# Polar Vortex - how far is it reaching?



## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Seems this little cold front is just going to be a bit obnoxious. Just how far is it setting records? TX is faced with unheard of cold.

Rolling blackouts started tonight to conserve power. Consumption isn't more than summer, but some wind turbines aren't equipped with heating to keep them operating and have shut down and other generators are offline for annual maintenance. 

The cars come into play here too. They are my backup plan to an extended power outage, sleeping or hanging out there for heat and some Netflix. Charged earlier in the week to 90% just in case.


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## bwilson4web (Mar 4, 2019)

Northwest Alabama is pretty much shutdown. We're seeing reports of multi-car accidents closing major roads.

In anticipation of potential power outages, I told my girlfriend that she, her dogs, and her grandsons are moving into my home if they lose power. I have an automatic, natural gas powered, 16 kW generator with grid safety connection.

Just now, we lost one broadcast service (tower?) in Huntsville AL. At least three channels are dead.

Bob Wilson


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## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

As a resident of Florida and being used to the threat of extreme weather and power outages: If you know a storm is coming, charge your car to 100%, and then unplug it. You'll have a 3 to 5 day reserve (double that if you're working from home) in case you can't charge, and your car will be safe if you get into unusual power surges or brownouts. Or for future reference if it's already too late!


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## MelindaV (Apr 2, 2016)

In the NW, we are thru the worst of it. Where I am lucked out and mostly got snow (but a lot of it!), while just a few miles south of me had 3 days of freezing rain. My dad's house has been without power since Friday.
My short legged dog thought the snow was fantastic when it was 4 or 5 inches thick... not so much when it was 12 or 18 inches.


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## lance.bailey (Apr 1, 2019)

my greyhounds would love the snow. nose down, plowing through the stuff at warp 6. it was a sight to see.


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

You know it's bad when your electrical provider asks you to leave. Griddy has zoomed to thousands of dollars per KWh https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ook&utm_medium=news_tab&utm_content=algorithm


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

_"Members pay a $9.99 monthly fee and then pay the cost of spot power traded on Texas's power grid based on the time of day they use it. Earlier this month, that meant customers were saving money -- and at times even getting paid -- to use electricity at night. But in recent days, the cost of their power has soared from about 5 to 6 cents a kilowatt-hour to $1 or more."_

That's crazy...I can imagine with a couple of powerwalls, you can really use them to incredible advantage with a pricing system like that.


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## TrevP (Oct 20, 2015)

JasonF said:


> As a resident of Florida and being used to the threat of extreme weather and power outages: If you know a storm is coming, charge your car to 100%, and then unplug it. You'll have a 3 to 5 day reserve (double that if you're working from home) in case you can't charge, and your car will be safe if you get into unusual power surges or brownouts. Or for future reference if it's already too late!


Don't forget to turn off sentry mode, that's a huge vampire drain


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

JWardell said:


> _"Members pay a $9.99 monthly fee and then pay the cost of spot power traded on Texas's power grid based on the time of day they use it. Earlier this month, that meant customers were saving money -- and at times even getting paid -- to use electricity at night. But in recent days, the cost of their power has soared from about 5 to 6 cents a kilowatt-hour to $1 or more."_
> 
> That's crazy...I can imagine with a couple of powerwalls, you can really use them to incredible advantage with a pricing system like that.


Griddy is popular with a few owners down here, but they almost always get burned when it gets really hot or this year, really cold. Then it burns hard when prices jump like they have. I'm on year 5 I think it is using a company where I pay about .08 kWh year round, and I don't have to worry about losing sleep over the craziness of those price spikes.


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## bwilson4web (Mar 4, 2019)

In Huntsville AL, the outside temperature 21 F (-5 C) with ~1/4" (~6 mm) of clear ice. Multiple attempts failed to enable climate preconditioning. Some indication of communications failure involving my local WiFi. The passenger side of car is about 30 m from the brick facing kitchen wall. Bringing iPhone to nearest inside surface failed to "TURN ON CLIMATE." Bringing iPhone to passenger side mirror failed to TURN ON CLIMATE. Entering car, enabled heating to 70 F and as walking away, heard the walk-away lock engage. Did see "network communication error."

Back to the car to use CAMP MODE to keep the heater on. It is plugged into an L2 charger showing ~22 A @247 VAC. It appears to be using ~5 kW for the heater. Sad to say, the battery heating indicator is not on.

FYI, driver side door is iced closed and hitting it did not free up the latch. I have 2/3d can of JOHNSEN'S DE-ICER I'm going to spray on the driver side door handle. Also increasing the SOC limit to the boundary between DAILY and TRIP (anyone know what % that is?)

