oliver2-44 9,726 #1 Posted January 14 Well if the weatherman is close their predicting my area will have 3 days at or below freezing. We should wake up Sunday morning at or below freezing. (we had a high of about 65, and no wind today, beautiful weather! When they say lows in the 15 F and 16 F I'm prepped and hunkered down. My middle son was Googling if the lawn sprinkler system would make snow and I just said its drained and the drops would be to big - just ice pellets. Then he said pressure washer would work with it being located as high up as possible to give the small droplets more time to freeze - O to be young again. Slight chance of some wet stuff Sunday night/Monday morning. The horses are put to bed, but the C81 does have weights, chains and a plow on it from doing some dirt work. If there was enough snow to plow, i suspect it would take me about 10 minutes to say "done That" time to get warm. Have I mentioned I'm a warm weather tropical bear! @ebinmaine might see this fairly often, so he can be the cold weather bear. 1 2 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ebinmaine 67,408 #2 Posted January 14 4 minutes ago, oliver2-44 said: Have I mentioned I'm a warm weather tropical bear! @ebinmaine might see this fairly often, so he can be the cold weather bear We CAN get below 32⁰ here anytime between Sept 1st and mid June. So that's less than 3 months outta 12 with a near zero chance of frost. Most years in January we have 1 to 3 weeks below freezing. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JoeM 7,873 #3 Posted January 14 I would just have to try the lawn sprinkler thing. I have a T shirt the family got me that says, they left me alone. Wife says I need adult supervision. Probably right. 1 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Achto 27,562 #4 Posted January 14 36 minutes ago, oliver2-44 said: Well if the weatherman is close their predicting my area will have 3 days at or below freezing. Looks to be sweeping the nation. We are predicted to have -10 for a low on Monday. 4 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SylvanLakeWH 25,525 #5 Posted January 14 49 minutes ago, oliver2-44 said: My middle son was Googling if the lawn sprinkler system would make snow and I just said its drained and the drops would be to big - just ice pellets. Then he said pressure washer would work with it being located as high up as possible to give the small droplets more time to freeze - O to be young again. My mechanical engineer son made a snow gun when he was ten. $10 in gas pipe, connectors, valves. Hook one side to a hose one side to a compressor and you got snow... actually works. Still have it in the garage. Somewhere... 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
WHX?? 48,814 #6 Posted January 14 (edited) 1 hour ago, oliver2-44 said: Well if the weatherman is close their predicting my area will have 3 days at or below freezing. Yer kinda preaching to the choir here Ollie. Welcome to Wisconsin... Edited January 14 by WHX?? 1 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ClassicTractorProfessor 5,314 #7 Posted January 14 It’s been here all day, you boys up north can come get your weather anytime you want it 2 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
8ntruck 6,998 #8 Posted January 14 My dashboard said -8 tonight when I came home after mentoring for the robotics team. Weather bug says below 0 temps for the next day and a half. Tomorrow's dog walk is going to be a short one... 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Racinbob 11,048 #9 Posted January 14 Woke up to -7° this morning and there not much relief until late in the week. Look at the bright side guys..........................no skeeters. 1 1 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
953 nut 55,174 #10 Posted January 14 @oliver2-44, hope the Texas power grid can stay up and running this time. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ebinmaine 67,408 #11 Posted January 14 39 minutes ago, Racinbob said: .....no skeeters. There's a niiiiice silver lining. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JoeM 7,873 #12 Posted January 14 2 hours ago, 953 nut said: hope the Texas power grid can stay up and running this time Okay, first everyone in TX turn off your AC! Really hope it holds up too, terrible to be out of power. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
oliver2-44 9,726 #13 Posted January 14 (edited) 3 hours ago, 953 nut said: @oliver2-44, hope the Texas power grid can stay up and running this time. Being retired from the generating side of the utility sector, I still keep up with things. ERCOT is the ISO (Independent System Operator) for much of Texas Back in November they gave the state legislature a winter report that said there was a calculated 14% chance of rolling blackouts in January and a 16% chance in February. four large coal generating units retired this past year. The ISO offered those four plant owners some sort of incentive to keep them on line but they didn't take it. This past session the legislature approve a bill offering big $$$$ to public or private entities that would build base or peaking load solid or liquid fueled generating plants. (no Texas incentives for renewables) But there is quite a bit of new Solar and Wind generation being built to take advantage of the Federal Incentives. After the 2021 Big Freeze the ISO took a beating from the legislature and then implemented fall inspections of plants to insure they had their winter preparations in place.. The hard thing for all the steam generating is they have outdoor boilers, vs many boilers in the colder climate are somewhat enclosed. While they have lots of insulation and freeze protection/heat tracing, they can have challenges with instruments drip legs, vents, water loops, etc freezing up. Unfortunately the legislature took a blind eye to the natural gas industry