Dunno if I’ll be one of them…
Hot and humid continues. Sunny with patchy clouds. REALLY unpleasant if you have to be out in the sun. Hats and longsleeves on to the linemen and others working to restore power. Those fire retardant clothes aren’t lightweight or particularly breathable, or wicking.
Centerpoint said they hoped to have the majority of customers back online today. We could hear and see transformers blowing up yesterday and during the storm, so they have a few more repairs to make than just splicing wires that trees broke. BTW, it’s distinctive when a transformer goes “Ffoomm”. Once you hear it, you’ll always recognize it.
Still running the gennies. Still hotter than is comfortable. Today I may do some poking around with solar, if the sun isn’t too hot. Or maybe some garage or driveway work. I’m reluctant, because if I get too hot, I don’t have a 73F house to fall back to.
Yesterday was cleaning up my rent house and refueling, which I mostly put in comments. Meeting my renter was nice. She’s outgoing, engaging, and grew up in the same general area I did, so it was nice to chat with a homegirl… And she got power back around 10am Tuesday. We used a realtor friend to do the legal parts of finding a tenant this last time, and although I’ve been to the house several times to do work, I never crossed paths with her before yesterday. (can’t be accused of discriminating if you never meet the applicants)
Anyway, cleanup continues, we might get power back today, and there are lessons to learn.
Stack some real world experience to help you identify problems before they are life or death…
n
The power problems Nick reports sound awful. However, they are also inexcusable – it’s not like heavy storms are a surprise, where he lives. The infrastructure should be up to that. That kind of unreliability is what you expect in second-world countries.
Most likely, the biggest problem are the exposed power lines. So: every time a street is ripped up, you put power lines underground. Over the course of 10 or 20 years, every street will be repaired, so nearly all of the lines would be protected. This just requires local government willing to plan for the long term.
Which really comes down to the manufacturers cheaping out on their power supplies. In the end, virtually every electronic device transforms incoming power to DC using switching power supplies. A “good” power supply shouldn’t care what the incoming power looks like, as long as the voltage is high enough.
Incoming power from a generator may approach a square wave, which looks like high frequency voltage spikes. But that’s no different that what a power supply might have to deal with, when the power cable picks up RF noise from a nearby lightning strike. Accounting for this might add a whole dollar or two to the manufacturing cost.
Welcome to Texas.
Austin is still recovering from a week of highs in the 20s which happened three years ago.
Tecnically speaking, the city government of Houston is insolvent due to first responder pension deals cut when the last member of the Whitmire family served as Mayor … in the 80s.
Bad power is not good. I pay $5/month for for a sugrge protector that the power company adds under the meter. I also have most of my electronics connected through an APC UPS.
Since almost everything uses a computer these days I wouldn’t connect anything straight off a generator.
MOrning all, Honda ran out of fuel and stopped shortly after I commented last night. We did without as the rain was really heavy at that point.
Don’t know what we ended up getting but the weather radar showed only 2 small areas of rain and they were over us. At least the rest of the area was spared.
When we moved here the grid was crazy reliable. We went years without even a blink. But each “emergency” repair, each bandaid, makes it much more likely to fail next time.
WRT undergrounding the lines, yes, there are places that helps. Given our water table, and flooding, this isn’t generally one of them. Others online have looked at the numbers and come to the same conclusion. Burying wire is expensive and all the transformers and service drops need to be changed too. One of Houston’s nicknames is “Tree City” so maintaining the easements can be hard… no one wants their trees butchered by trimming crews.
82F and very bright. Gonna be a hot one.
n
I suppose having a water table of basically 0 does make it a problem 🙂
In a lot of areas they don’t tear up the street, they do an asphalt overlay and call it good.
I normally hang out on Wednesdays with a bunch of ham radio guys at a Luby’s cafeteria somewhere in the Houston metroplex. Today was canceled because of no electricity.
Bummer. I like to get out of the house for things other than shopping and the gym.
My gym has power, at least.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/07/clooney-tells-biden-to-step-aside-only-weeks-after-hosting-fundraiser-that-raised-14-million/
“Barry, is that a pickle in your pocket?”
”No, that’s George Clooney”
Next, George will be amazed at how FJB was just fine a couple weeks ago”
I’ll never understand why some celebrity’s opinion is any more noteworthy than any random guy on the street. You’re a successful actor, George. That makes you an expert in pretending to be something you’re not. It doesn’t make you a political expert. Keep your opinions to yourself and smile for the cameras.
I suppose the really problem is celebrity-worship culture that actually allows the political views of their favorite actors and musicians to sway them, “OMG, George Clooney is so hot AND he’s voting Democrat. I will too! Then I’ll be more like George!”
The house is still on the genny. The houses two doors away are on the grid now. The office was still dark this morning.
