Power Grid Heads Up

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

Building Stuff

No doubt there will be another spike in lumber prices. There’s an awful lot of housing that needs to be rebuilt in the wake of Hurricane Ian. Prices had gone up during the pandemic when a lot of people were staying home. To keep busy a people did home renovations. Once things eased up a bit there was a housing boom. New houses were being built and older ones renovated. 

If you need materials for a house project you’d better pick them up now. 

I’d been putting off a few projects at my house waiting for prices to get a bit more reasonable. The prices at the local building supply stores had dropped below that of the big chains. It helps to be close to local saw mills. It felt good to be able to buy the lumber I wanted. 

It had been a while since I’d built anything of significance and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it. In that way I think I take after my dad a bit. He never needed therapy; he had tools and stuff to build. He was almost always in a better mood after time in the shop. 

My complaining about lumber prices about to go up comes from a privileged position. It’s not like I lost my house in a storm. However, the projects I’m doing are necessary to get through the winter in good shape, so they aren’t trivial either.

-Sixbears