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Comment by booboofixer | Hacker News Reader

If you have lived in a country with load-shedding and have experienced this before, as far as your average household goes, 3 hours without power is barely an inconvenience. If the winters are harsh though, probably not as easy.

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> If you have lived in a country with load-shedding and have experienced this before, as far as your average household goes, 3 hours without power is barely an inconvenience.

I live in the US (TX) where load shedding is rare, but I did lose power from roughly 11:30a yesterday until ~11:30 today due to a snafu with the power company. Discovered this just prior to my 12pm Zoom meeting.

Three hours while I sleep matters not. Three hours when I need my wifi for work is quite annoying.

A more robust energy supply should be the goal, but better failure modes would also be of value.

Texas is disconnected from the national power grid even though it would help.

"According to an analysis by the American Council on Renewable Energy, each additional gigawatt of transmission capacity connecting the Texas power grid with neighboring states could have saved nearly $1 billion and prevented blackouts in around 200,000 Texas homes during Winter Storm Uri last year."

"House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that the state’s denizens would prefer a prolonged blackout over federal regulators requiring changes to the system. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/14/texas-national-power...

It seems like Texas having a robust power supply is second to ideological virtue signaling by republicans

AFAIK there isn't a national power grid in America- there are at least 5 or so State+ size grids, with loads of smaller ones and a whole bunch of interconnects. I'm fairly sure Texas (ERCOT) has interconnects to other grids.

5 grids (of which Texas is one), and they're not even just US ones - we share with Canada: https://i.cbc.ca/1.5921020.1613772812!/fileImage/httpImage/i...

They're then further subdivided into operators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss...

In February of last year, a winter storm led to Texas having multi-day power outages, exasperated by the fact that ERCOT does not connect to any other grids.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection#Ties, the Texas grid has DC ties to the Eastern grid, and similar ties into Mexico.

Strictly speaking - 3 DC ties (from some cursory searching, they seem to only be used for power export) and 1 AC tie, that has only ever been used once. Texas is technically, but not meaningfully, connected to neighboring power grids.

I saw the term used to describe the various interconnected states but I think it's used because federal regulations can apply if one states connects with at least another, hence national

A more robust grid is the solution. But, in the meantime, you can do what I did and put all of my network gear on a battery so it continues to function for about an hour after a power failure. That gives me enough time to wrap up most meetings and start up the generator or head to a cafe, etc if I need more than that.

Bonus, I use Power over Ethernet access points and security cameras in my house, so even my cameras and the wifi access point at the other side of my house still functions perfectly during a power failure. I plan to add an additional battery which should help the system work for up to 4 hours without grid power.

> A well-insulated wall, being necessary for the warmth of a free House, the right of the people to keep and bear R15, shall not be infringed.

We lost our furnace during the winter and it took us about a week to realize it, because the house lost heat so slowly. 3 hours should be nothing unless you've no insulation at all, in which case you have other problems.

Sadly no amount of insulation can keep your internet working.

I'm really disappointed we didn't go for telco-like quality for internet communications.

It would be really nice if all the POPs and DSLAMS and stuff ran on -40v so all you had to do was put your modem and router on a UPS and keep your internet up when the power dropped.

And yet, nobody makes bare-copper ethernet cables...

Depending where you live, a cell phone might work as a reasonable backup, along with a USB battery.

Here’s a funny story: the Uk has the worst insulated homes in Europe and we stopped most of the incentives to improve them in 2010 because “we couldn’t afford it” and now we’re on the hook for billions.

It is basically never cold enough to die of cold in the UK. Winter death "surges" are just death by NHS. Anyway insulation is only worth bothering with if you give up on ventilation (excepting expensive heat-recovery mechanical ventilation very few people have in any country) which is far more important - being a bit chilly is easily fixed with tweed but lack of fresh air really fucks you up. Turn off the heat, open a bloody window and put a jacket on!

I for one am grateful the UK managed to keep loads of nice Victorian townhouses because the Luftwaffe weren't that great at their jobs. They're nice, proper high ceilings and woodwork.

I agree with you that the government energy subsidy we have now is appalling. Should be dumped immediately. I'm paying £15/mo less than I did before - this is the most stupid use of national debt ever devised, I would rather pay what energy actually costs than be forced to be complicit in this.

Wow, this sounds like some exaggerated British stereotype. “You don’t die from it, it’s fine.”

Sadly people with this viewpoint are in government, which is really going to screw over people who live in the real world.

There is nobody with this viewpoint in government. Quite the opposite, the government are running up huge debt subsidising the hell out of people's gas consumption, incentivising them to gobble it, which raises the risk of it running out as mentioned in the linked article. Why do you prefer this? It seems much more disruptive.

Heat recovery ventilation is standard in new construction housing here. Retrofitting decentralized heat recovery ventilation is not that expensive, units starting around €300 with €1000 for the really nice ones. With current gas prices you can earn back the cost of insulation and ventilation changes in less than 5 years.

