Stay Warm and Safe the Next Few Days

[03Lightningrocks]

It just so happens that larger homes are far less likely to have heat pump systems because a heat pump would never heat a 2500 plus square foot home. I get so tired of everyone looking to be a victim. Next thing we will see is morons playing the race card.

I have to respectfully disagree here. My 2500 square foot home has been heated by a heat pump without a glitch for over 23 years. My wife & I built the house and it is properly insulated. The heat pump rarely calls in the auxiliary electric strips (Last few days exception).

I have been servicing HVAC systems for 35 years and know what I am talking about. Your home would heat much more effeciently, and cheaper with gas. One exception would be if you live in an area without natural gas lines(propane can cost as much as using electricity to heat a home). Maybe I should have worded it differently. I was tired from no sleep for so long. I should have said never heat a home as effeciently as gas heat. But the main point of the post was that larger homes use natural gas for heating the vast majority of the time.

I would agree, except that I switched to Griddy a few years back.
It’s been great until two days ago. I have not lost power, as I am near a hospital. However I believe I am now paying $500 a day to run the small fan on my gas furnace. At $10 a KWh things get expensive quickly. Griddy is not telling me what I am using or at what price for the last two days. They say it’s because they have not gotten the information from the supplier. Usually I know every morning from the previous day. I am just really glad I switched from electric heat to gas heat last year.

Imagine what it would cost to run 15KW of electric heat strips pulling 60 amps at your rate! Holy cow! 10 dollars a KWH??? My god!

I don’t know if he strips are 220 v cause you get the square root of 3 thing but 120v 15kw heat strips would be 15x 10 = $150 an hour to run. I got my update for Sunday it was “only” $115.00 for Sunday only. I’m probably not the only one, but bills are in number of new handguns, college tuition is in terms of number of new Corvettes.

All electric heaters are 220 volt. Well, at least the ones located in a blower supplying heat to your home. The plug in space heaters are a different matter.

[jrs_diesel]

I don’t know if he strips are 220 v cause you get the square root of 3 thing but 120v 15kw heat strips would be 15x 10 = $150 an hour to run. I got my update for Sunday it was “only” $115.00 for Sunday only. I’m probably not the only one, but bills are in number of new handguns, college tuition is in terms of number of new Corvettes.

Root 3 only applies if your trying to do calculations on a 3 phase power system. It is exceedingly rare for a residence to have 3 phase service, most common here in the states is 240 Volt single phase (also called split phase) service.

The heat strips in a heat pump system would be a 240 Volt load to keep the wire and breaker size down. (63 amps @ 240 Volts vs 125 amps @ 120 Volts for a 15 kW load). Practically speaking, all large installed electric loads in a home are going to run on 240 Volts.

And I agree, $10 per kW/hr is absurd

We've been lucky in that our power hasn't gone out, though I have my generator ready in case it does.

[Take Down Sicko]

I will be looking to buy a generator maybe this weekend. Any advise on what i need to look for in a generator and can you run an electric space heater on one of those things?

[jrs_diesel]

All depends on how many heaters, and any other loads you want to run, like refrigerators, freezers, lighting, and any critical loads you have like a water well pump. But yes, you can run space heaters on a generator.

Most portable 120 Volt space heaters top out at 1,500 Watts, so if you want to run one space heater, you need at least that much in a generator. You add the Watts together of what you would like to run, and factor in some overhead, to figure the size of generator you want. Electric motors need extra to start rotating, and less while they are running at normal speed.

Generators typically have two ratings, the running rating and the surge rating. The running rating is for continuously running loads and is what the generator can support before being overloaded. The surge rating is what it is able to put out before undervolting (a bad thing for most devices) for a brief period of time, like when the compressor on your fridge first starts.

Example, if I wanted to run three space heaters, a fridge, a 42 inch TV, and a couple of lights, here is what I would need:

1,500 Watt space heaters x3 = 4,500 Watts
Typical fridge draws about 600-800 Watts while running, about 400-500 more for starting
42 inch TV is about 120 Watts
Energy efficient lights (like LEDs or compact florescent) draw about 5-15 Watts per bulb, lets figure 4 lights at 10 Watts

4,500 + 700 + 120 + 40 = 5,360 Watts. Add a little overhead on the continuous rating and in this example you'd want a generator with no less than a 5,500 Watt continuous rating, and at least 6,000 Watt surge capacity.

