Mark Loveless, aka Simple Nomad, is a researcher and hacker. He frequently speaks at security conferences around the globe, gets quoted in the press, and has a somewhat odd perspective on security in general.

Texas and Winter Storms

Texas and Winter Storms

It may be winter, but the dog still insists on taking a walk. From the winter of 2023.

I live in Texas. This has both advantages and disadvantages. Something in that vein of both “advantage” and “disadvantage” is Texas’ power grid aka the Texas Interconnection. Covering most of the state, it is not connected to other grids (via AC, there are a very few number of DC connections) to avoid crossing state lines, so it is not subject to federal regulations. To quickly summarize, there is a weird setup here where there is basically a non-profit organization that oversees the grid, for-profit regional grid providers, and then for-profit separate power companies that use coal, gas, nuclear, and (my fave) renewables. There are literally dozens of power companies. Switching power companies is like switching cell phone service in that it can be done instantly over the phone. Anyway, this brings us to the topic for today - dealing with weather extremes like extreme winter storms.

The Situation

When the Texas winter storm of 2021 hit, there were days of record-setting sub-freezing temperatures in a row, and due to a combination of both planned outage maintenance windows by some power companies and infrastructure components failing, rolling outages occurred, and there were hundreds of deaths. The rolling outages included my house, and this entire event inspired the addition to the home setup of batteries. You see, if the grid goes down, the power is off and even though I have solar panels I could not use them. If for example there was a planned outage where there were grid repairs in my area, if my solar panels were active they could put power onto the local part of the grid that could cause damage to repair equipment and worse of all repair technicians, so if the power is out the solar panels are cut off.

Due to changing regulations, I could not put my batteries in the garage and they had to be outdoors. This is fine, however if the temperature drops low enough where the internal temperature of the battery unit is below freezing, they will not charge. They will discharge, just not charge. When the temperature is low, the normal idling operation of the battery unit will be higher than the outside temperature, and if they are charging this value increases.

So the feared situation is the following things all happening at once:

  • Extended period of extreme cold, roughly 20F/-7C for as more than 24 hours.

  • Lack of decent sunshine due to thick cloud cover.

  • Grid outage.

The odds of these happening all at once are unlikely, the average high temperature for winter in Texas is still above 50F/10C. But it did happen last winter, with an area outage impacting my immediate neighborhood for two hours. During that time the batteries did keep the critical circuits running so I had heat and Internet (who needs more?) but it still was nerve-wracking.

A Plan

As a result, there is a plan in place to help ease the situation in the event of a repeat of 2021. Plus I’ve included a few non-nonsense steps that just in general help simplify the entire scenario.

  • Ensure the EV is charged to at least 80% capacity before a predicted winter storm hits.

  • Make sure all portable chargers, laptops, and other devices are fully charged.

  • Ensure there are plenty of groceries and dog food on hand. Make sure there are items that can be cooked on the gas stove if the power is out, or cooked in the microwave if the gas is out. Neither the stove or the microwave are on a critical circuit, but an extension cord can easily solve that minor inconvenience.

  • HVAC, refrigerator, and Internet have priority on the critical load circuits. Reduce use of lights and charging on critical circuits as much as possible should a power outage occur.

Conclusion

When I originally drafted this blog post in early December, I didn’t know that the week I planned on posting it there would actually be something close to being a test of the plan, a “dry run” if you could call it that, and I’m redoing the end of the blog as a result. I’m typing this new paragraph on January 9 2025, as I am looking out the back window, the sidewalk in the back is iced over from this morning’s freezing rain and sleet, and now it is snowing. So far so good, I don’t have to leave the house, I have groceries for days and days, and I have plenty of tea for making lovely warm drinks. The power grid is holding up fine so far, and the area power outages are small - maybe even fewer than normal. Every winter since 2021 I’ve felt nervous about a repeat of that outage, and all I can say is that there is definitely a level of relief when you have a sense of preparedness.

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