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Invest in a portable generator. I prefer the Honda 2200 watt gas fed model. They are quiet, rock solid, easy to use units that can keep your house running safe and smooth no problem- furnace, appliances and lights, in case of BS like this or any other emergency that may pop up.

Wow. Just, lol.

Hondas are the way to go, highly recommended them. Plus Govplanet has surplus generators for cheap so there’s also that option.

Because the power grid is controlled by what party takes over……….hopefully the lizard people are letting us use our well water we take from them.

The concern is energy usage due to heating during this really cold blast we got. The grid is under very heavy load, so they run the risk of having to do quick rotating shut offs in areas. Is it ideal? No. Could our infrastructure be better? Yes. Regardless, PA has it a lot better than some other states.

Heating a house/apartment takes a lot of energy. I put my thermostat down a bit and put a sweater on. 🤷

Yeah my pipes would absolutely freeze if they did that. Maybe they shouldn’t have shut down as many power plants as they have.

you are for sure over reacting. I can't believe the amount of posts I've seen about this on this subreddit. Obviously, the letter is a blanket suggestion for everyone. If enough people take it seriously it'll ease strain on the electric grid during these freezing temps. Some of you are so first world it is disgusting. Be thankful you even have reliable power in the first place. Yes this is America, yes your paying for it blah blah blah. Downvote the shit out of me. For real, its just a heads up letter with the intention of saying, "hey if you strain the electric grid too much in these temps power will go out." Not hard to understand. Fucking hell.

I’ve lived in the region my whole life and this is the coldest weather I can remember. It’s going to put a strain on the infrastructure, and asking people to conserve power where possible to prevent blackouts seems entirely appropriate.

I think you’re taking it a tad too personally. Merry Christmas.

Exactly. Invest in a generator. Problem solved.

Agree but from a slightly different angle. I think the intent was that the individual household and consumer was asked to conserve, which is jarring. It's tough to justify turning off a few lights when tens of thousands of store lights stay on all night, casinos blaze light 1000 suns, and empty offices keep equipment running and heat at 72. The biggest places where actual electricity reductions could be noticed aren't the ones implementing the changes.

2009 was colder and for weeks on end, and I don’t recall being asked to conserve electricity.

The world has committed to an energy transition, we have a semi-world war going on, we're dealing with high inflation and we've got record levels of government debt growing out of control.

Despite those realities, US consumption levels have increased since COVID.

It's not great and I think it'll get worse before it gets better.

Go with the generator until the gas company sends us the same notice.

“My wastefulness is justified by the wastefulness of others” is one hell of a take.

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Too many people rely on others for their every day necessities. No one is prepared for anything.

I have a wood stove, If my house is cold, it’s my fault. No one can come to me and say, “listen, your neighbors didn’t cut enough firewood last year and they are going to run out, please don’t burn as much so they can have some.”

When hearing of the impending storm and high winds, I ran our generator for a bit, refilled our 25 gallons of water jugs for flushing toilets etc, topped off our oil lamps/lanterns and made sure we had plenty of fuel for the generator.

I don’t know when everyone became so helpless.

Got a similar email from PECO. Never have been asked to conserve power like this before. But we made it through the night with no issues.

Exactly and this is how it’s going to be for our foreseeable future. Push the responsibility onto individual citizens while giving corporations a free pass. I’m sure all the abandon malls and mega warehouses shut their lights off this weekend….

This is a result of electrification of residential heating systems (very inefficient at these temperatures), and green electricity sources unable to fulfill demand. Interesting to me, many industrial/business users will curtail usage this weekend anyway, would seem to offset heating demand? You could do like most people and use what you want until it goes out.

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Your indignation is unjustified. Your grandparents ate Spam for Christmas. Not because they couldn’t afford something better, but for the good of a cause bigger than them.

As a child in the 70s, my family and whole neighborhood turned Christmas lights off at 8 pm to save power. Every time we turned a light off, we saved resources and money for everyone.

Turn off the lights, light some candles, send the kids to bed, and light a fire if you have a place to do so. If you turn the thermostat down 2-deg, you can cuddle more with your Christmas elf in your new Christmas pjs.

It is only one day. The day we are told is a season of giving. So give a bit and feel the joy to the world.

I got the email from PECO also. Dude, your name and icon is hilarious. Merry Xmas!

Oh so reliant on yourself, but yet still here interacting with other people why?

