In the UK there is outrage when people lose power for six hours.
How many outages are caused by drizzle?
In America, we have real weather, hurricanes, thunderstorms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.
The coldest temperature ever recorded in Britain was -17F in the Scottish Highlands. In Minnesota or North Dakota, we can go for weeks without the thermometer going that high.
A typical summer day in Las Vegas is 20 degrees hotter than the warmest ever recorded in England.
Stop your dick-waving. There are other places with what you call "real weather". Australia gets category 5 cyclones, too. Fortunately we managed to avoid things like tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanoes. It's just the flora and fauna we need to watch out for.
Anyway, the issue that should be discussed and debated is what another poster said - "what about backups?". Referring to electricity, not the duplication of bytes.
Look at your last electricity bill. Look at the peak power draw, and the daily watt-hour
Anyway, the issue that should be discussed and debated is what another poster said - "what about backups?". Referring to electricity, not the duplication of bytes.
Look at your last electricity bill. Look at the peak power draw, and the daily watt-hour usage. The former will tell you how big a generator you'll need, and the latter will tell you how much fuel to stockpile. You could also extend it with a battery, but please don't pick the cheapest - pick the best. The worst time to regret a stingy purchase is when you need it the most.
So you say you should spend $20K preparing for a one-time freak event? The cost of a generator, plus gas, plus all the monthly maintenance of said generator, plus the installation of an isolation switch (probably manual) for rare events is rarely a good cost.
And yes, generators need maintenance, if nothing more than to cycle through your gas supply because gas goes bad after 6 months, and is something you won't even want to touch after a year. And you will have a gas supply, because when the power's out, the gas stations are out too (as people with gas vehicles realized in Texas - thinking with the power out, the EV hippies were dead in the water - they were, but so was everyone else without a full tank).
It was a freak event. It's why Texas power plans shut down - why wind farms shut down (frozen), nuclear plants and natural gas plants shut down (intakes froze up) and such. Yet we know wind farms, natural gas and nuclear power plants work fine when it gets cold in Canada and in many other places. It's just that Texas isn't generally known as a place that gets very cold, but it does get very hot so the equipment is designed to handle the heat of mid-day heatwave. Plus, most electricity in Texas is used for cooling, not heating.
And yes, it means climate change will be problematic in Canada as the power plants are great performing in the cold, but in the heat, well, not so much.
In some places in the world, like India, a power outage is practically an hourly event, and the power quality is horrendous, so there is much need for UPS and generators and switchover systems.
In the US and Canada, unless you live in a remote area, power generally doesn't go out for more than a few hours every few years. And even those usually aren't caused by natural disasters - usually those outages are caused by a car accident, balloons, or other manmade things running into infrastructure. The odd crispy fried animal usually results in a short outage as the animal gets fried and they fall off the power lines clearing the issue.
Remote areas where they have long overhead lines powering a handful of people can experience longer outages and should be prepared for typically a couple of days without power, but that comes with the territory. A week without power is a rather rare and exceptional event even for those areas unless you're really so deeply remote that there is a power line strung just for you. Even gigantic outages like the one that took out the eastern seaboard in 2003 lasted only 3 days and most of that was figuring out how to restart the grid.
Six days? (Score:2)
In the UK there is outrage when people lose power for six hours.
Re: (Score:2)
In the UK there is outrage when people lose power for six hours.
How many outages are caused by drizzle?
In America, we have real weather, hurricanes, thunderstorms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.
The coldest temperature ever recorded in Britain was -17F in the Scottish Highlands. In Minnesota or North Dakota, we can go for weeks without the thermometer going that high.
A typical summer day in Las Vegas is 20 degrees hotter than the warmest ever recorded in England.
Re: (Score:3)
Stop your dick-waving. There are other places with what you call "real weather". Australia gets category 5 cyclones, too. Fortunately we managed to avoid things like tornadoes, earthquakes, and volcanoes. It's just the flora and fauna we need to watch out for.
Anyway, the issue that should be discussed and debated is what another poster said - "what about backups?". Referring to electricity, not the duplication of bytes.
Look at your last electricity bill. Look at the peak power draw, and the daily watt-hour
Re:Six days? (Score:2)
So you say you should spend $20K preparing for a one-time freak event? The cost of a generator, plus gas, plus all the monthly maintenance of said generator, plus the installation of an isolation switch (probably manual) for rare events is rarely a good cost.
And yes, generators need maintenance, if nothing more than to cycle through your gas supply because gas goes bad after 6 months, and is something you won't even want to touch after a year. And you will have a gas supply, because when the power's out, the gas stations are out too (as people with gas vehicles realized in Texas - thinking with the power out, the EV hippies were dead in the water - they were, but so was everyone else without a full tank).
It was a freak event. It's why Texas power plans shut down - why wind farms shut down (frozen), nuclear plants and natural gas plants shut down (intakes froze up) and such. Yet we know wind farms, natural gas and nuclear power plants work fine when it gets cold in Canada and in many other places. It's just that Texas isn't generally known as a place that gets very cold, but it does get very hot so the equipment is designed to handle the heat of mid-day heatwave. Plus, most electricity in Texas is used for cooling, not heating.
And yes, it means climate change will be problematic in Canada as the power plants are great performing in the cold, but in the heat, well, not so much.
In some places in the world, like India, a power outage is practically an hourly event, and the power quality is horrendous, so there is much need for UPS and generators and switchover systems.
In the US and Canada, unless you live in a remote area, power generally doesn't go out for more than a few hours every few years. And even those usually aren't caused by natural disasters - usually those outages are caused by a car accident, balloons, or other manmade things running into infrastructure. The odd crispy fried animal usually results in a short outage as the animal gets fried and they fall off the power lines clearing the issue.
Remote areas where they have long overhead lines powering a handful of people can experience longer outages and should be prepared for typically a couple of days without power, but that comes with the territory. A week without power is a rather rare and exceptional event even for those areas unless you're really so deeply remote that there is a power line strung just for you. Even gigantic outages like the one that took out the eastern seaboard in 2003 lasted only 3 days and most of that was figuring out how to restart the grid.