Rolling Blackouts Question

[Need4Camaro]

Originally Posted by 10scoachrick

I may have missed it....were you without power for a significant time???

Probably about 6 to 8 hours out of a 24 hour period total, some of that happened in the middle of the night while I was sleep. I consider myself to be among the more fortunate ones in this regard as it never got below 50, but when the power was on the HVAC was pretty much doing double duty just to keep the place from freezing over. It came to a point where I had to use the emergency heat which draws about 4x as much power and ditches the heat pump using the coils instead.

[JT24hr]

Originally Posted by Need4Camaro

Electric Bill came in —

Bill Period between 02/08 thru 03/10

2,109 kWh @ $201.15

Last year this time (with HVAC issues)

1,618 kWh @ $159.44

That seems high usage. Do you have a lot of electric appliances, range, etc?

I have a 3300 sq foot 1 story house, gas stove, 2 FT WFH workers, charge an electric car 99% from home, turn on AC whenever I feel hot, landscape lighting, 1 big refrigerator, 1 beverage fridge, 1 7 cu ft freezer in the garage, have multiple air purifiers, etc etc. and my usage is not even close to that. I do try not to leave lights on when I am not in the room however and try not to be wasteful however.

1/13-2/8 - 590 kWh
2/9-3/15 - 699 kWh

[Trainwreck20]

Originally Posted by JT24hr

That seems high usage. Do you have a lot of electric appliances, range, etc?

I have a 3300 sq foot 1 story house, gas stove, 2 FT WFH workers, charge an electric car 99% from home, turn on AC whenever I feel hot, landscape lighting, 1 big refrigerator, 1 beverage fridge, 1 7 cu ft freezer in the garage, etc etc. and my usage is not even close to that.

1/13-2/8 - 590 kWh
2/9-3/15 - 699 kWh

A heat pump that goes into 'emergency' mode is inefficient as all hell, or at least that is my understanding. Also, if the heat was out for periods of time, then the cooling walls will need to be reheated and will use a considerable amount of heat.

[JT24hr]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

A heat pump that goes into 'emergency' mode is inefficient as all hell, or at least that is my understanding. Also, if the heat was out for periods of time, then the cooling walls will need to be reheated and will use a considerable amount of heat.

That is true. I don't know if mine was doing that but I had non-stop rolling blackouts from Tuesday at 2am til Thursday morning or evening (forgot exactly when Thursday). Had heating come on non-stop. I would have power go out for 17 minutes and come back on for 10-15.

[riaelise]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

A heat pump that goes into 'emergency' mode is inefficient as all hell, or at least that is my understanding. Also, if the heat was out for periods of time, then the cooling walls will need to be reheated and will use a considerable amount of heat.

Yup, resulting in super high electric bills as well.

Not a fan of gas otherwise, but I do prefer having a gas furnace.

Amazingly, we've had less usage this year but are paying more due to the ONCOR delivery fee going up. I fully expect ONCOR to raise it again because of the winter storm.

[Need4Camaro]

Originally Posted by JT24hr

That seems high usage. Do you have a lot of electric appliances, range, etc?

I have a 3300 sq foot 1 story house, gas stove, 2 FT WFH workers, charge an electric car 99% from home, turn on AC whenever I feel hot, landscape lighting, 1 big refrigerator, 1 beverage fridge, 1 7 cu ft freezer in the garage, have multiple air purifiers, etc etc. and my usage is not even close to that. I do try not to leave lights on when I am not in the room however and try not to be wasteful however.

1/13-2/8 - 590 kWh
2/9-3/15 - 699 kWh

I also have servers in my house but I turned them off during the storm. Servers + Heat will cost me a pretty penny though. I’ve had the HVAC looked over multiple times last year though after replacing a heat-kit and even had the original installer come out and recheck it. They did find a bad capacitor and replaced it but couldn’t find anything else so for now I’m just dealing with it. When it got cold during the beginning of the storm I called them and they told me it was normal because heat pumps aren’t designed to tolerate extended temps below 30 and their efficiency becomes exponentially weaker the colder it gets so it became a power pig.

Back in ATL the cost for natural gas was MUCH higher than it is here. A 3k sqft home would have costed us about $500 Mo. to keep warm... but out here it seems like Natural Gas is the way to go.

[ScoPro]

It appears the state lege is moving to fix the power grid problems so there are no more massive failures like last month:

https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-poli...-reform-bills/

[Trainwreck20]

Originally Posted by ScoPro

It appears the state lege is moving to fix the power grid problems so there are no more massive failures like last month:

https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-poli...-reform-bills/

I need to look at the wording, but I am curious how it will be 'funded'. I know that we, as the consumer, will and should pay for it. But how to keep that bill to a minimum while getting what we need?

I personally think the lege should mandate a set of standards (weatherization and emergency plan, for starters), have a schedule to meet those standards, and then let their beloved 'free market' take care of passing on the costs.

I fear that with the outage fresh on everones mind, they will add a surcharge to all the bills and give that money back to the power companies. No one will squawk and it really won't be that big, but it is talking out of both sides of your mouth when you have a 'free power market' saving the consumer money and then have the lege basically bail the companies out.

Also not sure how they address the natural gas freezing up issues, although the compressor outages should be relatively easy to take care of.