Portable generators tend to come in two flavors, the normal type, and the inverter type. The normal ones are cheaper and louder, but can put out more power than the inverter generators. The inverter types are more expensive, but a lot quieter, and tend to be limited to around 3,000 Watts in the larger models. There are also the whole home standby generators which can run off of propane or your natural gas utility if available. These are usually professionally installed and wired to it's own sub panel and automatic transfer switch to run some (but not all) loads in your home.

One thing to factor is fuel. The tank on portable generators will usually allow a runtime of about 8-12 hours depending on how much load you put on it. You'll need a supply of gas cans to feed one for en extended period of time, or to run the generator periodically in order to stretch your fuel supply while also keeping your food cold.

DO NOT backfeed your house with a portable generator! Is is not safe to do that at all. Very high risk of putting power back into the utility system, this has killed linesmen and utility workers thinking they were working on dead/downed power lines.

Hope this helps!

[Take Down Sicko]

Jrs_Diesel, That is indeed very helpful to me. It gives me a great starting point on what to look for. I'm hoping to find what i need at Home Dopey if they havent sold out. One thing i forgot to ask is how long of an extension cord can i use on something like the refrigerator and heater. Thanks for all your helpful advice.

[carlson1]

I use a Honda EU 3000is on my 5th wheel when traveling and staying on Walmart parking lots. It runs my while 5th wheel which has two roof top A/C’s and fridge. I kept it at the house when I came back on my last trip. My power has not gone out, but I am ready with fresh oil and gas in generator. The Honda I have is supposed to be their “quiet” model and it quieter than most, but it isn’t silent.

[MaduroBU]

Blaming heat pumps is not exactly correct or fair. Heat pumps are the overhwelming best choice for heating/cooling, but not the way that they are commonly (read "cheaply") done in Texas. I learned about them because my relatives in Nebraska, very old farming people, used one to heat their house through winters wherein every day for 4 months looked like our past 3 or worse. The major difference in types of heat pumps is the heat sink/source. Air is the cheapest thing to move heat to and from, and the object that we commonly call a home AC is really the heat exchanger or condenser coil. That noisy fan and radiator outside of everyone's house moves heat from the inside of the house to the air outside against a thermal gradient to cool the home and moves heat from the outside into the home to heat it against a thermal gradient to heat the home. That process uses evaporation and condensation to achieve this, and uses a large pump to do so, typically a ~5kW electric motor. This process is often efficient because each watt of power can move at worst 2 or at best 4 units of energy for every one consumed.

However, the efficiency falls apart as the thermal gradient becomes too large. As the hill that the air conditioner/heat pump must climb grows, it can start moving less than 1 unit of heat energy for every unit of electricity expended. This is a big problem for several reasons. First, had the heater just burned gas in a furnace, it is guaranteed to always get the same one unit of heating value from the gas; it will never get 2, but it will always get one. Second, a new combined cycle natural gas power plant is about 58% efficient and you're likely to lose ~5% of that in the transmission lines, so that each unit of natural gas burned at a power plant and then used to move heat at your house is only a net positive if you move (1/(0.58*0.95=) 1.8 units of heat for each unit of eletrical energy used by the heat pump. In very cold temperatures, you'll move a lot less than that. This is why people are suggesting that natural gas heating is more efficient: the statement is only true sometimes, but under those circumstances it's VERY true.

Heat pumps have a "solution" for this issue. If the outdoor air that the heat pump is trying to remove heat from is too cold, then why not warm it up with a resistance heater? This is very inefficient, as you're applying an electric heater directly to the atmosphere (albeit right in front of your outdoor heat exchanger), but it is better than an efficiency of zero. So your heat pump is now pulling 5kw for the condenser motor and another 3 for the heating strips, giving you far higher load than even at the height of summer. When one person does that, it's emergency heating. When a bunch of folks do it it's a demand spike that happens once a decade.

