Like a Bad Penny, I'm Back

[Texas Sheepdawg]

Glad to hear you're okay. We had a severe ice storm here back in the first week of December. I was without electricity for 34 hours and the temps never reached above 25 at my house for several days. The day my power finally came back on my thermostat temp was bottomed out at 40° And the thermometer in my gun room was around 35. As you guys may know, Dallas and the surrounding counties are not really prepared for weather like this, so it took almost two weeks to some folks back on power. The cause for our event was an ice storm. I wished ours was just snow... We got no snow. First ten hours was freezing rain. Followed by about 24 hours of off and on sleet. We had 4" of ice at my AO. I still had ice on the ground ten days after the storm. That's almost unheard of here. The power companies are still dealing with spotty outages due to trees that were weakened by the ice finally breaking and falling on lines.
Fortunately, I got some Cabelas gift cards for Christmas so I invested in a new Coleman stove and a few other survival gadgets. It's events like this that show us where we need to make improvements so you guys out there that are reading this and have not experienced it, let these events show you where you need to focus your time and money, investing in things that may make a difference in life and death WHEN it's your turn.

[paulmark3010]

Glad to hear you're okay. We had a severe ice storm here back in the first week of December. I was without electricity for 34 hours and the temps never reached above 25 at my house for several days. The day my power finally came back on my thermostat temp was bottomed out at 40° And the thermometer in my gun room was around 35. As you guys may know, Dallas and the surrounding counties are not really prepared for weather like this, so it took almost two weeks to some folks back on power. The cause for our event was an ice storm. I wished ours was just snow... We got no snow. First ten hours was freezing rain. Followed by about 24 hours of off and on sleet. We had 4" of ice at my AO. I still had ice on the ground ten days after the storm. That's almost unheard of here. The power companies are still dealing with spotty outages due to trees that were weakened by the ice finally breaking and falling on lines.
Fortunately, I got some Cabelas gift cards for Christmas so I invested in a new Coleman stove and a few other survival gadgets. It's events like this that show us where we need to make improvements so you guys out there that are reading this and have not experienced it, let these events show you where you need to focus your time and money, investing in things that may make a difference in life and death WHEN it's your turn.

Hey, Dawg. You got a tractor on that ranch of yours? You would be surprised how cheap you can get a PTO driven 12KW or 16KW generator. I thought about it myself.

[Nosparks]

FWIW, I am a Master Electrician and work in the industrial side of the business. If you are going to go off the grind in a "arctic" zone. I suggest you buy solar panels for when it is sunny and a inverter style generator for when its not. Use both to charge a large battery bank to actually supply your power. It wont be cheap but you will be in better shape and have a lot less noise to contend with or alert anyone to your presence, if that is necessary. Secondly the inverters use less fuel than any other power generating equipment I have seen.

Tim glad you are surviving up there!! I have family in the upper peninsula. They are struggling as well through that horrendous weather!!

Good luck to all of you Northern folk, I wont complain about the low temps here in Florida!

[Texas Sheepdawg]

Solar Panels here in My part of Texas would get destroyed by the first hail storm. We get up to softball size hail here during the spring and summer months.
And I have a John Deere lawn tractor but no PTO on it. The best option around here is propane powered gennys.

[jerdebson]

I have a 6.5 KW Onan out of a motor home and natural gas to feed it, I just haven't got the NG part up and running yet. Quiet and will run most of the place at once. Cheap way to go.

[wildcatter]

FWIW, I am a Master Electrician and work in the industrial side of the business. If you are going to go off the grind in a "arctic" zone. I suggest you buy solar panels for when it is sunny and a inverter style generator for when its not. Use both to charge a large battery bank to actually supply your power. It wont be cheap but you will be in better shape and have a lot less noise to contend with or alert anyone to your presence, if that is necessary. Secondly the inverters use less fuel than any other power generating equipment I have seen.

Tim glad you are surviving up there!! I have family in the upper peninsula. They are struggling as well through that horrendous weather!!

Good luck to all of you Northern folk, I wont complain about the low temps here in Florida!

This is the kind of advice I Really-Really want and need!

So what do you think for batteries? I know how to recondition Fork Lift Batteries??

In my mind a shack with a large bank of these deep cycle batteries and the charging methods you're talking about might be the trick?

What does everyone think??

..t

PS..Correct me here, but even on cloudy days, Solar cells will put out some power. Is this correct??

..t

[Hoot]

We have multiple high power UPS' (Uninterruptible Power Supplies) at our main and backup dispatch sites. They buffer the street power in case it drops out to give the generator time to get up to speed and in regulation before the transfer switch throws. You need to get batteries designed for that kind of service despite the up front cost and plan on replacing part of the them regularly if reliability is a key factor. We discard perfectly good three year old batteries every year as we have three banks on our 150 kW UPS. That way they all get replaced at a minimum of three years. Their warrantied for 5 years, but the role they play is one where failure is not an option. We are building a new dispatch center which should be online in a year. Unlike our current one, which was built in 1949 and updated in 1971 which has only one generator and one main and one half power auxiliary UPS, the new facility will have triple redundant full power UPS' and generators. That's the current state of the design for a Public Safety Center. Anyway, if you can afford for your UPS to be offline while you order in replacement batteries should they fail, there's no reason why you can't keep the batteries for their rated 5 years, though you should do an internal impedance check annually on them. Given they will provide ancillary service, you have more choices, but don't skimp on batteries. Tow motor batteries are not designed for that service. Automotive batteries are not designed for that service. Deep cycle trolling motor batteries while they are the better choice of the three, are still on the edge of acceptable. Research UPS batteries and I don't mean the little 7.5A 12V ones either. If you string a lot of them in series/parallel to get the storage capacity you need, the string is only as good as it's weakest point. Spending more money on fewer, properly designed batteries puts less eggs in your basket. We've had the best luck with Enersys HX500-FR batteries. A good balance between cost and performance. Find out your worst case power consumption as in the heat of summer, with your shop equipment running, lights on, etc and get a UPS rated for that capacity. Ditto on the generator, or other electricity sources such as wind or sun. Run your alternative energy sources when conditions permit and rely on the local grid for the difference. IMHO, stay away from the enticement of back-feeding the local grid in times of excess. Sounds good having them have to pay you, but the switchgear will take a long time to recover the investment unless your local electrical utility provider springs for it. Less opportunity for complications when you least need them.

