Wind turbines

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

That's assuming everyone keeps staring at their fridge for months instead of searching for alternatives, working to restore power in key areas, eating canned food, etc.

A lot of food that gets shipped frozen can be canned as well. People like their food 'fresh', but would take canned or dried if the alternative is none.

As long as there is stuff that burns people can cook.
People are inventive, especially in times of adversity. Not everybody has proper hiking skills, but once that is needed they learn from others that do.

I really don't see the problem.

I envy your optimism.

But ... no power = no internet. After the first 8 hours, no cell towers. After 3 or 4 days, maybe a week at the outside, no fiber switching infrastructure.

It seems that during the last decade we have slid down the knowledge mountain ... everyone relies on the internet to tell them how to do things, and youtube to show them how to do it.

Without internet, I don't see most people being able to do more than plug their now-useless phone into a USB connector on a packaged solar panel.

[sendler]

Will all of the local compressors and regulators continue to supply natural gas with an extended electrical outage?
.
"The good news is that some of the main compressor stations, feeding the large interstate pipelines, are typically fueled by natural gas and generate their power with it, to keep operations running. Gas-fueled compressors could be more widely used throughout the system, but they are noisy and have environmental implications. So in urban areas, the gas distribution companies typically use electric pumps and compressors to bring gas to the consumer. It’s not hard to see where the problem lies here. No electricity, no gas supply.
'
https://geekprepper.com/how-long-wil...t-electricity/
.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

That's assuming everyone keeps staring at their fridge for months instead of searching for alternatives, working to restore power in key areas, eating canned food, etc.

A lot of food that gets shipped frozen can be canned as well. People like their food 'fresh', but would take canned or dried if the alternative is none.

As long as there is stuff that burns people can cook.
People are inventive, especially in times of adversity. Not everybody has proper hiking skills, but once that is needed they learn from others that do.

I really don't see the problem.

Almost no one cans food any more. The only people I know who still can are my mom and that part of the family.

With out power or gas how does all that refrigerated food get canned by people who don't know how to do it or have the supplies?
Everyone who has had home canned food during some disaster canned it before the disaster.

The problem is natural gas infrastructure is almost wholly powered by nature gas it's self, some ares may continue to see gas service for quite some time. But the control systems for the long distance distribution systems and that power the natural gas refineries needs comes from utility power.
I work with people who are former oil and gas plant ops, they say once the backups run out of diesel 90 to 95% of people lose gas.
You can hope that it keeps working or listen to the guys who have worked in the refineries and distribution stations.
There is a large natural gas distribution station to my south, it has a large 100 to 200kv power line going to it, this place is in the middle of no where, I know they don't need a medium distance transmission line and a substation to keep the lights on.

There was a bill introduced to the Senate in 2010 to mandate that natural gas infrastructure be made independent of the power grid but it failed to pass.
If natural gas infrastructure was inherently designed to work with out the electrical grid why the bill?

When the next large coronal mass ejection hits earth the power just doesn't go out and get turned back on.
There are something like 1,000 very large distribution transformers, ones that are the size of a house that make the power grid work. When the suns energetic particle storm energies the power lines designed to run at a half million volts AC are energized with several million volts DC these transformers are going to melt down. There are no spares, each one is custom made. I have seen these melt down, the power company trucks in smaller transformers and wires them up temporarily for up to a year while a new transformer gets made, usually in china or south Korea.

Something like 1/3 of US power comes from natural gas. With out power the natural gas grid fails, with out natural gas the power gird won't be able to start back up to full capacity.
You get into a really tight spot really quick when this stuff stops working.

In 2016 I believe it was was a large CME just barely missed earth. There was no plan. The plan was "hope it doesn't hit".

[NeilBlanchard]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

No twice over. Using the sun to boil water to make electricity does not make sense, because photovoltaics are a lot more efficient, and can easily be installed on your roof. Using nuclear reactions does make sense, because (for a lot of reasons) you sometimes need more than you can get from the sun, and (unlike coal or other fossil fuels) nuclear reactions do this with minimal side effects, like screwing up the climate.

Thermal solar is much more efficient than PV. And thermal is less expensive, too.

[sendler]

Solar heated water doesn't make electricity well.

[redpoint5]

Yeah, I'd expect thermal to be more efficient 'cause it wouldn't take much to beat the paltry 20% efficiency of PV. Would be neat if there were some way to turn the heat gathered by the PV panels into useful energy while reducing the panel temperatures.