A LOT more people have electric heat these days. Also the entire Eastern seaboard is on the same grid, and the entire eastern seaboard (honestly pretty much the entire country) is well below average temps right now. Where the northeast might normally be able to draw power from the southern states to keep the lights on, that's not an option here due to how widespread the issue is

Interacting with others on Reddit is hardly a necessity. It has nothing to do with making sure my family and I are warm, fed and have shelter.

It’s a time killing luxury, that isn’t needed to survive.

But here you are here on christmas day so clearly you rely on it or you dont like your family on christmas?

Do you use gov planet often? Seems kind of scammy.

Are you prepared for a nuclear apocalypse? Clearly you rely to much on your government to protect you.

Little ones are still fast asleep. Barn work has been done, firewood has been brought in, just killing time for the time being.

It's just part of The Green New Deal, get used to it or vote for better politicians.

Just remember this when people keeping forcing EVs on a grid that can't support the current load during bad weather situations.

Having a backup generator certainly is a backup plan but those burn more fossil fuels than does a fully functioning power grid.

Below average temp but not extreme for a winter cold blast.

What in the world does this have to do with The Green New Deal?

I'm a child of the 70s was very poor but the life you described wasn't what I went through. We turned down the heat and shut off lights not needed to save money not to aid others.

Don’t you remember the constant message of the oil crisis? I got it at school, in public service announcements during Giligan’s Island, constantly streaming from new programs and political leaders. Maybe you just don’t remember, but that’s what was going on. No one message about conserving on one night…It was always and everywhere.

You realize they didn't check your electricity usage before sending this to you, right? Everyone in the affected area got this email.

So good job, you're using a perfectly reasonable amount of electricity and hopefully the power plants kept up with demand.

You misunderstood. Let's say my family is comfy at 68 degrees with 2 lights and the TV on. I'm asked to conserve and turn something off. My office building is set at 72, hallways lights/monitors/printers/etc. are on with no one around or serving a purpose. The shopping center has 200 "security" non-LED lights on. Who is wasteful here? Lighting and heating empty spaces or the family being cozy?

Oil crisis, odd even gas lines and messages about conservation and Jimmy Carters fire side chat on putting on a heavier sweater to stay warm but never messages about turning the lights off to save energy for a neighbor.

https://youtu.be/8iwwgjm-lYg

Edit: the first 2 minutes set up what I’m talking about

I don't click links posted by strangers on the internet.

Your reply and the one above hit the nail on the head. I have no clue why it is always our individual responsibility to make these changes when wasteful corporations make up double what we consume. At my office, they don't recycle. No one in the entire suburban office park recycles. So one of my coworkers set out a bin and takes our recycling to his home. Like, why does everything have to roll down to individuals like this when companies have the same access to light switches and recycling services and energy-saving fixtures we do, but they won't.

Edit: It reminds me of the phrase "We aren't going to paper-straw our way out of this problem."

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Electric heat is still 100% efficient at these temps. A heat pump may not be giving you the 300% efficiency it normally would, but it's still more efficient than alternatives.

OK. It’s a video explaining exactly what I’ve been talking about. That is, that why were are a nation of independence, in the energy crisis, we learned that we had to conserve, not just for ourselves but for our nations. If you don’t remember this, I’m sorry, but it was a part of the national ethos.

It is baffling to me how little people understand about how utilities work. Seriously, an EMP is the perfect weapon against the US. We are definitely too stupid to survive without technology at this point.

Heat pumps lose much efficiency at 40 degrees, substantially so at 28 degrees. We're at 13 here, after hitting 1 degree for the last 24 hours. Throw in some high winds.

You are misinformed. Green energy is additive. It does not take away from the grids ability to meet demand, despite republicans favorite talking point. BTW if you want to see what the grid is burning today, go onto PJMs web site

silly.

This is the result of us sharing our energy with our neighboring states. We produce third most electricity in the country to offset other states that don’t have the same capacity.

Everywhere is cold in the us. They’re asking us to cut back to help out our neighbors

Technically true, but they maintain 100% efficiency. Modern cold weather and geothermal units can handle these conditions with no sweat.

This is true, but a lot of folks have switched from fossil fuels to heat pumps recently (myself included.) Efficient and environmentally friendly but it’s still a grid load that wasn’t there before. My old oil system would have bankrupted me this winter but it barely used any electricity.

Oh, I have one, bought after a long outage back in 2016 or so. I will say that our power delivery is many times more reliable here in Berks than it was in Chester County at least.

Caving to the far left is absolutely what’s going on. This is just a taste.

