What I'm up to
 

Interesting day

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KuO...ew?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e52...ew?usp=sharing

Stole a couple chainsaws from dad a couple weeks ago. I know what I'm doing this weekend.

We had a similar day last fall. That, plus all the beetle killed pines around here, makes me wonder if wood gas would be a good idea for ecomodding.

Be careful!
As if that branch falling a minute after you were below it wasn't enough of a warning ;)

On a completely non-vehicle related note, this kind of weather has me wanting to trade my phone in and get one that has an FM radio on it. I don't care if it's an old phone. When we had that storm here and all the trees started falling down it was after a terrible wind storm and then a heavy snow. The whole valley is fed by one data line that feeds everything including all internet, cable TV, land lines and cell phone lines that aren't off of satellite. As a result, that line was affected and the only way of knowing what was going on was to listen to the radio. But ironically, my only radio was my car's radio, and the authorities were telling people to stay out of their cars since there were so many getting crushed by falling trees.

Shilling for Google? You'd be less dangerous with a chain saw in your hands. :)

He was a bot (the same username and links showed up on other forums today)...gone now.

All cell phones have an Am/Fm radio in them, just for some reason they are turned off/blocked in most american cell provider networks. There are downloadable APPS or get an unlocked phone. Both of my Nokias have them ditto forall my old samsungs. There's also an APP for hazards or incoming bad weather that doesnt use cell reception.

That doesn't look like fun. A bit north of you we spent the weekend XC skiing in the streets and enjoying pints at the local brewery.

Attachment 30156
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....and a bit South, it's been gray and rainy all this time.

My brother's phone line has been 'busy' for three days. Maybe this is why?

Could be worse. In Texas the windmills are frozen still and the solar panels are under inches of snow.

In the Nordic countries they have lots of windmills and lots of cold, and they never freeze solid. Maybe those Texas windmills are missing something essential, like frostproof bearings or internal heaters?

If the blades get covered with a layer of ice I understand why the mills got shut down. That's a rare and extreme condition though.

Over here we just ended one week of snow, the first in quite a while, down to minus 11 Celsius on our wall-mounted outside thermometer. Most of the solar panel arrays were completely covered, but some arrays were completely free of snow on an otherwise snow-covered roof. IIRC Tesla solar panels have a thaw program to melt off snow when needed, and apparently they are not alone.
The wind turbines were happily spinning in the mild cold breeze.

Flinging ice and snow off blades is a pretty bad juju when the tips are capable of +100 mph plus potential imbalance issue. If you stop them because of storm winds you need to wait until they thaw.... blades in places that freeze often have anti ice strategies.

I spent the 3-day weekend running a chainsaw and filling petrol cans, running extension cords from our generator to the neighbors, etc.

I cut the end off an extension cord and wired the generator directly into the main panel. Of course, I have the main breaker switched off. Being without grid power since Friday night has me realizing I'd like a 240v diesel generator so I can hook up both legs of the electrical panel and be fully powered up. As it is, nearly everything I'd want to run has power.

Our natural gas fireplace uses a thermocouple, so we never lost heat, and of course the gas water heater allows hot showers.

There are 2 roads to exit our neighborhood, and 1 has several oak trees across it (main street). Finding a route out on the remaining road was interesting, involving heading the opposite direction you want to go and meandering through neighborhoods.

I don't know why traffic is 3x more than normal. I doubt people in their lexus are headed to borrow a chainsaw, so where they're going I have no clue, and I don't think they know either based on how slow and confused people have been driving.

I've got 2 bars of cell strength, which is enough to give me internet service for the moment.

Our view Saturday morning; a little more open than before.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613496361

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613496361

Then the sun came out
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613496361

3.5 kW continuous generator prior to wiring to the panel.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613496361

Near my parents (the barn is barely visible in the background). Miles of down lines and half the poles are snapped. My grandmother thought she'd have power restored "at 4:15pm" because she had called PGE and the automated message said that. There weren't even crews working on it Sunday.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613496361

Dad made a rain collector so they can flush the toilets.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613496361


That looks fantastic.

My Friday night wasn't too shabby. Heated some sake up on the stove.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613497216

Whatever it was stopped the windmills, covered the solar panels and stopped the pumps in the natural gas pipeline, a week or two after the current Resident in the White House invited the CCP into the power grid.

edit:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613496361

Nicely framed. Life is all a matter of perspective.

And the CCP immediately started throwing ice and snow and breaking poles etc.
Damn commies!
It sure is good to have someone to blame, hm?

Take care over there.

My 2 cents.

I would get a Generator that runs off of natural gas. Just like you never lost heat you wouldn’t lose power either because natural gas rarely stops flowing through the pipes unless there’s an earthquake. Even then you could change the orifice and run on LPG. Natural gas engines run super clean, require very little maintenance and usually start easily.


Oh and just so you know, they make a multi fuel carburetor (NG, LPG, Gasoline) for your generator just look on Amazon you’ll find it. They’re very inexpensive. ;)



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Good points. I was looking on Amazon for a NG adapter, but I'm not sure which would fit this 7HP 4k peak watt Sportsman generator.

Don't know why it didn't come with the carb that allows NG too. Would be super easy for me to hook up to one of the BBQ lines.

... the ones I'm finding on Amazon show Friday delivery. We should have power before then, but if we didn't, it sure would be nice to have the adapter. I plan to get one anyhow so I'm prepared for the next time.