If you don't intend to pursue alternative energy sources and can stand to be without power for a few minutes, dump all the capital you can muster into a quality commercial, emphasis upon commercial, generator and forget the whole UPS thing. If you wind up getting one that uses stored fuel, get a tank big enough to last as long as the longest outage you've ever experienced up there rated for the power consumption you need. That's where liquid fuels excel, due to the power content per unit volume. We buried an 80,000 gallon fuel tank just before the freeze moved in at the new dispatch center back in late October. The downside to stored liquid fuels is their deterioration, ever with a well maintained storage system, recirculating pumps and filters and additives. You still have to burn some off periodically and refresh the supply, whether you need to or not. The good news is that's going to reduce your bill from the local electrical utility company. Depending upon the cost of fuel, having the proper sized generator for your home and your local electric utility rates, you may find it's cheaper generating your own electricity. The plus side is it's good for the generator to get run and the fuel to get cycled out. The downside is wear and tear along with increased preventive maintenance. It won't take long to find the duty cycle sweet spot.

I'm guessing that there's an ample source of planning calculator sites around the web, given all the energy awareness we are currently experiencing. Check into some of them.

Hoot

[jerdebson]

I work for an REA power company, for the last 38 years. We test, clean, check, fill and replace batteries annually. They are somewhat labor intensive but they work when we need to operate equipment. Ventilation is another important consideration, we gang ventilate them, VTA (vent to atmosphere) they can be very dangerous. That is just off the top of my feeble head to add to Hoots very good explanation. Fuel, gas especially, doesn't seem to last nearly as long as it use to. It is my belief you should have several options, redundancy is the key to long term needs. Gas, propane, diesel, solar, wind all have their place. Use what you have the best understanding of, there won't be a Tech around when you need them if the SHIF were to occur.

[wildcatter]

Boy-O-Boy, you guys are starting to get wound up now! And the advice is precious to me.

Per BTU, nothing beats fossil fuels. But shelf life is quite problematic. My thought is to again, use propane and a larger KW generator backup. In other words, if 10kw is needed, I'd buy a 12.5-15kw gen-set (to make-up for the BTU deficiencies), for shelf life purposes and ease of overall maintenance. Of course, there are flaws to any system and daisy-chaining many tanks has a big one, like a not so errant bullet, from say, Moreaduring thugs, to name but one. But that aside (I keep extra Barbeque Sauce around for just such a job! --BTW, you do realize I have redefined the purpose of the Hollow Point, right? It "IS" the receptacle for the BBQ Sauce, and what brand of Barbeque Sauce do I use for this Job? Well, Bulls Eye Brand of course..wink-- "See Insert"), my thoughts are to charge a large bank of batteries, to act as a Well pressure tank. In this way, when the lights go off, the switching changes over to the Batteries and the gen system (gas -and or- solar powered), charges the batteries, just not constantly and when running off the gen, all excess power, not already charging the batteries, goes to the shops and House requirements. In other words (I say it this way because, as you guys know, my prose suffers some.), I am thinking I want to run off the batteries, in a power outage, when the batteries start to discharge enough, switching will start the gen-set. Using Solar to otherwise charge the batteries, when power is not required. I'd nice to have enough Solar to excessively charge the batteries on those Commercial Power Outage sunny days. I was just down a week and took care of dozens of families around me. I was holding my breath, because I knew I was going to find some dead. Heck, one night it got down to -6° below! But we had a couple of Sunny Days, in all of that, that would have provided allot of power..

So again, I'm thinking, Solar and a gen-set to charge batteries, any excess power not charging batteries, runs the house hold, heck the shops can just shut down for awhile or in an extended situation I could turn off the house and divert the power to the shops for a time. The Gen-Set not to kick in until the batteries and solar are overwhelmed. And for the Gen to run on Propane??

In the case of Hoots 3 year batteries, they'd be wonderful candidates to recondition. Reconditioning will bring back the five year turn around and if you've never done it You-Tube has lots of videos on the subj (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YhfeSOyPAg). BTW, if it makes any sense, tow-motor/fork lift batteries are Deep Cycle Batteries, much like very large marine Batteries. But, discarded UPS batteries shore look inviting. Any idea where I could get them locally. They are so expensive, I'd even ship some of those you guys replace, assuming I could get them, I mean, well, you're discarding them, right??

I'm still looking for constructive criticisms. Don't be afraid to insult, I need the feed back to be able to make a decision on my needs..

..t

Hollow point Medicine!! I no-longer care about expansion, but as my Mother used to say.."Boys, if you're going to shoot it, you're going to eat it"!!

[Texas Sheepdawg]

And so the BBQ sauce debate begins.... Seeings how I lived in Memphis for so long, I gotta go with my favorite.

Corkys

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