Now, you'll recall that I said that heat pumps are wonderful, but the paragraphs above don't really support that conclusion. If you have a heat source/sink that stays basically the same temperature year round, a heat pump is phenomenal, and can move over 4 units of energy into or out of your house for every unit of electricity that it uses. Air is absolutely terrible for that: it is always hot when your AC wants it to be cold and cold when your heat pump wants it to be hot. If only such a thermal battery existed.....and yet one does. It is known as "the earth", and if you dig a hole about 2 feet deep in Texas, you'll find a giant thermal battery that varies between 65-75F depending upon geography and varies about 8F over the course of the year. Ground source heat exchangers instead of the air heat exchanges fix this problem. It is common practice to cheap out and use the air unit like everyone else, which is fine....right up until it isn't.

Like so many things, we have met the enemy, and he is us.

[03Lightningrocks]

I wasn't "blaming" heat pumps. It was not a statement of "heat pumps bad". Here in the Plano area neighborhoods with predominantly heat pumps were being shut down for 12-16 hours at a time while neighborhoods with gas heat were getting 4 hour shut downs. The reason for shutting down a gris was to keep electricity demand down to a level that would avert a complete system wide shut down. A neighborhood that is predominantly heat pump does presently have an electricity demand 8-10 times higher than the same size neighborhood with gas heating. It was simply a possible explanation for why they were shutting down some neighborhoods for much longer than others. They seem to be getting it more averaged out now but we will see what happens. As for ground source heat pumps, it is close to impossible to install ground source heat pumps in a suburb due to limitations on area available for digging. Sorry if I offended anyone who has a heat pump or friend with one.

[RPBrown]

It just so happens that larger homes are far less likely to have heat pump systems because a heat pump would never heat a 2500 plus square foot home. I get so tired of everyone looking to be a victim. Next thing we will see is morons playing the race card.

I have to respectfully disagree here. My 2500 square foot home has been heated by a heat pump without a glitch for over 23 years. My wife & I built the house and it is properly insulated. The heat pump rarely calls in the auxiliary electric strips (Last few days exception).

I have been servicing HVAC systems for 35 years and know what I am talking about. Your home would heat much more effeciently, and cheaper with gas. One exception would be if you live in an area without natural gas lines(propane can cost as much as using electricity to heat a home). Maybe I should have worded it differently. I was tired from no sleep for so long. I should have said never heat a home as effeciently as gas heat. But the main point of the post was that larger homes use natural gas for heating the vast majority of the time.

I have about 16 years on you
But you are correct that gas heat is the best, most efficient way to heat your home. These companies that are selling duel fuel heat pump systems are doing a big injustice to their customers IMHO.
Although I don’t plan n moving, I learned a long time ago that I will not own a home that doesn’t have gas to it for both heating and cooking

[03Lightningrocks]

It just so happens that larger homes are far less likely to have heat pump systems because a heat pump would never heat a 2500 plus square foot home. I get so tired of everyone looking to be a victim. Next thing we will see is morons playing the race card.

I have to respectfully disagree here. My 2500 square foot home has been heated by a heat pump without a glitch for over 23 years. My wife & I built the house and it is properly insulated. The heat pump rarely calls in the auxiliary electric strips (Last few days exception).

I have been servicing HVAC systems for 35 years and know what I am talking about. Your home would heat much more effeciently, and cheaper with gas. One exception would be if you live in an area without natural gas lines(propane can cost as much as using electricity to heat a home). Maybe I should have worded it differently. I was tired from no sleep for so long. I should have said never heat a home as effeciently as gas heat. But the main point of the post was that larger homes use natural gas for heating the vast majority of the time.

I have about 16 years on you
But you are correct that gas heat is the best, most efficient way to heat your home. These companies that are selling duel fuel heat pump systems are doing a big injustice to their customers IMHO.
Although I don’t plan n moving, I learned a long time ago that I will not own a home that doesn’t have gas to it for both heating and cooking

Same here. When I bought my home in 1996, if I walked into a home with electric heat or a heat pump, I would immediately tell the realtor, we can leave now. I wouldn't even look at the house. LOL

I don't know if you remember but back in the mid eighties, the electric utility companies realized they were going to have no demand in the winter and heavy demand in the summers. They started offering huge incentives to builders who would install heat pumps. Here in Plane there were entire neighborhod that did not even have a gas line running through them to tap into.