Still on generator…
and now I’m sure that HOme Depot is one of the companies buying google’s overheard keywords, or they are buying from someone else, but I don’t have a ton of random apps installed, and certainly not a Home Depot app.
I was working back thru my piled up email, and there were two from HD, “we found some options for you regarding xxxxxxx…” and “we found some options for you regarding yyyyyyyy…” I’ve had verbal conversations with people about xxxxxxxx and yyyyyyyy but because of the power outage and thin pipes, absolutely no way did I do any searching. In the past I wasn’t sure enough that I hadn’t searched, this time I am. Fukcing sleaze bags.
————
and it is hot hot hot.
n
“I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV…”
They borrow the authority from their roles as pretend experts. It works to sell product, it works to sell ideas.
n
Wed. July 10, 2024 – supposed to have a whole bunch of folks back on the grid today…
Centerpoint says that they have restored a million meters out of 2.4 million meters out of service at lunch time today.
Ten of the 345,000 volt high lines coming into Houston were offline. Just restoring those was a lot of people.
>> Fukcing sleaze bags.
Make sure they “hear” you mentioning how you’ve watched Oppenheimer three times to get all the details on how they built the ‘you know what.’
The power problems Nick reports sound awful. However, they are also inexcusable – it’s not like heavy storms are a surprise, where he lives. The infrastructure should be up to that. That kind of unreliability is what you expect in second-world countries.
Most likely, the biggest problem are the exposed power lines. So: every time a street is ripped up, you put power lines underground. Over the course of 10 or 20 years, every street will be repaired, so nearly all of the lines would be protected. This just requires local government willing to plan for the long term.
Putting lines underground is not a fixall. First, the cost is 10x of the overhead. The customers are rarely willing to pay the cost.
Second, the amount of theft is staggering. When I worked at TXU, we had a underground solid copper 138,000 volt ring surrounding downtown Fort Worth. Somebody went in one weekend and cut out a several hundred pound section with a torch. We could not figure out how they kept from from getting fried.
Third, the cost of maintenance for underground is much higher and dangerous.
Ask Florida about undergrounding their utilities. It brought a whole new set of problems.
>>Make sure they “hear” you mentioning how you’ve watched Oppenheimer three times to get all the details on how they built the ‘you know what.’
Wait, wait, just kidding… I meant talking about the upcoming season of The Batchelorette. Yeah, that’s what I meant. “You” heard that, right?!
Vegas will peak at116°F again today. This usually happens in August, GlowBull Warming is REAL!
But it’s a dry heat…
Here in the high desert KWJF has had 110F or above for the last 6 days, but that streak will probably end today with a measely 108/109F.
Whew.
Even here in Idaho, broke into triple digits just now and will hit again for the next few days.
I just got my power and cable internet back on at my house. The office is still dark.
Still no improvement here. I’ve been napping. Everything on my lists either requires power to do or threatens heat stroke.
So I read a bit, then fall asleep.
n
Here’s what the world needs…
Huma Abedin gets engaged to George Soros’ son Alex during romantic Italian break
not.
n
Wasn’t that a month or more ago? I’d SWEAR that I saw that a while back.
Leaving work today, I walked past a parked Tonymobile which had all of the cooling fans running full blast.
Taxiing for takeoff …
One of the managers who hotel desks in my general vicinity was ranting to a friend yesterday about how his daughter couldn’t get DoorDash in Houston and had to … gasp! … go to the cafeteria at the hospital where she works and wait in an hour line.
Colonist money.
Union guys. Inside job.
We have AT&T fiber-optic just north of Houston. When I got up just after 4:00 am we had no internet, television, or phone. When the sun came up, we spent an hour cleaning tree debris from our yard. We are in our early seventies and with the heat (even that early) we got worn out. Took showers and the wife wanted to take a drive to try and make a phone call. Gas stations all had long lines into the surrounding streets. I imagine people needed gas for their generators. There were a lot of trees down, some blocking traffic lanes. Some traffic lights were working and some were not but we survived our short trip.
We decided to watch DVDs and found “The International” with Clive Owen and Naomi Watts. Neither of us had seen it and don’t know how we got the DVD. There was a preview, “The Taking of Pelham 123” with Denzel Washington and John Travotla. The preview looked good and it had been a long time since we’ve seen it, so we watched it next. The third feature was “The Sum of All Fears” with Morgan Freeman and Ben Affleck.
I’m glad we have the whole house generator! Back during Hurricane Ike we were both working and we had no electricity for thirteen days. When I retired and we bought our current home, the generator was our first major purchase. Our internet and television came back on just after 6:00 pm and there are several large lineman trucks behind our house now.