After about 15 minutes, turned off CAMP mode and was able to TURN ON CLIMATE that now shows the battery and defroster working. L2 EVSE is pumping out 7.7 kW. App shows charging at 7 mi/hr.

Bob Wilson


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

bwilson4web said:


> In Huntsville AL, the outside temperature 21 F (-5 C) with ~1/4" (~6 mm) of clear ice. Multiple attempts failed to enable climate preconditioning. Some indication of communications failure involving my local WiFi. The passenger side of car is about 30 m from the brick facing kitchen wall. Bringing iPhone to nearest inside surface failed to "TURN ON CLIMATE." Brining iPhone to passenger side mirror failed to TURN ON CLIMATE. Entering car, enabled heating to 70 F and as walking away, heard the walk-away lock engage. Did see "network communication error."
> 
> Back to the car to use CAMP MODE to keep the heater on. It is plugged into an L2 charger showing ~22 A @247 VAC.
> 
> Bob Wilson


Are you about to go somewhere or just protecting the car? Ours are in the garage, but even the temp there are into the 20's. Whether the car is plugged in or not it will protect itself (the battery) if the temps continue to drop and as long as you have some charge left in the battery. Our friends up North know more about this than me, but the DFW group has rediscussed this as well. The car will take care of the battery if the temps drop low enough it needs too.

We are at 11 and dropping on down to near or about 0 overnight. Ice and more snow coming tomorrow through Wednesday.


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## bwilson4web (Mar 4, 2019)

GDN said:


> Are you about to go somewhere or just protecting the car?


Girlfriend called and she is feeling ill. Headed over to check vitals and get more history. May run her to ER based on preliminary scan: temperature, BP, heart rate, and O{2}. She lives on the Northwest part of town and likely her BMW i3-REx is iced up even worse. NO! I'm not going over to play doctor but see what is going on.

Bob Wilson


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

bwilson4web said:


> Girlfriend called and she is feeling ill. Headed over to check vitals and get more history. May run her to ER based on preliminary scan: temperature, BP, heart rate, and O{2}. She lives on the Northwest part of town and likely her BMW i3-REx is iced up even worse. NO! I'm not going over to play doctor but see what is going on.
> 
> Bob Wilson


Got it, understand when you have to venture out - let it do that warm up plugged in, makes sense. Hope all is well.


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## bwilson4web (Mar 4, 2019)

She is fine, not an ER candidate, although she needs to be examined by her physician. Something going on in her belly and it needs a diagnosis. But driving back in 15 F (-9 C), I ran over a patch of dry snow and the car started to spin. Easily caught, I'm wondering:

driving mode: CALM
Regenerative Braking: change from STANDARD to LOW?
Stoping Mode: change from HOLD to ROLL?
What are the snow parameters?

Thanks,
Bob Wilson


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

bwilson4web said:


> I'm wondering:
> 
> driving mode: CALM
> Regenerative Braking: change from STANDARD to LOW?
> ...


That's about it. Accelerate slowly, decelerate slowly and above all else, make sure you're going slow before you have to TURN. Any (too quick) change in direction or speed can cause a loss of traction. And try not to ask the tires to do two things at once (such as slowing down while turning).

You bought Bridgestone Ecopia tires, correct? Those things are horrible in bad weather. You're just going to have a tough time on that rubber, I'm afraid.


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## bwilson4web (Mar 4, 2019)

garsh said:


> You bought Bridgestone Ecopia tires, correct? Those things are horrible in bad weather. You're just going to have a tough time on that rubber, I'm afraid.


In a day or so, we'll be above freezing and this short excursion will be over. In my case, it was a familiar street, posted 25 mph but I'm at 15 mph with 90 degree turn. It has been awhile since having to deal with power snow. Just one of those things that reminded me I needed to reconfigure the car driving modes for snow.

Bob Wilson


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

GDN said:


> You know it's bad when your electrical provider asks you to leave. Griddy has zoomed to thousands of dollars per KWh https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ook&utm_medium=news_tab&utm_content=algorithm


Thousands per MWh. Not KWH. Big difference!


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

JWardell said:


> _"Members pay a $9.99 monthly fee and then pay the cost of spot power traded on Texas's power grid based on the time of day they use it. Earlier this month, that meant customers were saving money -- and at times even getting paid -- to use electricity at night. But in recent days, the cost of their power has soared from about 5 to 6 cents a kilowatt-hour to $1 or more."_
> 
> That's crazy...I can imagine with a couple of powerwalls, you can really use them to incredible advantage with a pricing system like that.


