Post storm Texans check-in

[EMom]

Finally got water after 6 days without and was thrilled to have no burst pipes. Lost electricity for probably 4 days, then it recovered. Was scheduled for a COVID vaccination, and have been told it will take place next week.

 

[zoo2tycoon]

My son thankfully never lost power but was without water from Tuesday through Saturday in downtown Houston. Thankfully he had bottled water. Filled toilet like other residents at complex with pool water. Water restored late yesterday.

 

[Cheburashka]

thrilled to have no burst pipes

Same here!

 

[Cheburashka]

I am from Texas and this is the first time that I have heard of rolling blackouts. If they happened before, they were not in my part of the state.

I've experienced rolling blackouts in the Austin area before, but only during peak summer heat & it was nothing like what happened last week, which of course was actually a severe blackout, not rolling blackouts.

 

[aggiedog]

Day 8 of no water. No idea when it's coming back. The local well/pump/station is currently under inspection to see what's working and what isn't. The water district is handing out drinking water and the fire department is coming around dispensing non-potable water into bins, etc, that you must bring yourself.

Our county seat has water. It's a town of about 5,000, and they have a small hospital. I'd say half the rest of the county is still without water.

 

[seashoreCM]

Did they really call 30 minutes on 15 minutes off a rolling blackout? I would call that experimentation or unexpected overload tripping. To me a rolling blackout once they got it down pat would be a few hours on, then an hour or two off, then a few hours on, etc.

 

[ToddlerMom311]

Did they really call 30 minutes on 15 minutes off a rolling blackout? I would call that experimentation or unexpected overload tripping. To me a rolling blackout once they got it down pat would be a few hours on, then an hour or two off, then a few hours on, etc.

I wish I was exaggerating - it was tortuous! Here's a list of times someone who lives in my area made.

 

[sk!mom]

For my city, this epic storm followed a waterless week due to an Erin Brockovich style water contamination the week before. We have been in the house for two weeks but school/work is a go for tomorrow.

We never lost power so our pipes are fine. We were without water the first week for only 2 days at our house. Storm week, I lost track of how many days. After two weeks, it’s all a blur. This week our water was restored late Thursday but we still are under a boil notice. The city begged us to conserve until finally late today the whole
City has water again. I finally drained the bathtubs today. We had filled them to use in the toilet as our water was shutting down.

 

[Nicolepa]

Did they really call 30 minutes on 15 minutes off a rolling blackout? I would call that experimentation or unexpected overload tripping. To me a rolling blackout once they got it down pat would be a few hours on, then an hour or two off, then a few hours on, etc.

Our area started out 30 minutes on and an hour off. Then it went to 30 on 30 off, but there was one blip in the middle of the night that was only 8 minutes. I didn't even get the pool ice broken up before it went out again. Some times it was 2 hours off 30 on.

 

[gopher101]

We lost power from Monday evening to Friday night. Water stayed on though.

I am scared to open my electric bill. Take your electric bill of auto pay people. A coworker had a 3333 electric bill.

 

[MrJT]

Checking in from San Antonio here. My house never lost power, I must be on the same grid as a nearby hospital. Was without water for a couple of days. Luckily we found that losing water was a possibility, so we started filling our tubs, to use as toilet water, and before we could fully fill them, our water was gone. We still don't have drinkable water coming through our pipes yet. Hopefully that will be resolved soon.

 

[MrJT]

One last note, I needed to buy a loaf of bread last night, and I had to go into a Walmart and 2 HEBs before I found one.

 

[aggiedog]

We got water last night, though at reduced pressure and it's under a boil water notice. I'll take that. So nice to be able to shower again and flush a toilet without hauling a bucket of water from the front porch. We're supposed to hold off on washing machines and dish washers until this weekend. I'm also not dumping out my bins of water on the porch until I'm confident this will last.

 

[tex1989]

We lost power from Monday evening to Friday night. Water stayed on though.

I am scared to open my electric bill. Take your electric bill of auto pay people. A coworker had a 3333 electric bill.