I was 10 during Hurricane Carla and living in the southeast side of Houston. I was looking out a window at the storm when shingle came flying straight into the window slicing the screen. It happen so fast and scared the hell out of me. It made quite an impression that I still remember. When the eye passed over us, we went outside and was surprised how quiet it was.
We had to go to an appointment this evening, so I shut down the gennies. Decided to change the oil in the generac before starting back up. It was WAY past time. Heavy, black, thick… new golden oil installed. I’ll change it again after we get back on shore power.
Still running gennies on this side of the street.
The number still out tells me it’s big stuff affecting lots of people per incident, not a bunch of tree limbs on wires or occasional poles down. Could be wrong, but that’s what it seems like. That is good news if true, because each big fix will light up a lot of people.
Sweaty in the house since the a/c wasn’t running for a couple hours. No central air helps me find the really hot walls too. Some are like hot water radiators they are so hot.
Dunno what we’ll do about most of that, but in the bathroom I’m eventually taking the walls down, so I can upgrade the insulation. That will help in one room…
n
I figured why all of the lights were flickering every 10 or 15 minutes on the house genny. The 3 ton a/c did not bother the genny but the 4 ton a/c does. The genny is a 38 kW Mitsubishi four cylinder turbocharged natural gas motor generator running at 1,800 rpm. When they converted it to generator duty, they changed the flywheel from 10 lbs to 20 lbs but looks like that was not enough to not shudder the entire generator when the 4 ton compressor kicks on.
The 4 ton a/c is zoned and starts / stops for each zone demand so it starts a lot. It is fairly smart and can open the other zone ducts if they demand while one is going. That is, if both zones are demanding a/c. Or if both zones are demanding heat.
Union guys. Inside job.
Those linemen were not union. In fact, none of our linemen were union when I left in 1989. Most of them are Oncor now.
“AOC Introduces Articles of Impeachment Against Justice Thomas and Justice Alito”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/07/aoc-introduces-articles-impeachment-against-justice-thomas-justice/
It is time for AOC to go away.
The entire Democrat caucus should be charged with conspiracy to keep an incompetent vegetable in the White House and endanger the country.
She’s always been someone else’s useful idiot. Bargirl got uplifted.
n
“Tiamat’s Wrath (The Expanse, 8)” by James S. A. Corey
https://www.amazon.com/Tiamats-Wrath-Expanse-James-Corey/dp/0316332895?tag=ttgnet-20/
Book number eight of an nine book science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback weighing 1.3 lbs. Ah, Science Fiction by the pound, cool ! I have the last book in the series and will be reading it soon.
James Holden is still alive and is a political prisoner in the palace on Laconia. The Laconians, the lost Martian colony, are now ruling the central station with the 1,300 gates, shortcuts around the Milky Way, with their three antimatter based super battleships.
The Laconian’s usage of the protomatter to enhance humans, take over worlds, enhance space flight, and change all matter to meet their rule over the Galaxy is going to new levels. Even Sol System has been subjugated by the Laconians. But, somebody else has awakened and wants to destroy everything.
You can watch books one through six converted to a six season tv series on Amazon Prime. The series was started on the Syfy channel and moved to Amazon for the fourth season.
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars (27,704 reviews)
Lynn
“Media Reports Earth’s ‘1.5C Temperature limit’ was ‘breached for 12 months in a row’ – Nothing Bad Happened”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/07/10/media-reports-earths-1-5c-temperature-limit-was-breached-for-12-months-in-a-row-nothing-bad-happened/
“Recently, several media outlets claimed that June 2024 was the hottest June on record globally and that it topped off a string of 12 or 13 warmer than normal months, which they blamed on human-induced climate change. Each of the news stories made false claims of reaching climate tipping points, extreme weather events, and that the extended streak of hot temperatures proved a “climate crisis” was at hand.”
We are all going to die.
“Warm weather continues, and why did Hurricane Beryl’s intense winds persist after landfall?”
https://spacecityweather.com/warm-weather-continues-and-why-did-hurricane-beryls-intense-winds-persist-after-landfall/
“Normally as a hurricane traverses land it starts to weaken fairly quickly. But Beryl didn’t as it moved north from Matagorda into Fort Bend County and Sugar Land. The storm maintained much of its strength and bulldozed right into the heart of Houston with near hurricane-force sustained winds and higher gusts. Why?”
“I chatted a little bit about this with Eric Blake, a forecaster at the National Hurricane Center, on the social media site X Tuesday. He noted that just as it was coming ashore, Beryl was starting to intensify rapidly, with a closed-off eyewall. He believes it would have been a Category 2 hurricane with just six more hours over the water. Thus, there was a lot of momentum built up by the storm.”
Plus there is that 97 mph wind reading from Freeport. I think that Beryl was really a Cat 2.