Ironically, you have to keep rooms quite hot to have anything to recover - and you're committing quite a few kWh to run the ventilators. If your house is new enough to seal properly and you really do want to be hot indoors, it's definitely more economical. Some big "if"s there. But skipping the heat and ventilating naturally is free :-) Can't beat that. It wouldn't be a practical plan in places that regularly get serious cold, but Britain is not one of those places, barring a few Scots mountaintops.

Just to be clear, it's not just "I literally froze to death" thousands of people die in the Uk each year due to the cold, and that was before the cost to heat your home more than doubled. Whilst you appreciate the architecture, the rest of us will appreciate not freezing to death.

Tosh! Thousands more people die in winter, not from cold, probably because they're stupid enough to see NHS doctors. They don't actually die of cold in a country where uninsulated old houses rarely even form ice on the inside of the windows these days. Even that isn't harmful; you should try it, it might make you realise you are much less fragile than you believe. In mentioning the architecture I was merely referencing that Britain having less-insulated houses than some countries is not some moral failing but an historical accident - but if I could trade all modern houses for beautiful ones I would do so in an instant. Even without heating they do not get cold enough in winter to kill you; if you transplanted them to Poland they would, of course, but we don't do that.

I am jealous of the build quality of your house. And/or your mild winter weather.

It really had neither - winter was ending so it wasn't -40 out, but thermal mass is HUUUUGE.

Or at least there are much better built and insulated houses around here now.

In South Africa we've been having load shedding for a record amount of time this year. Worst it's been so far is 2 2hr slots and one 4hr slot every 24 hours (so 8 off per day)

It's not winter though, and we tend not to heat our homes like Europe.

WiFi and fibre boxes are on DC UPSs so working online is OK. Hard to do laundry and run the dishwasher though when power's only on for 4 hours at a time.

Had DC UPSs where I’m from as well, they’re great for wifi and simple lighting.

Or, if you live in California. 3 hours is nothing! A while ago, we went for a week without power in the northern part of the state.

Why?

California's energy policy needs a little work. Their environmental laws made creating power plants impossible in their state, so they almost exclusively purchase power from other states at sub-optimal rates for any new power demand.

Edit: phrasing and tone

In 2021, California produced about 200 TWh in-state and imported about 85 TWh, meaning they imported about 30% of total electricity. Not exactly "almost exclusively" imports.

Also, California regulations certainly permit building new power plants (and many new plants have been built in the past decade), just not new coal fired plants.

https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...

> just not new coal fired plants.

Or hydro-electric, or nuclear, or anything that would have meaningful impact on the state's situation.

More solar and wind are great, but they do not respond well to surges in demand, and there is no current way to store energy either.

So some impressive total production number might sound great, but the reality does not follow unfortunately. For a non-trivial portion of the state, electricity isn't a guarantee throughout the year anymore.

When I lived in LA it was frustrating explaining (to my out of state friends) how bad the power situation was. I cancelled many a DnD game because of it.

I eventually got so sick of it , that I left the state for good. I've never been happier.

If you chew through the numbers you just posted, you will find that imports from out of state are increasing year over year.

Hence, my statement "they almost exclusively purchase power from other states at sub-optimal rates for any new power demand"

PG&E, our regulated monopoly electrical utility, turns the power off during hot, windy days during the summer so that they can avoid liability for starting wildfires. They never maintained their equipment, so it fails and starts massive fires.

Fascinating

That's nothing.

You want to learn what to do during winter power outages?

Join us down in Houston! Or anywhere in Texas for that matter.

I lived in California for 30 years and the only time I remember any serious issues with power was back in 2000-2001 during the famous electricity crisis. But for some reason this idea endures that California has problems with their grid. Do they really? Because other than that one acute crisis I didn't have a problem with blackouts (that I can remember) for 20 freaking years. That's a pretty good record. It's a big state, so maybe the Bay Area has just fared better than other regions?

It's been getting worse lately. The average amount of time each residential PG&E customer was without power due to a sustained outage has increased from 1.9 hours/year in 2016 to 3.6 hours/year in 2021.

https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/outages/planning-and-p...

PG&E started voluntarily turning off power to entire towns to avoid fire hazards... fire hazards that were self-made and exist only because of other failures that have piled up for the past few decades.

So the current situation is something along the lines of when the wind blows too much, they shut off the grid. When it blows too little, they shut off the grid. When it gets too hot, they shut off the grid.

It's crazy that this is happening in California of all places, but decades of poor policy decisions led to this and it'll take quite a bit of time to undo.

I used to live half a mile from a power plant in another state and I had far more outages there than I've had in California. That said, there are constant incentives to reduce peak energy usage, and there were a couple weeks this year where they almost did rolling blackouts. So, they still struggle with meeting demand sometimes.

Stanford had a big power outage recently (this summer) that took out student accommodation, server rooms, etc... due to wild fires.

Maybe a stupid question.

What happens to your freezer items in a country with continous load shedding? Do people just waste that food or are the load shedding periods short enough to avoid thawing?

Freezers are well insulated. As long as nobody opened it up for too long, things stayed good and frozen for 3 to 4 hours without power. However, we have thrown food from the fridge away after 8 or 10 hours power outages, and food from the deep freezer after whole day power outages.

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