Yeah, I'm not arguing it isn't an added strain on the grid but to call them inefficient is wrong. I want to get rid of my oil furnace and get a heat pump. I got a quote but I'm waiting until there is more clarification from the federal government in regards to HEEHRA. Bought 200 gallons this year. Hoping it lasts. This cold snap is putting a dent in it though.

If I told a customer to order less because I didn't feel like doing more I'd be fired. So how about we work on getting a better electrical provider?

That better be a joke that they are cutting power. I live in an older home and simply can’t afford more efficient stuff. Allowing people to go without heat especially with these temps is BS

Yeah that part as well. Most businesses I’ve gone by still have their neon signs going even though they’re closed.

Perhaps. My experience with geothermal is peripheral with an older commercial system. The original bid called for an auxiliary heat boiler, the geothermal guy claimed it was unnecessary. It was left out, then installed at far greater cost later on after the geothermal continuously burned up pumps and blew breakers every winter. I believe the cold weather units you refer to carry conventional heaters.

How long do you think they will shut it off?

This is the reality of privatization of infrastructure. Private companies will always make their profit the first priority. Also, if they're able to operate with a 30% year of year profit, how much cheaper would our power be if it was a public utility not focused on profit?

We're continuing to keep handing our country over to corporations and, in turn making the rich richer. Why people don't realize this in the voting both? I'll never know.

I'm fine with helping. What they're saying though is "cut back or we'll cut you off".

If they do it, they'll cycle it around a couple hours at a time. Calculated to not cause weather related damage. Worst part, many won't know if it's a rolling blackout and likely to end soon, or a regular outage of unknown duration.

Buy an electric car too. 😑

I agree, but I'm the opposite of you - we are a major power user. Multiple PC's and monitors running, plus I keep a fairly large coral reef tank - it uses, by itself, a few amps just for the heater. The pump is DC, and lights are LED, but its still a huge consumer.

I pay quite a bit in electricity, yet rarely see any grid improvements.

My parents have been without electricity for 4 days.....

If you’re looking for a good affordable alternative, I bought my own from Alpine Air for $5k instead of the $20k the local installers wanted. 90% of it is doable yourself, someone just needs to come charge it with refrigerant.

Yes, that's what happens when people use more than is produced.

You think that can be done overnight?

Our whole block did such a great job conserving power that even out streetlights we're out. I've never seen such teamwork from everyone on our grid. Complete pitch black at every house. All for the greater good so everyone else could enjoy power.

What is the point of this post besides virtue signaling or complaining?

It was very cold out and the grid was at risk of having issues so they asked everyone to dial back their usage if possible.

How dare they talk to people lol

The people in this thread are something else.

No. But the active threat of being replaced might kick them in gear

He saw it on Facebook and wanted to own the libs on Reddit.

Can’t wait to see my bill this month 😅

They’re saying “cut back or we won’t have enough and there will be brown outs”

Ive installed a bunch of systems and have my EPA 608 certificate. I know I can install it and have no issues, but I won't get the warranty. A highly reputable vendor that does work for my company quoted me at 7500 for a trane 14 SEER unit. My carrier oil furnace is not old, so I'm opting to keep it for back up heat or else I'd go to a higher SEER.

He is complaining about people relying on regulated utilities and how they need other people to survive. His interaction with people he dislikes acknowledges that his point makes no sense. Because he is relying on other people, the same people hes complaining about.

I’m petty so regardless I’ll call multiple times an hour. Annoy them enough maybe they’ll learn not to do it.

Keep voting in republicans and citizens’s needs will stay second to corporate whim.

Many offices do have motion sensor lights and after-hours HVAC settings, though. Also remote controls/monitoring and modern high efficiency heat exchangers that are many times more efficient per cubic foot.

And when there are tens of thousands of households vs dozens of office buildings in a service area, it's absolutely the households that are consuming the vast majority of energy, so it makes sense to try and reduce the demand where it's greatest.

Both can be wasteful, but you're the one being willfully wasteful.

It's for the betterment of capitalism! It's not about you enjoying Christmas. It's about the money!

The alternative to rolling brown outs is full on black outs. Stop wasting call center people's time.

You think they had no idea leading up to this winter that things would be cold and electricity might be used to alleviate that?

No they definitely had no time ever to prepare for this.

You're really overreacting, CA showed even sending a brief message like this can reduce load on a grid if even a small portion of customers can reduce their usage.

I'd much rather get an inoffensive e-mail than our grid fail during a deep freeze like in Texas or something.

This makes absolutely no sense. You think they make more profit by selling less electricity?

