I couldnt find anyone yet, but once they plow the streets, neighbors get stuck in driveways.
Town car vs crown of the road…
my kids insisted on ramming speed, but he just needed a push by hand.
We have about 6 inches with 6degrees for last nights low. It got up to 29 today. The forecast is ice and snow tonight and tomorrow. This is huge for northwest Louisiana. I may get my Kodiak out and ride around my land. 4 wheelers are fun in the snow.
I didn’t know they would freeze and get stuck.
Surprise!
Just Spewed on That’ Ramming Speed Captain’
Ramming Speed! What are you Preparing The Children for Figure 8 Racing ! Love it ! 
Unless the ones in TX are different than the ones here, they don’t. First time I have ever seen it and it was minus 8 here. The only time I have ever seen them shut down is in extremely high winds.
The White House just announced Federal Relief for Texas. If the power went out at your residence you don’t have to pay for that time. Geriatric Joe be on it. 
This is what it looks like in Middle Tennessee right now:
I can stand on my back deck and hear the limbs popping. We have been without power for 2 days now.
Isnt that part of the reason Tx is powerless?
Well, we have over 12000 wind generators out of service - frozen. 25 Megawatts of wind capacity, but only 5 megawatts operational at this demand peak. Louisianna and Oklahoma are competing for surplus from neighboring grids.
We are absolutely regretting tearing down all the natural gas production in the state not very long ago. We didn’t just shutter - they were scrapped.
Turns out our excess capacity in state has dwindled to 2% from closer to 20% excess capacity 20 years ago.
So … I want to sit outside an Academy holding a cardboard sign reading:. will trade ammo for generator.
Well from what I heard they had problems with natural gas heads and everything. I know building codes are different all over, but I doubt they use different wind turbines and gas heads all over.
I think a company in Minnesota gets a bunch of the power from here. That makes sense, because a co-op not far from me that is in customers of that Minnesota company briefly announced possible rolling black outs for it’s customers. Friends in that area said every municipality in the area was running their generators as hard as they could and a couple hours later they went from alert 3 to alert 2.
When the town I live in lost power for awhile before we moved here, it was because of ice and wind so bad that telephone poles were laying down and or breaking. There was a ton of work to do to get new poles and lines ran for so many miles and miles. But you never heard the wind mills had much problems. Nobody had rolling black outs in the area, nothing.
Over 40 years of wind-solar experience here. Both installing and living with.
Couple of points on wind power:
1- The smaller the blade diameter the faster the RPM…which increases wear on components…even the tower.
The larger the diameter the slower the RPM= a good thing. 2-300 RPM is desired.
2- Large commercial wind generators can use the torque when wind speed increases and adjust the magnetic field proportionately to increase power output and keep RPM’s low…reducing the wear.
3- As wind speed increases the power output is a cubic formula.
10 MPH = 800% increase over 5 MPH wind speed and so on.
4- Icing issues. After several decades with white colored blades and icing that could last for days, I tried Black colored blades. Even without visible sun the ice melts quickly. Easy as that.
Here’s my “bird” 
5- Tilting towers. After years of climbing towers, I figured how to make a tilting hinge base tower for inspection and maintenance. Much safer! 
6- Wind power also works in the night when Solar is asleep.
BOTTOM LINE: We need to continue to explore and increase efficiency in ALL energy production and storage/distribution systems.
MICRO GRIDS: make sense…not long distance distribution with wasteful energy losses and vulnerabilities such as many are enduring today.
EDIT: This is what I think I know. Just sharing my own experiences so far! 
That is the key. Wind turbines in your area face these conditions for 7 months of every year. Until last week, Texas NEVER faced these conditions. Our turbines are not designed for the conditions.
All wind turbines are custom. We simply exceeded design specs. I for one will be pissed when we begin paying to upgrade generators. Global warming makes this a one time, never to repeat event … right 
?
Guess the point is, the weather here can be brutal.
Also maybe the turbines are different? I don’t know. When I run into a kid I know that travels all over the country working on them, I will ask him.
I suspect the answer is going to be no, they are all the same, but I can’t say for sure. In TX they don’t have block heaters on cars very often either, around here almost all do.
The generators here have special semi trailers and flag cars and stuff to haul one blade at a time. It’s amazing because they don’t look that big until you see the parts on the ground.
Idk, I guess in the end, it’s probably best not to count on big companies and government and just try to handle as much of your own business as you can. My observation in life is if you don’t handle your business, someone else will.
@MountainHunter Are your black blades custom made or can those be found retail? I’m keen on using both solar (energy and hot water) and wind. Using double bank of AGM batteries for storage and use then switch banks. I have found that the configuration should be based on what kind of environment you live in like me in Idaho. I have also found that wind turbines generators need extra distance and radiant energy frequency insulation when you set up a HAM radio antenna tower. All and all a good combination takes off the grid cleanly.
Hey MountainHunter
That was great information you shared on wind turbines and power.
I’m wondering if you would like to critique my new and revolutionary wind turbine design and installation. I think you might find it of interest?
Let me know I can PM my canvas on it to you.
Cheers,
Well, I came to the right place. Lol
I have been wanting to put one up for a long time. I just don’t like what is available for the avg household. The big boys have it pretty well down pat, but when you start talking about enough for one house, they are not sharing the details.
I want to do a vertical axis turbine. I know they (same ones not sharing details???) Say it doesn’t work as well. Maybe not for one hundreds and hundreds of feet up producing power that will supply a small town.
But something tells me that all the old ventilators ontop of buildings that have been in use around here for over a hundred years, probably have a lesson to teach. Will one ventilate every building in town? No, but it seems to work well for one building.
Next would be gearing. The wind blows here, hence the big boys building great big ones here.
So with a little math a guy should be able to find where he needs to be in rotation speed vs avg wind speed. Because you know wear on bearings and such with higher rpms.
I’ve been kicking this around for years.
But my first thing is to get the larger power sucking things under control.
So I was landscaping out back this last year and there is an old cistern out there. Those that don’t know a cistern is an underground rain water holding tank, usually concrete.
I thought, maybe I should fill it in. But I didn’t. It’s huge, probably 8ft deep and 10ft diameter. Maybe a little bigger.
So I am wondering what would happen if I dropped 6-800ft coil of pex down in that cold water and ran a glycol solution through it.
Heat pump?
Well sort of. But I think it would get my power sucking central air unit most of the way offline.
I did some math on it and it will definitely pay off fast, but I just don’t know how it’s going to do in the middle of July. Might have to run the ac a little for a couple weeks a year here and there.
So the getting my power sucking stuff offline is going to happen before I get back to the wind turbine design.
My blades were made at the factory. They are made of injection molded glass reinforced polymer.
Many decades ago we used painted wood blades with helicopter leading edge tape on the front edges. It didn’t hold up and the blades got out of balance…lowering the predicted output greatly…a real PITA!
First consideration is how long do you plan to live at the location you will be setting up any kind of system? Or can you remove it to relocate it if you move?
Depending on your family size…and hot water needs…and your site, I would go with a properly designed solar hot water system first. It will also need a backup…which I’m working on now. Pics coming soon.
PV would be my second investment over wind power. The cost per watt is at all time low. Thanks to China competition. I do not recommend anything from China.
Batteries: Lead acid 2 volt cells in series is the best bang for the buck in many situations…not 6 or 12 volt batteries in series or parallel.
I’m on my second set of 2 volt cells in series for a 24 VDC battery bank in ~30 years…sometime soon I will probably replace them with the same batteries.
I do not know of any issues with modern wind generators and ham radios…do car alternators cause issues?