Honestly, it's crap. Yeah, you might pay as low as $.04-$.05 / kWh during non peak times. But right now it's over $9.00 per KWh. And in the summer, on a heavy demand weekend, you might lay $2.50-$4.00. It's not uncommon to hear of people here in TX having $300-$400 WEEEKNDS over the summer. Someone here didn't switch out in time and his bill was $198 for Sunday. With almost everything turned off and no charging. Someone else posted their "recharge" page. It got hit with $320 worth of charges between 2/14 and 2/17.

I use an energy broker to find me plans. So far they have found me $0.07 For 6 months, $0.115 for 4 months and now I'm on a 14 month plan at $0.092. All for zero effort by me. griddy Average users say they are around $0.075 "normally" when you factor in the bad days. But that's before something like this.


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## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

Needsdecaf said:


> Thousands per MWh. Not KWH. Big difference!


But still, $9000/MWh... my brain can't even wrap itself around that price


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Needsdecaf said:


> Honestly, it's crap. Yeah, you might pay as low as $.04-$.05 / kWh during non peak times. But right now it's over $9.00 per KWh. And in the summer, on a heavy demand weekend, you might lay $2.50-$4.00. It's not uncommon to hear of people here in TX having $300-$400 WEEEKNDS over the summer. Someone here didn't switch out in time and his bill was $198 for Sunday. With almost everything turned off and no charging. Someone else posted their "recharge" page. It got hit with $320 worth of charges between 2/14 and 2/17.
> 
> I use an energy broker to find me plans. So far they have found me $0.07 For 6 months, $0.115 for 4 months and now I'm on a 14 month plan at $0.092. All for zero effort by me. griddy Average users say they are around $0.075 "normally" when you factor in the bad days. But that's before something like this.


It's really kind of sad, but reality is Griddy is nothing more than the bad mortgages a few years ago or someone going to Vegas, most of them knew what they signed up for, they were taking a gamble. Everyone of them owe Griddy a huge payout as Griddy let them off the hook. Pisses me off when someone signs up for something then whines when their bet doesn't pay off.

I've been with Infinite energy now (think they are related to Veteran energy) and have had a consistent .08 to .09 cents /kwh for over 5 or 6 years, I'm on my 3rd 3 year contract I think it is. Why save $30 / month and gamble on the summers and now winters we have here. It makes no sense.


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

I don’t know. Some people are into watching The price like a hawk, bailing out just in time or having to run on very low power through A summer weekend not to get slammed. I guess the6 get off on the thrill of it? Me, I don’t have enough time in my life for that.


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## Needsdecaf (Dec 27, 2018)

bwilson4web said:


> In a day or so, we'll be above freezing and this short excursion will be over. In my case, it was a familiar street, posted 25 mph but I'm at 15 mph with 90 degree turn. It has been awhile since having to deal with power snow. Just one of those things that reminded me I needed to reconfigure the car driving modes for snow.
> 
> Bob Wilson


Tires.

when I was 16, I took my dad's 300zx to a friend's house to help her and another classmate study for math. It was forecast snow. I was a pretty good driver, but 16 is 16. My dad said, if it snows, come home immediately. I did. And man, being 16, I crept home. There was just a dusting on the ground, barely enough to cover the road and show tracks.

I was coming around a gentle turn, I mean, it's like 30 degrees. Going maybe 15. As I turn, the back end comes around, swinging left as I'm turning right. As taught, I countersteer. that Arrests the spin, but I am still sliding left. All of a sudden, I catch a dry spot with an armful of countersteer, and the car whips around to the right. Now I am almost completely backwards in what was just the oncoming lane. But not quite. And I quietly slide sideways off the road, into a power pole.

car had summer tires on it. This was 1991. We didn't know how little grip they had in the cold. I wouldn't be surprised if the eco tires were not far off.


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## bwilson4web (Mar 4, 2019)

Posting from home safe after the temperature reached 50 F (2 C) about 2 PM. Then came the clouds and the temperature soon dropped approaching freezing.

Current conditions, I'm in Huntsville AL, under the red line circle, with snow and ice to the West, rain overhead:









It isn't so bad for me as I grew up in the midwest but local folks are facing challenges. The saddest one are those who bring an emergency generator into their homes only to fill it with carbon monoxide or sit in a running car in a garage.

The widow of my best high school friend, Beau, she lives in the Dallas area. Sad to say, she is experiencing the rolling blackouts of Texas. Uncharacteristic, he did not install an emergency generator.

Bob Wilson


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