You can thank the people that protest coal and nuclear and make it politically infeasible to expand our energy production capabilities.

Has nothing to do with capitalism, it is politics. The electric company's have not been allowed to expand under the current state and federal government. Climate change you know ( insert eye roll ). Question, how will they charge all the electric cars they want us to buy?

I mean they literally got an NFL game delayed an hour in Tennessee because of stress on the grid. You don’t think they called all those place too to ask for a cutdown on usage?

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few ~ Spock

Years of not willing to invest in infrastructure, privatizing everything, not wanting to pay taxes, thank the republican platform!

I have a propane conversion kit on my EU2200i. I’m able to keep it in the camper or house without any smell of gasoline. Slightly less efficient but so much nicer to use.

I don't.

It sounds like this isn't targeted toward you. Much more likely towards those using electric resistive heat, which is a huge draw on the grid. Or things like electric cars (which are still amazing), slow down charging overnight if you don't need it.

Hell, even dryers are big draws. Given the super rare conditions that hardly ever happen, I get it.

Devils advocate, if just a couple of non critical buisness cust there power, it would be massive compared to a hundred homes.

Milking customers for years without improving infrastructure. And on top of that every idiotic company pushing electric vehicles on an already stressed grid in many states. This won’t be the last email we receive like this one.

I got the same email and I have panels, so I’m actively giving back to the grid 😆

The vast majority of what you “recycle” doesn’t get recycled… so people stop doing it because it was a facade

My point is that prices are higher, and yes, at times it's cheaper to keep supply down to increase the price. While PA is better regulated, the beat case study for this is Texas and their absolute runaway energy pricing during high demand. That system provides an incentive to have just enough for 90% of the time, then 10% of the time cashing in on high demand pricing and cutting service to some areas.

It's much more complicated than the way you make it seem as if pricing is fixed at the whole sale level (not your's and my pricing). With your train of thought I can make energy widgets and I can sell them for $10, if I make 100 I earn $1,000 so why should I not make as many as possible? Well, the reason is because if I make 100 I make $1,000 but if i make 50 and demand is high I could make $5,000. So half the labor and supplies costs and x5 revenue. That's how you maximize profit.

Edit: TL;DR energy is a commodity

Lol k

Not everything is all about you.

Yea, I get that, but I’m sure they all new this would be a possibility. Too many companies are trying to upgrade everything to be electric, yet won’t update the infrastructure. And hell yeah I expect better. We are supposed to be a developed nation and we have the capabilities to do better. I’m worried more people aren’t pissed off.

This will continue to get worse if our country doesn’t actually do something. We won’t be able to use fossil fuels as a backup forever.

Last night I was going to go to a Christmas Eve service at one of the churches in my area, but found there was no service at all at many of the churches where I live. I think with this major storm, bitter cold, and being asked to conserve electricity on top of that has cancelled out many of the church services yesterday. I would say because of the major storm and bitter cold is why we are being asked to conserve electricity to prevent a strain on an aging grid that could cause major blackouts I feel as we do what we all can to keep warm.

Very sad state of affairs we live in. We keep building big house further away from the power plants on rikity poles

Which really drives home the point that corporations talk about social and environmental sensitivity, then lie and cheat to extract a better profit at the expense of what society really needs, while shoving the responsibility onto individuals.

I don’t understand how your comment is relevant to what I said

This is going on in most places to be honest. I’ve seen similar alerts for NJ, NYC, etc

Just a sign we are descending into collapse mode as a country.

🤷‍♀️

I was looking at all the office towers downtown Philadelphia that had lights on last night while individual households are being asked to conserve. I don’t know, but it feels like a waste of energy to light an office tower during a holiday and especially at night.

Yet Democrats are the ones waging a war on energy.

Merry Christmas!

Bidens energy policies.

You nailed it.

I did my part. My furnace ran out of water and shut down until 3 am Christmas Eve when I ran water into the water jacket.

It’s definitely improved over the last few years in my part of Berks. A mouse would fart and I would lose power. Ever since we spent money to have the generator installed we’ve had no extended outages. Thank goodness, but it’s nice to know we have it if we need it now.

What area of PA are you in and what areas does First Energy serve?

If you vote democrat you get what you vote for.

They cover large portions of multiple states now. Think this map is an older one..

https://www.firstenergycorp.com/content/dam/corporate/images/fe-territories-2011-wht.gif

Or voted for the wrong party. Democrats are taking away all the energy sources that we run off of; oil, gas, nuclear….

