From WSJ ... New England Risks Winter Blackouts as Gas Supplies Tighten

woobagooba

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-england-risks-winter-blackouts-as-gas-supplies-tighten-11665999002

Blocked pipeline projects from Marcellus, blocked transmission line projects, renewables aren't ready to take the load, Jones Act, Ukraine conflict ... a lot of contributing factors.

Not sure if the gas fired boiler or heat pump is the way to go this winter.

Jamie Hall

Without worrying about the cause, this shouldn't surprise anyone. What your energy source is is also pretty much irrelevant. Have some extra fuel on hand (doesn't apply to natural gas; if that's cut off, so sorry). Have a generator with enough capacity and enough fuel (don't count on going to the local gas station for more).

woobagooba

Preparedness for an unplanned outage is one thing (storm damage etc). Policies preventing transport of nat gas or electricity from a few 100 miles away is another kettle of fish.

WMno57

to add to the list of things to have on hand:

• Starting Fluid
  
• Jumper Cables
  
• Battery Jump Pack
  
• Vehicles with full gas tanks that are started bi-monthly
  
• Start your generator bi-monthly
  
• Printed instruction's on how to re-establish the magnetic field in the generator
  
• Gas
  
• Diesel
  
• Propane (16 oz, 20 pounds, small plumber torch, weed burner torch)
  
• Coleman Fuel, Lantern, Stove
  
• Flashlights
  
• Radios
  
• Matches, Zippo, BBQ lighter, Bic
  
• Food
  
• Water
  
• Lawyers, Guns, Money
  

JakeCK

WMno57 said:

to add to the list of things to have on hand:

• Starting Fluid
• Jumper Cables
• Battery Jump Pack
• Vehicles with full gas tanks that are started bi-monthly
• Start your generator bi-monthly
• Printed instruction's on how to re-establish the magnetic field in the generator
• Gas
• Diesel
• Propane (16 oz, 20 pounds, small plumber torch, weed burner torch)
• Coleman Fuel, Lantern, Stove
• Flashlights
• Radios
• Matches, Zippo, BBQ lighter, Bic
• Food
• Water
• Lawyers, Guns, Money

What good is money going to do one in a shtf scenario? Toilet paper?

ChrisJ

JakeCK said:

WMno57 said:

to add to the list of things to have on hand:

• Starting Fluid
  
• Jumper Cables
  
• Battery Jump Pack
  
• Vehicles with full gas tanks that are started bi-monthly
  
• Start your generator bi-monthly
  
• Printed instruction's on how to re-establish the magnetic field in the generator
  
• Gas
  
• Diesel
  
• Propane (16 oz, 20 pounds, small plumber torch, weed burner torch)
  
• Coleman Fuel, Lantern, Stove
  
• Flashlights
  
• Radios
  
• Matches, Zippo, BBQ lighter, Bic
  
• Food
  
• Water
  
• Lawyers, Guns, Money
  

What good is money going to do one in a shtf scenario? Toilet paper?

Well.
We all now know what @WMno57 has at his house.
And apparently doesn't use toilet paper.

WMno57

At some point TP becomes a luxury, and long sleeve shirts get cut off to become short sleeve shirts.

BobZmuda

JakeCK said:

WMno57 said:

to add to the list of things to have on hand:

• Starting Fluid
  
• Jumper Cables
  
• Battery Jump Pack
  
• Vehicles with full gas tanks that are started bi-monthly
  
• Start your generator bi-monthly
  
• Printed instruction's on how to re-establish the magnetic field in the generator
  
• Gas
  
• Diesel
  
• Propane (16 oz, 20 pounds, small plumber torch, weed burner torch)
  
• Coleman Fuel, Lantern, Stove
  
• Flashlights
  
• Radios
  
• Matches, Zippo, BBQ lighter, Bic
  
• Food
  
• Water
  
• Lawyers, Guns, Money
  

What good is money going to do one in a shtf scenario? Toilet paper?

According to this site each dollar bill you burn is worth 12.44 BTUs!

https://coalpail.com/fuel-comparison-calculator-home-heating

EdTheHeaterMan

BobZmuda said:

According to this site each dollar bill you burn is worth 12.44 BTUs!

https://coalpail.com/fuel-comparison-calculator-home-heating

I that the same BTU rate for $100.00 bills? $803,858,520.90 per million BTUs

Sal Santamaura

woobagooba said:

...blocked transmission line projects...

