How can the Southern power grid handle months of blistering heat with everyone blasting air conditioners, but can’t handle two days below freezing?
In: 1150
And if you’re looking at the Texas issue from February 2021, that happened because a lot of power plants were not properly winterized to withstand the Arctic blast and several plants went off line and couldn’t produce electricity. That caused a massive shortage.
After a few days of frost and snow when the infrastructure wasn’t designed for it, power lines (above ground) can snap like twigs from the weight.
I’m assuming you are talking about texas. If so, here is a great video from Practical Engineering explaining what happened in 2021, which likely has similar causes to now.
In addition to what others are saying, texas relies heavily on natural gas which is sensitive to freezing and texas has not done much in the way of insulation like northern climate areas have because it doesn’t get cold as often.
Humidity drops in the winter too, so heat doesn’t transfer as well. I’m not sure how low the humidity is in south and if drops enough to affect heating. But where I am, I have a whole house steam humidifier and it can barely get the humidity above 30% unless I have the fan on a minimum of 20 minutes per hour. 750w for the furnace fan and 2000w for the humidifier add up pretty quickly.
Can you cite some source that the “Southern power grid […] can’t handle two days below freezing” ?
I have not heard of any issues with the power grid. I have only heard of the usual issues with ice-laden trees crashing into power infrastructure.
(Of course, Texas is its own special snowflake due to poor oversight; the Texas grid is isolated and lacks redundancy and winterization.)
everything people are saying about ambient temperature versus outdoor temperature is correct but also local adaptive architecture really plays a role in how in efficient it is to heat houses in the south. Southern houses for the most part are specifically designed to stay cool. I grew up in northern Michigan and I’ve lived for the past 15 years in New Orleans. The actual architecture of my house is designed to not hold on to heat; everything from the raised floor, to high ceilings, to transoms, to a shotgun design that encourages airflow, to the fact that our vents are on the ceiling, not The floor. This makes sense when you think about we spend most of our time doing air conditioning and cold air falls, but when you’re trying to pump warm air into a house, it’s incredibly inefficient to have it coming from ceiling vents, especially in a high ceiling house (we keep our ceiling plans on year-round just changing the directions to help push the warm air down)
1. Different equipment is used to heat and cool.
The heating equipment is not as well-maintained or efficient as the cooling equipment. It won’t work as well and is more likely to break. The cooling equipment gets a lot more use and attention so it is simply better. It has to be. But people in warm climates don’t spend a lot on heating equipment.
2. Parts can freeze.
intense cold can freeze components, causing breakage. Heavy snow and ice can weigh down and break roofs and coverings, exposing parts to breakage, freezing, etc. Water getting inside things can then turn to ice and expand (water is the thing that gets bigger when colder, unlike pretty much anything else). This makes water pipes burst and anything full of water can break too.
3. Water is not good for electrical equipment.
Snow is wet. Ice is wet. Rain is wet. And when things freeze, they can contract (get smaller) allowing gaps where moisture can get inside things it normally couldn’t. Also rubber gaskets and seals freeze and lose their ability to be flexible and maintain their seal. So moisture gets in and shorts out equipment.
4. Snow and ice prevent people form accessing equipment quickly and easily so fixing repairs takes much longer in cold.
Because lots of people use ceiling fans, desk fans, box fans, etc. in addition to air conditioners during the summer. The only real solution to warming things up is a heater – whether a small space heater or central heat. Heaters consume far more power. Plus if it’s 100 outside, most folks only need to cool to 80 or 70 to be adequately comfortable. If it’s 0 outside like it is around the country right now, it takes a LOT more power to heat you back up to 70 than it does to bring you down to 70-80.
It isn’t the temperature differential, it’s that the power infrastructure itself can’t handle cold weather and more people are using their heaters than may have used their AC’s. Last year the windmills and power lines couldn’t withstand the weather conditions and failed, especially once ice starts gathering on everything
A 70° house is just as far from 40 as it is from 100, but the power infrastructure feels that same difference very differently
So with homes in hot areas they are made to maximize the air flow and homes in cold areas are made to minimize the air flow. Why don’t they try to insulate against the heat the same way they try to insulate against the cold? Wouldn’t that make more sense?
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