[jrs_diesel]

Jrs_Diesel, That is indeed very helpful to me. It gives me a great starting point on what to look for. I'm hoping to find what i need at Home Dopey if they havent sold out. One thing i forgot to ask is how long of an extension cord can i use on something like the refrigerator and heater. Thanks for all your helpful advice.

Glad to help You should size an electric cord for what you intend to run, and how far from your power source (generator in this case). Space heaters will be the biggest draw (window unit A/C in the summer would have a similar draw). 1,500 Watts @ 120 Volts is 12.5 amps.

Cord length is typically in multiples of 25 feet, up to 100 feet max. The gauge of the wire (wire thickness) is another factor. With heavier loads you want a heavier gauge wire, as thinner wire runs the risk of overheating the wire. Wire gauge numbers work just like shotgun gauges, where thicker wires have smaller numbers. 14 AWG (American Wire Guage) is a common cord size, 12 AWG is thicker, 10 AWG s even more thicker. Bigger cords cost more though. Your bigger loads you’ll want on a 12 or 10 gauge cord depending on distance (use a thicker cord if going 75 or 100 feet). The fridge can run on a 14 gauge cord if near the generator, but I would feed it with a 12 gauge cord if over 50 feet.

Also with the larger loads, use one cord per device so you don’t overload the wire (fire hazard). Splitters can be used with light loads like phone chargers, smaller TV’s, energy efficient lighting, etc. Coffee pots are big loads, as they usually run about 1,200 - 1,500 Watts, and that is for both regular drip machines and the Keurig style machines.

[Paladin]

Texas didn't learn its lesson | Experts say little has changed with winterization of generators since blackouts of 2011

KHOU 11 News also tried to talk to state regulators, but a Public Utility Commission spokesperson said a full review of what went wrong will have to wait. The agency's top priority is getting power restored.

PUC is ducking for cover. Apparently there has been no oversight, so state officials don't even know whats going on. With energy prices dramatically rising, I think a criminal investigation is in order.

[Paladin]

Texas Blackouts Plunge Up To 15 Million People Into Darkness

considering utility companies count outages by "customers" and not actual people - the real number could be north of 15 million people who have been plunged into darkness amid frigid temperatures.

With 27 million people in the state, cutting power to residential areas has left the majority without power.

[flechero]

We just got power back a few min ago... woke up to 51 degrees in the house!!!

Groceries are on the patio here too.... will be carrying it all back inside if power stays on another hour or so.

Yep. Plano is sending out emergency calls telling us this could last through Tuesday with the power outages. Mine just came back on after six and a half hours off. I am feverishly recharging all my devices. LOL. It was 53 in my house when it came back on. I may start burning furniture in my fire place.

Lost power again a few minutes after that post and just got it back, a few cups of coffee ago. They are saying ours is temporary- so enjoying a few creature comforts while we can!

And lost water as the rural supplier is also without power... they say no water expected until the weekend, and that's IF they didn't have major damage from all the frozen pumps and pipes.

Hope all you guys are fairing better with power/water than we are down in the Bell county!

To end on a positive note- my generator fried but a friend in the area has power and loaned us his generator yesterday, so we've been able to get warm and have lights & a couple basic comforts!!

God is good!!

[extremist]

Im In Keller and my power has been out since Monday 530AM. No cycling rolling just blackout. Oncor is worthless in providing answers.

Did they cut off your water? Mine is off.

City of FTW water plant went down on Monday and they put contaminated water into the system that supplies many of the towns on the north side of the city. Roanoke, Westlake, Keller, etc. They're hoping to fix it today. This morning we got a "Boil All Water" message. And at about 1330 they shut the pumps. Managed to fill the tub and we'll boil for a while. I have a Lifestraw setup that can process over 4,500 gallons, just in case.

Water restored today. They say boil order still in effect. As we fill our hot water tanks with "contaminated" water