problems of well heads and other gas equipment freezing up, thus curtailing the gas supply to gas plants. So if the boilers and natural gas equipment doesn't freeze, and the wind turbine blades don't ice up or get shut down by high winds or no wind, and the sun shines on the solar plants 24/7 we should stay warm. As for me I topped of the 100 gallon butane tank for the gas fireplace and have fire wood stocked up for the fireplace. I also have several portable butane bottles full for the old school butane headers that came from the farm house. I even picked up a CO2 detector in case I need to use those butane heaters. Here a graph from the ERCOT Public Dashboard. Looks a little tight Monday & Tuesday morning. The forced Outage display on this Dashboard doesn't look like things are off to a great start. Here's a closer look at Forced Outages. The Orange line is Forced Renewable Outages, so their not looking good this morning. I suspect by tomorrow morning we will see a medium blue line showing some fueled generators forced Outages. Edited January 14 by oliver2-44 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
953 nut 55,174 #14 Posted January 14 18 minutes ago, oliver2-44 said: the legislature took a blind eye to the natural gas industry problems of well heads and other gas equipment freezing up, thus curtailing the gas supply to gas plants. Perhaps all of the politicians could go out to the gas lines and talk about what needs to be done and all that hot air will keep the lines from freezing! 1 2 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
oliver2-44 9,726 #15 Posted January 14 Just now, 953 nut said: Perhaps all of the politicians could go out to the gas lines and talk about what needs to be done and all that hot air will keep the lines from freezing! You hit the Nail on the Head. Significantly bigger political $$$$ donations from the Gas Industry than the Power Industry. 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wh500special 2,168 #16 Posted January 14 20 minutes ago, oliver2-44 said: …. As for me I topped of the 100 gallon butane tank… I had no idea Butane was a thing in the US. Interesting. I’m guessing it’s a southern thing since it has a higher boiling point and wouldn’t vaporize in colder regions. Steve Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ClassicTractorProfessor 5,314 #17 Posted January 14 Hope you don’t have any major outages down there Jim, we are used to more cold up here than you are down there, but this is even colder than what we are used to. I left the house at 7:30 this morning to go to the coffee shop like I do every Saturday and Sunday, when I started the Jeep it was reading a brisk -2, and has since started to snow. We have a generator here at the house, so no worries there. And I made sure yesterday that the old Miller would start in case of an outage at the farm so we can still pump water for the cattle. My biggest concern at the moment is we have 3 cows ready to drop a calf any day now, stocked up on propane for the heater in the shop in case we have to bring a newborn in out of the cold 1 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Achto 27,562 #18 Posted January 14 3 hours ago, oliver2-44 said: This past session the legislature approve a bill offering big $$$$ to public or private entities that would build base or peaking load solid or liquid fueled generating plants. Might explain why we have been pumping out generators left & right for this company. https://enchantedrock.com/enchanted-rock-microgrid-knowledge/erock-generators-lot-2/ 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
WHX?? 48,814 #19 Posted January 14 There's definitely gonna be a outage in TX today. Dallas area I predict. Packers gonna kick the $h1* outage dem 'boys.... 5 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
oliver2-44 9,726 #20 Posted January 15 8 hours ago, WHX?? said: There's definitely gonna be a outage in TX today. Dallas area I predict. Packers gonna kick the $h1* outage dem 'boys.... Gee, that was a hard one to predict 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
WHX?? 48,814 #21 Posted January 15 17 hours ago, WHX?? said: There's definitely gonna be a outage in TX today. Dallas area I predict. Packers gonna kick the $h1* outage dem 'boys.... Who woulda thunk it? Wow I really pulled that one out of my rear. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
oliver2-44 9,726 #22 Posted January 16 Were staying nice and warm with the heat and water on. One of my sons has some frozen water lines at his house. I'll make sure he has the water off as things begin to thaw. Monday morning the low was 18f and this morning the low was 16f. I hasn't been above 32F since about 2 am Sunday morning. The Texas ERCOT electric grid has held up well with no rolling outages. We had a dusting of snow Monday morning. From news pictures it appears East Texas had several inches of snow and ice. The Grid Manager ERCOT now displays these dashboards so the public can see what's going on. (I guess their good attempt to be more "Transparent" which seems to be the buzz word these days. https://www.ercot.com/gridmktinfo/dashboards I've been monitoring them, and could see that all types of generators (wind, solar, hydro,natural gas, coat, etc) had some outages. But not enough to degrade the grid. There is more wind power during the night, then wind drops down during the day and solar picks up. Its been interesting following the Energy Storage Resources (batteries) Dashboard. Strange that you can see them Charging and Discharging at the same time. Power coming across the DC ties has also been interesting. ERCOT does not have any AC ties across the state lines. This keeps them out of some Federal Regulations. They have a few DC ties across the state line, as their way of getting around these regulations (what a game) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