Maybe this one? Free return if it's not right I suppose, and the price is right.

https://www.amazon.com/Saihisday-Car...511187&sr=8-12

While I'm a fan of NG generators we are in the Cascadia subduction zone that spits out 9 - 10 magnitude earthquakes on occasion. The last Cascadia earthquake was in 1700.

If I was redpoint I would want a LPG back-up or a way to store some of the his solar energy from that new system he installed.

I know.... correlation does not imply causation. But I followed Robert Anton Wilson.

Robert Anton Wilson: Consciousness, Conspiracy & Coincidence -- Thinking Allowed w/ Jeffrey Mishlove

Is you mind inside or outside of Universe?

Simulation Theory suggests the must likely outcome is the most entertaining one. So I expect that after the 2nd failed impeachment, Trump won't run again. That would blow some minds, but he's proved in the last four years that the idiot box is more powerful than the Presidency.

JSH: Best ROI would be a gravity battery in a dry well.

Oh, I forgot to mention we've got a lot of tractors, so a PTO generator might be the best option. We store up to 550 gallons of diesel (just had that quantity delivered 2 weeks ago), so that's plenty of emergency power.

Not sure how the throttle gets adjusted based on load. Perhaps a more modern tractor can adjust throttle based on load to keep the PTO speed constant?

On a tractor, the throttle control usually selects the engine speed and a governor adjusts the actual engine throttle to maintain that RPM. PTO speed is pretty standardized. I think it's usually 540 or 1000 RPM?

We've got a 40+ year old Mitsubishi MT372 - 12 HP PTO 540 RPM
https://946e583539399c301dc7-100ffa5...635/343178.jpg

a 40 year old John Deere 750 - 18 HP PTO 540 RPM

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2fZs4gFk9Ns/maxresdefault.jpg

and a 50+ year old Allis Chalmers One Ninety - 77 HP PTO 540/1000 RPM
https://bigiron.blob.core.windows.ne...cloader-59.jpg

... almost forgot this old Ford 4400. It hasn't moved in a while. - 45 HP PTO 540 RPM
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...0&d=1613603130

We've got power AND internet again! 6 days of outage.

It will probably be a week or two for my parents to get power restored. I spent the morning clearing their driveway and cutting debris into movable pieces. Still several days worth of clearing debris from the yards left.

Here's drone footage from Saturday morning.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jVd...ew?usp=sharing

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613676945

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613676945

https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1613676945

I finally got through to my brother['s wife]. They've been without power for six days running, too.

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Don’t worry.

They have it under control... 😉

https://i.postimg.cc/YCc6ysLY/8-B8-C...C530-DB099.jpg



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It's hard to keep up, isn't it?

The lead story on Suspicious 0bservers was about Oregon, youtu.be/AnOE_X7PVOw?t=43
Meanwhile, things are looking up on Mars.

The question remaining is whether or not the ice storm was made from fossil fuels. :D

We had a thread about that, or at least the lack of consensus. It got locked.

We're all just a leaf on the wind.

Scott Adams takes a victory lap. At one minute he passes a late model Airstream with a nice tow vehicle.

Those are Norwegian turbines. The texan ones are not set up with de-ice since they never should go below freezing according to the owners of said turbines. AFAIK, there's more conventional generation offline than what all the turbines produce.

The main cause for the Texan power outages was problems with the distribution of natural gas, which reduced the gas plant output by up to 26 GW.
That dwarfs the 4GW loss (max) from iced wind turbines. But hey, they got the blame.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02...s-power-storm/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENyatRcxzsM
This is just a preview of the Biden/Harris energy policy. From last August (seems so long ago):

thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/512601-a-biden-harris-presidency-would-largely-end-oil-and-gas-production

Well, they promised a dark winter. Promises made, promises kept. :)

??? you missed the memo. It wasn't renewables that caused the blackouts.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/envi...change-rcna289At least their pockets will be warm, they are well lined.

Nuclear too. Didn't expect that at all.

So nothing to do with Biden and Harris. They are still cleaning up the White house anyway, they had no hand in this crisis for good or for bad.

Even under the Trump administration over 75% of all new power generation plants were solar or wind, just because they are now more cost efficient. Economics beat everything. It is the same in Europe.
So why stimulate renewables then, if it happens anyway? Because we just need more power fast.
Overcapacity is not a waste, it is an insurance, like an army in peacetime is.

It will be interesting to see which generation sources were providing the most power during this emergency.

According to Alex Epstein, funds allocated in intermittent power sources reduced investment in more reliable sources and maintenance/improvements of infrastructure to increase reliability.

I'm missing more than your memo. I don't see a problem with the energy sourcing, or the weather. It's a command and control issue.

I can't find the source about the electrical transformers with the unknown additional circuits, but if I see it again I'll 'circle back'.

Maybe...



https://www.zerohedge.com/technology...ging-tesla-900

And because this is a car forum...




Outages Morph Into Outrage As Texans Slapped With "Mind-Blowing" Power Bills

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ou...ng-power-bills



Ahh yes, it’s a Green $$$ Deal alright...

For somebody... 😉


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Did someone say Big AC?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Hedge
Sounds legit.

If you read the links, you would have seen highlighted text. The highlighted text takes you to the sources used in said articles. Maybe, just maybe you’ll find a more trusted source to your liking.

It’s really not that hard... :rolleyes:

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Good or bad .. It's just how cold blooded capitalism functions .. supply and demand.

The Ferengi would be proud ;)