I came into a disturbing bit of information about the power grid. I’m curious to see if anyone else has heard about this.
This information comes from a tech guy in a big IT company. He’s concerned about the power grid having issues this winter. The guy claims that parts for the grid have been hit with supply chain issues. There are no spare parts and nothing available for grid expansion.
I can’t but help wonder if Hurricane Ian’s grid damage sucked all the slack out of the grid parts supply. It would also be interesting to see if some of those areas don’t get their power back.
I would encourage people to have at least a small solar electric system. Even a 100 watt system is enough to keep a light on and your phone and radio powered. There are plenty of off the shelf systems out there.
You could go old school and do what I’ve done for years. Get a deep discharge 12 volt lead acid battery, like a trolling motor battery. Take 100 watt solar panel. Connect it to a cheap 10 watt charge controller. Connect the charge controller to the battery. That will charge your battery. To get the power out, wire in a 12 volt cigarette connector to the battery. Then you can use car chargers for your electronics. A small inverter in the less than 1000 watt range will give you some AC power. You could get fancy with fuses and switches but they aren’t even necessary for such a small system.
Having even just a small amount of renewable power makes a big difference.
Please let me know if you’ve heard anything about grid issues.
-Sixbears
Why should the power grid be exempt from supply chain issues.... And a lot of the hardware we use for it is sourced from outside the country. Not a good thing for mission critical parts. I have read that at any one time there exists only a handful of the large transformers we need for power distribution. Knock enough of them off line at one time and the grid is crippled. And it takes a year or more to manufacture a replacement.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly large transformers are made in India and there's a long lead time on them.
DeleteI don't know about parts shortages, but I have seen utility company workers doing work for what appears to be far loo long at same location. That may be because finding the part is so hard to do.
ReplyDeleteIt does seem to track with supply issues.
Deletethose small round solar walkway lights are about 20 lumens, and have about 8 hours use. not enough to read by, but better than candles, and rechargeable the next sunny day. we use them for camping, safer in the tent than the gas lamp.
ReplyDeleteThey are pretty cheap and readily available -right now. Better get them while you can.
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