Ice Accretion Warnings for PA House Area

With the ongoing snow storm here in the northeast, I've been monitoring the weather for both New Jersey, where I am, and for the area of Pennsylvania where the other house is.  PA is now seeing "Ice Accretion" warnings from National Weather Service.

As this storm continues to move northeast, it will change from snow, to sleet, to freezing rain, and that mean ice will accumulate on everything. One-tenth of an inch of ice can actually increase the weight of a tree limb by thirty percent, which is why tree limbs (and sometimes whole trees) go down in such conditions.

If and when they go down, they sometimes take electric power lines with them.

I recall, I guess two or three years ago, a late winter storm up in PA, with heavy, wet snow, took down so many trees and power lines, that the PA house was without grid power for FIVE DAYS.

Thankfully, I was up there when things went bad, so I just hooked up the generator and things were fine.  Little did I know it would become a five day ordeal.

I got through it.  The generator served its purpose and I had enough fuel to run it for about 16 hours a day.  When I went to sleep at night, had to shut it off.  Absolute silence in the house and the whole area.  Pitch "effin" black outside at night.

 last year, the local electric utility - a Rural Cooperative - undertook a tree trimming project in their ENTIRE service region.  They had contractors trimming back tree limbs and trimming down wild-growth trees, and they did a terrific job.  Very noticeable reduction in trees along the power-line areas of those backwoods country roads. 

It worked well, too.  Much better electric power reliability since they did that.

BUT . . . 

Now, another similar storm is headed that way up in PA - and maybe to a smaller extent, here in NJ.  Now we get to see if they cut things back enough or not.  This will be "learning the hard way.

But now, there's the solar power system up there at the PA house.

SOLAR

With the storm today, there wasn't much solar power generation at all.  Not enough to fully recharge the battery rack to its full 30kw reserve.  The battery rack was at about 64%.   So about an hour ago, I told my son to invoke the grid power battery chargers and force the battery back up to 100% from the grid . . . . while we still have grid power.

He did that and as I type this story at 4:29 PM, the battery rack is up to 99%.

When the house up there is empty, it averages 1.5kw per hour energy consumption.  At its lowest, it only needs 0.8kw to keep the fiber optic, cable modem, cellular failover and two satellite uplinks, plus the burglar alarm, with porch lights front and back, the refrigerator and freezer in the house, and the well pump - if it has to kick on, all powered.

The energy use rises and falls based on whether or not the propane furnace comes on, and whether or not the external 2kw electric heater comes on in the solar battery/equipment shed.   But over any typical 24 hour period, it all averages out to 1.5kw per hour.

So if the power goes out up there from tonight's storm, the house will be fully functional in every regard for at least 1.5kw for a max of 20 hours, but in reality, probably only about 18 hours. Can't run the batteries down to zero.

That will give me more than ample time to drive up, and manually activate the generator, because we do not yet have the auto-switch for the generator installed.  We bought one, just haven't put it in yet.  That, along with the through-wall generator exhaust system/muffler are the final two things that have to be installed.  We HAVE them both; just haven't had the time to put them in yet.

So I'll be watching the weather and the grid power up in PA and see what has to be.  I really DON'T want to have to drive all the way up there this weekend.

I seriously doubt any plowing will be needed down here in the New York City area.   It's heavy, wet snow.  While it is accumulating on the grass and a little on sidewalks, there's pretty much nothing on the roads.  Just wet.  So if I HAVE to go back up to PA, at least I'll have the 4 wheel drive snow plow truck to get up there.  Unless there's so much ice they shut everything down.

And so it goes . . . . . . . . .