Lol they downvote you for the truth

Only on russian state tv

Didn't Biden just release a Russian war criminal dubbed "The Merchant of Death" back to Russia?

You really think they stopped to look at your electricity usage before sending this mass message? Lol. I appreciate the warning because most people don’t think of others and the impact of their actions.

Well to be fair, using candles does add to the Christmasy ambience.

TBH... I would think there's less emphasis on dealing with extreme surges or outliers with private companies. You'd be paying for a lot of capacity and infrastructure you only need once every few years.

My brother lives out in the mountains and loses power every now and then. For Christmas, I bought him a Jackery Explorer Power Station. These portable batteries won't power a refrigerator or a furnace, but they will allow you to charge your devices and power a laptop and cable modem for several hours.

We got a text from PECO. First time in the 14 years I've lived in the area.

Good news is that we shut down three mile island. /s

you have a boat load of people converting all of their energy use to electric and the people in charge of this public messaging dont realize the grid cant support this. coal is one of the cheapest ways to produce heat and energy, along with oil and LNG/LP after. after telling our whole area to dump coal and go electric its no surprise an area that relied on coal is having energy issues. our leaders keep shouting we must dump fossil fuels without making sure their proposed solution is even tangible

PJM's grid is always winter peak demand and people act like this shit is a surprise

edit: and crickets about nuclear energy as always

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Did you know the population of PA in 1960 was 11.32m and at the latest census was 2020 at 12.96m…..

Didn’t benedict donald steal a crapload of national ultra top secret documents after staging a violent failed coup to regain the presidency that putin helped him get?

No, but Biden did release a war criminal back to Russia.

Yeah, and you think the 2 are equivalents. Merry Christmas.

What you said is not only false, but loaded with so many mainstream buzz words that in totality make no logical sense the way you said it.

If you don't think releasing The Merchant of Death will lead to the death of innocent lives, then you must be truly naive.

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I feel bad for that reddit care resources. I feel like it is used more for trolling users. I know I get spammed with it when I make a hot take on Reddit.

I think the point is, do you think they asked major corporations to cut back on their usage? Did the threaten to intermittently cut their electricity to force compliance?

Keep drinking the koolaid.

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You're delusional

It's not an atypical ask.

I work for a commercial HVAC contractor. The large buildings in the city ( condos and what not) have dual fire boilers that can run off electricity or oil.

It's very common for the city to put a call in to these buildings to switch the boilers over to oil to conserve electricity during cold spells like this. Our company spent this past week checking all the dual fire boilers we have to make sure they will run in oil.

They take this very seriously and if a building doesn't switch over, there's heavy fines.

Been this way for at least the past 10 years.

Yeah they most certainly did ask them lol.

Having some post-Festivus celebration, I see? But in all seriousness, you are right. A lot of businesses don’t conserve as much as they should, and they can conserve about as much as you do on a regular basis. Problem with it is, while it would save them lots of money in the long run to use auto dimming lights and lower temperature setpoints when not occupied, those businesses put that low on the totem pole because it can be involved and not save them too much right away. So unless the government creates some program to encourage businesses to be reimbursed for going green, they won’t do it until they have nothing else better to do to save money

Is there a source for that other than your words? Also, did they threaten to simply cut power if there wasn't compliance?

I own a small business and we were asked and have friends who are in upper management for big corps who also received the same email.

It was a boiler plate email sent out to ALL accounts, not just residential.

Wasn't sent to all, I didn't receive one. No one that I know has received one either.

So, it seems as if you're spewing some BS you've seen online. Then attempting to label it as fact rather than giving any evidence to support your claim.

I'd suggest you update your email with MetEd then? I'm done discussing this with you, have a great new years eve & new year itself.

Shhhh. Stop that. People dont want educated about things that are facts that they can't use to prove their own agenda.

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Because thats what people do. Even if someone is self reliant, it doesn't meant they are a sociopath living alone & shunning the world. Common sense. It is someone who takes care of themselves & others they care about.

From my experience & community, most people are quite social who are self reliant.

I hate judging but I am a business owner. There are adult people that have no idea how to care for themselves. There are days when our staff is laughing at requests & others where we are genuinely afraid or sad.

The idea that someone maintains their own home is absolutely a weird concept for so many.

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And that has what to do with "the war on energy"? Please be specific.

We're roughly the same age and the world population has nearly doubled since our childhood. People have too many kids and consume at a rate that exceeds our planet's capacity to sustainably provide.

Just because some dickhead doesn't take their responsibility seriously doesn't mean you're off the hook for your contributions to sharing resources. We all have to do our part.