As long as you did not sign up to one of those "deals". I was given a sales pitch by a friend of a friend and I know some that started buying "wholesale" power. I begged off and said let me read the contract and I will let you know. Well I read it and right there in black and white it says you will pay the wholesale grid price for electricity where ever it goes. It was literally a daily variable rate and I said no thanks. Up to this point people who had signed up were paying 25 to 30% less than me for electricity. I made that up and am far better off than a lot of them by like thousands of dollars. If you were with a company that has been around and actually generates power and on a fixed rate plan like I am then you were fine. If you signed up to one of the "save you money" plans you are not so happy today.

 

[gopher101]

As long as you did not sign up to one of those "deals". I was given a sales pitch by a friend of a friend and I know some that started buying "wholesale" power. I begged off and said let me read the contract and I will let you know. Well I read it and right there in black and white it says you will pay the wholesale grid price for electricity where ever it goes. It was literally a daily variable rate and I said no thanks. Up to this point people who had signed up were paying 25 to 30% less than me for electricity. I made that up and am far better off than a lot of them by like thousands of dollars. If you were with a company that has been around and actually generates power and on a fixed rate plan like I am then you were fine. If you signed up to one of the "save you money" plans you are not so happy today.

Thankfully I do have a fixed rate plan. I just a feeling the electric companies will try to screw us over.

 

[seashoreCM]

That list of times with ons* and offs five to fifteen minutes apart is not rotating blackouts. It could be part of the repair and restorations procedure.

Hmmmm. My area (part of New Hampshire) has a selectable flat rate plan for natural gas. Seems like I always choose the wrong plan. A few times I to chose the flat rate and the market rate dropped to half of that, or I chose the market rate which rose to twice the flat rate.

Later I was guessing that if market price rose then those choosing the market rate had to help pay for the gas used by those who chose the flat rate, not just pay market rate on the gas they actually used. Or if the market rate dropped, the revenue collected from those on the flat rate would show up as a further reduction of the bills of those on the market rate.

Too bad that so many people did not know how to drain their house plumbing (or could not drain the plumbing). Admittedly they would have to make an up front choice, drain the plumbing versus let the water trickle. Those with water filled or steam operated heating systems would have to drain those systems too. And be able to switch back and forth between (if desired) refilling the plumbing/heating if power returned and drain it all again if power went out again for an extended time.

* Aye, ayes; yes, yeses; nay, nays; no, noes.

 

[tex1989]

Thankfully I do have a fixed rate plan. I just a feeling the electric companies will try to screw us over.

Stay with your plan, much safer. I work in the Energy business (oil and gas). I work with a lot of Traders who like to lead their lives the way they work, making deals, making money and saving money (?). So there were a lot of people playing the wholesale game. For their sake I hope they switched off the plan prior to last week. What you do have to understand though is the people selling the high price electricity are not the "power companies" depending on how you define the term. There are power generators who run the plants and make electricity, transmission companies who own, maintain, and transmit the power (many of theses are the old regulated companies who still do both like TXU, and Centerpoint) and then there are the Retail sales companies. The latter are the ones charging the outrageous rates. All they do is go into the market and buy wholesale power and then turn around and find end use customers to sell to. They are a small trading shop with no assets and very low overhead. They have end use customers sign contracts that say they will pay the going wholesale rate plus something. They then go buy wholesale power and make the spread. As a customer you signed a contract and agreed to pay the wholesale price where ever it went. It spells it out in black and white in the contract, hence the reason I never jumped on board because I read the contract.

I know this is a lot of information but I explain it only because people are lumping "power companies" into one group of bad people doing so many bad things when in reality there are good and bad in the group. If you want to really understand the genesis of the whole problem you really have to go back to deregulation back in the late 90's early 2000's to see how and why the system failed us. It is not a simple story.

 

[MrJT]

Quick update, the Boil Water notice was lifted for all of San Antonio yesterday. I now have a lot of bottled water in the house.

 

[ToddlerMom311]

That list of times with ons* and offs five to fifteen minutes apart is not rotating blackouts. It could be part of the repair and restorations

They were supposed to be rolling blackouts but they got out of control. The energy company here actually acknowledged the automated blackout system wasn't working as planned. They started to manually roll blackouts and those were more reasonable.
sanantonioreport.org/cps-energy-power-outages

 

[ToddlerMom311]

What is truly frightening is how close the entire state came to a full blackout. We were five minutes away from what could have been a catastrophe unlike anything we have ever seen.
ttps://news4sanantonio.com/news/local/ercot-holds-emergency-board-meeting-to-discuss-grids-power-failures