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by sendler

Will all of the local compressors and regulators continue to supply natural gas with an extended electrical outage?
.
"The good news is that some of the main compressor stations, feeding the large interstate pipelines, are typically fueled by natural gas and generate their power with it, to keep operations running. Gas-fueled compressors could be more widely used throughout the system, but they are noisy and have environmental implications. So in urban areas, the gas distribution companies typically use electric pumps and compressors to bring gas to the consumer. It’s not hard to see where the problem lies here. No electricity, no gas supply.
'
https://geekprepper.com/how-long-wil...t-electricity/
.

I expect that each area has better/worse coverage with the natural gas driven compressors. I didn't intend to state that EVERYONE was going to continue to have natural gas feeds.

I've been out of the control system consulting world for 15 years. Things may have changed. Circa Y2K I can tell you what our local utilities did. We had people investigating what equipment would continue to run after Y2K and what equipment would not. And I'm nosy, so I asked a bunch of questions that were not directly related to Y2K.

Our electrical grid (here in Saskatchewan) has lost a lot of resiliency. We have equipment that was designed to run for 25 years and has had 2 life extension projects already ... and they are still 10 years past their replacement date. This was not in a report. I was at the stations and worked on some of the gear. Some is older than I am. Built well, maintained, but still old and everything fails eventually. Some has newer add-on, or upgraded controls on older systems .. but those systems are only as good as the engineer that did the update. Did they cover all of the bases? Or just the ones that they were TOLD about?

Our natural gas distribution is more modern. As things wear out, they get upgraded. Compressors wear, parts get hard to get, capital replaces them with larger units. The natural gas in the system ... 'in transit' to customers .. is quite large. We have a large land area, few customers, and *LOTS* of big distribution pipes. Our utility guys told me that if everything else failed on Y2K they were still good for a month, without anyone being able to get to work. It may be less now, it may be more.

Communications is resilient on failure of fiber, or individual power supplies, or a particular vendor's equipment (if all of one vendor's equipment caught a virus at the same time). Local power backup *WAS* limited ... hopefully that got upgraded in the last 15 years. Each cell tower was mandated to have 8 hours backup power. Some went in with much more since it was expected that there would be a bunch more equipment added to the tower and they still needed 8 hours runtime. The main fabric will stay up for maybe a week or 2. After that, not likely.

Your situation is not likely the same.

[Grant-53]

The compressors around here are powered by large diesel engines fueled by natural gas.

[thingstodo]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

...
The problem is natural gas infrastructure is almost wholly powered by nature gas it's self, some ares may continue to see gas service for quite some time. But the control systems for the long distance distribution systems and that power the natural gas refineries needs comes from utility power.

The control systems set target flow rates, max pressures, minimum speeds. Isolated compressors have enough local intelligence to avoid rupturing their discharge piping, sucking the walls in on the supply piping, etc. At least, the ones that I have been involved in do. The people who program pipeline controls don't change much stuff, even if it sounds like a good idea. I'd bet that the controls are still the same as I remember ...

I work with people who are former oil and gas plant ops, they say once the backups run out of diesel 90 to 95% of people lose gas.

There are no natural gas compressors, at least there were not, inside city limits that run from the gas. They were all electric. Maybe due to noise? The people in the cities may not have natural gas ... but the boilers in apartment buildings and condo complexes need electricity anyway. To run the pumps and the fans. So they would be out of luck even if they had natural gas .. unless they have a fireplace maybe. They certainly would not have water.

There was a bill introduced to the Senate in 2010 to mandate that natural gas infrastructure be made independent of the power grid but it failed to pass.
If natural gas infrastructure was inherently designed to work with out the electrical grid why the bill?

I guess we had some designers that were a bit more paranoid .. or less paranoid .. or whatever.

Good info - thanks!

[oil pan 4]

That's one of the reasons I said no to natural gas and went with propane.
Really to make natural gas ever be worth it I would have to have it installed which would run $1k to $2k, would have to get a natural gas heater which would cost at least $1,800 just to buy the unit not including the install, $500 for a natural gas water heater, up to $500 for a gas dryer and $600 to $1,200 for a natural gas stove.
That surcharge during the summer really eats up winter heating savings.

I'm going to keep the heat pump. I installed a wood and coal furnace, to reduce winter heating costs I have a gas dryer that I don't use I will convert it over to propane this is more of an off grid thing and want to get a propane stove.
So far I have three 100lb propane tanks I bought used and had filled for the price of 1 new tank filled.
Then this year I plan on also getting a little wood stove or pellet burner for the other end of the house.