off on using appliances for a few days. Can imagine that if our areas heat was electric that would have collapsed the grid.

flavius29663 4y ago
Was that because of insufficient grid capacity, or not generating enough juice for everyone?
- digitalsushi 4y ago
  I live in NH and my town was part of it ... a 70mph single gust of wind at the boundary of a storm came through and knocked down around 60 or so trees in our 4,000 person community. Many, many pathways were simultaneously interrupted. It is incredible that the power company got power restored in a 36 hour window, when half of it was Christmas Eve.
  - flavius29663 4y ago
    "rolling blackout" is a very specific term used when grids are overloaded (usually when not enough generation is happening), which means that the operator is intentionally cutting power to some areas to save on energy. The areas keep changing (such that each area is out of power for just a few hours at a time), hence the name "rolling". The OP said that the eastern storm is proof the grid is not resilient enough because of rolling blackouts, which I find hard to believe without some more sources/reasoning.
    - treeman79 4y ago
      I don’t think you would accept any proof. As your own definition is good reasoning on why grid is over whelmed.
      - flavius29663 4y ago
        I am not sure why you're attacking me, instead of what I'm saying, but you can't use "rolling blackout" as a description for "some power lines were downed by the wind". Rolling blackouts are bad, but they are initiated by the power companies when the grid is under stress from an imbalance between production and consumption. Lines affected by trees and other natural elements have nothing to do with that, and these natural occurrences won't change if we switch to 100% electric or not.
- hattmall 4y ago
  In my town the temperature dropped to like 15 degrees on Christmas Eve and due to demand one of the substations exploded. There were about 10,000 people without power from 10am to 10pm on Christmas Eve. That additionally caused a lot of commercial buildings to have pipes burst which depressurized the water system. That caused main underground water lines to collapse and around 5k people had no water for 3 days. Similar events happened in a few other areas as well.
dml2135 4y ago
Just have a wood stove or fireplace for emergencies? Harder in cities but anywhere with detached homes, this doesn't seem like a difficult problem to solve.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  A wood stove isn't a trivial thing to maintain or install. Sure we could require everyone to add one but that's a huge expense for a lot of people. After they have one, you need to manage your firewood which involves having enough for your needs delivered ahead of when you need it, you need to store it somewhere it will stay dry, you need to educate people on how to properly use the wood stove, etc. and that's not even considering the insurance implications and the guarantee that there will be a lot more housefires. Propane heat would be simpler but still costly to install.
  - digitalsushi 4y ago
    A wood stove is an excellent piece of infrastructure to protect a house that can freeze solid if the electricity goes out. When we lose power, we can't even flush the toilets because we have an electric well pump. (We should get a generator, perhaps). But I can always go outside and find some wood and keep the house from freezing and bursting. (I guess it also requires me to be here, to be transparent)
  - treeman79 4y ago
    President is currently trying to ban gas stoves. Also I imagine save the tree groups would lose their minds on burning wood in more areas of the country. Air quality folks probably wouldn’t be happy either.
    - throwaway4aday 4y ago
      Apparently you just have to call it biomass and they're ok with it. The air quality would suck though if you had whole neighbourhoods doing it.
- mauvehaus 4y ago
epistasis 4y ago
>Hold off on appliances I'm not familiar with your utility's challenges with delivering electricity, but it is a very solvable problem to greatly improve reliability. Vermont's Green Mountain Power does great work, perhaps you can fire you utility commission and get one that will reign in your utility's incompetence.
rasz 4y ago
They just shut down 2,000 megawatt Indian Point because "green energy".

flavius29663 4y ago

Was that because of insufficient grid capacity, or not generating enough juice for everyone?

digitalsushi 4y ago
I live in NH and my town was part of it ... a 70mph single gust of wind at the boundary of a storm came through and knocked down around 60 or so trees in our 4,000 person community. Many, many pathways were simultaneously interrupted. It is incredible that the power company got power restored in a 36 hour window, when half of it was Christmas Eve.
- flavius29663 4y ago
  "rolling blackout" is a very specific term used when grids are overloaded (usually when not enough generation is happening), which means that the operator is intentionally cutting power to some areas to save on energy. The areas keep changing (such that each area is out of power for just a few hours at a time), hence the name "rolling". The OP said that the eastern storm is proof the grid is not resilient enough because of rolling blackouts, which I find hard to believe without some more sources/reasoning.
  - treeman79 4y ago
    I don’t think you would accept any proof. As your own definition is good reasoning on why grid is over whelmed.
    - flavius29663 4y ago
      I am not sure why you're attacking me, instead of what I'm saying, but you can't use "rolling blackout" as a description for "some power lines were downed by the wind". Rolling blackouts are bad, but they are initiated by the power companies when the grid is under stress from an imbalance between production and consumption. Lines affected by trees and other natural elements have nothing to do with that, and these natural occurrences won't change if we switch to 100% electric or not.
hattmall 4y ago
In my town the temperature dropped to like 15 degrees on Christmas Eve and due to demand one of the substations exploded. There were about 10,000 people without power from 10am to 10pm on Christmas Eve. That additionally caused a lot of commercial buildings to have pipes burst which depressurized the water system. That caused main underground water lines to collapse and around 5k people had no water for 3 days. Similar events happened in a few other areas as well.

dml2135 4y ago

Just have a wood stove or fireplace for emergencies? Harder in cities but anywhere with detached homes, this doesn't seem like a difficult problem to solve.

throwaway4aday 4y ago
A wood stove isn't a trivial thing to maintain or install. Sure we could require everyone to add one but that's a huge expense for a lot of people. After they have one, you need to manage your firewood which involves having enough for your needs delivered ahead of when you need it, you need to store it somewhere it will stay dry, you need to educate people on how to properly use the wood stove, etc. and that's not even considering the insurance implications and the guarantee that there will be a lot more housefires. Propane heat would be simpler but still costly to install.
- digitalsushi 4y ago
  A wood stove is an excellent piece of infrastructure to protect a house that can freeze solid if the electricity goes out. When we lose power, we can't even flush the toilets because we have an electric well pump. (We should get a generator, perhaps). But I can always go outside and find some wood and keep the house from freezing and bursting. (I guess it also requires me to be here, to be transparent)
- treeman79 4y ago
  President is currently trying to ban gas stoves. Also I imagine save the tree groups would lose their minds on burning wood in more areas of the country. Air quality folks probably wouldn’t be happy either.
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    Apparently you just have to call it biomass and they're ok with it. The air quality would suck though if you had whole neighbourhoods doing it.
mauvehaus 4y ago

epistasis 4y ago

>Hold off on appliances I'm not familiar with your utility's challenges with delivering electricity, but it is a very solvable problem to greatly improve reliability. Vermont's Green Mountain Power does great work, perhaps you can fire you utility commission and get one that will reign in your utility's incompetence.

rasz 4y ago

They just shut down 2,000 megawatt Indian Point because "green energy".