For a number of years I contributed to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests' "Trees not Towers" campaign. It was successful; Northern Pass is dead. Why? Because of greed. Had Northern Pass LLC done the right thing and proposed burying the line over its entire route, neither I nor any other "greenies" would have had objections. In my opinion, all transmission lines throughout the country ought be buried. However, any impingement upon profits is unacceptable to developers of all stripes. Thus, southern New England will be unable to avail itself of Canadian hydropower, but New Hampshire will be spared the blight of even more massive towers.
I cannot speak to the specifics of any other proposed transmission line projects, especially whether, unlike Northern Pass, they would provide at least some benefit to the northern New England states they're asking to go through.

Jamie Hall

@Sal Santamaura -- you and I were and are very much on the same page on the Northern Pass project! Surprised? But for me it was only partly the transmission line. For me it was the source of the power -- HydroQuebed's "green" hydropower. Which they create by building big dams, flooding huge areas of wilderness north of the St. Lawrence -- and, not incidentally, forcing whole First Nations tribes off their lands and communities with no compensation or even opportunity to object.

woobagooba

I've seen this play out now several times. Cape Wind. Northern Pass, Clean Energy Connect, Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct. RIP.

Local renewables are not yet ready to take the load (mass scale storage is not yet viable).

Electrification is being incentivized (EVs and heat pumps) w/o an adequate plan to supply the electrons.

pecmsg

woobagooba said:

I've seen this play out now several times. Cape Wind. Northern Pass, Clean Energy Connect, Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct. RIP. Local renewables are not yet ready to take the load (mass scale storage is not yet viable). Electrification is being incentivized (EVs and heat pumps) w/o an adequate plan to supply the electrons.

Our government making decisions without thinking it out?

NEVER!

yesimon

woobagooba said:
Not sure if the gas fired boiler or heat pump is the way to go this winter.

https://twitter.com/javierblas/status/1582363859364347904

Folks on heating oil 👀

Jersey2

Maybe people in New England should convert to oil, and have a large capacity tank. Buy it in the summer and store it for use in the winter. That would eliminate the dependence on imported gas. I have to believe that oil prices will fall in a few years.

Hot_water_fan

Electrification is being incentivized (EVs and heat pumps) w/o an adequate plan to supply the electrons.

More efficient to burn gas off site for a heat pump than on-site regardless. 

ChrisJ

Jersey2 said:

Maybe people in New England should convert to oil, and have a large capacity tank. Buy it in the summer and store it for use in the winter. That would eliminate the dependence on imported gas. I have to believe that oil prices will fall in a few years.

Space does have value to most people and I'm sure storing oil does come with it's own set of issues.

Jamie Hall

New England is not a homogeneous place of elegant subdivisions and the Boston/New York corridor or places like the Burlington/Bennington corridor in Vermont. A goodly chunk of the territory by area -- not by population -- is very rural.

Natural gas is not an option in those area, which cover at a guess at least 3/4 of the area -- and perhaps, also at a guess, a tenth of the population.

For those areas, though, the choices are oil, LP, and electricity. Oil and LP are within a few percent of each other, priced per BTU. Electricity is still more expensive unless the heat pump COP is at least 3..

For the storage question on oil, most reliable dealers offer a "prebuy" option during the summer months. This gets around the storage problem for the homeowner or business.

Sal Santamaura

Jamie Hall said:

@Sal Santamaura -- you and I were and are very much on the same page on the Northern Pass project! Surprised? But for me it was only partly the transmission line. For me it was the source of the power -- HydroQuebed's "green" hydropower. Which they create by building big dams, flooding huge areas of wilderness north of the St. Lawrence -- and, not incidentally, forcing whole First Nations tribes off their lands and communities with no compensation or even opportunity to object.

I understand your objections. I've long felt that the singular root cause of this planet's substantial problems is massive human overpopulation. In light of the fact that there is no will whatsoever to stop, much less reverse, that population growth, I accept the inevitable negatives of projects like Northern Pass as long as they're (in my opinion) more than balanced by benefits. In this case, they didn't come close.