It's now Thursday morning, and ONCOR, the largest power company in the
state, tweeted that it is discontinuing power blackouts related to this
week's winter storm.
We were again blessed yesterday to have an entire day without a power
outage, but I (at least) continued to take as many opportunities as I
could recognize to charge batteries and wash dishes and basically get
stuff done hopefully in advance of an outage.
At the same time, I was also trying to be careful to conserve — turning
off extra lights and so on — partly motivated by my guilt in running the
dishwasher.
It seems to me that power demand would typically increase in the evenings,
because the temparatures fall, and heating one's home (with an electric furnace)
seems a major power draw (I once read that any appliance used for changing
temperature — think furnaces, refrigerators — is always a huge energy consumer);
in a normal world, homes are mostly dormant during the day, with a relatively
stable and standard power draw: refrigerators, furnace at a lower setting because
people are gone. But in the evenings, people are returning home, turning on lights,
making dinner, adjusting the thermostat to a more comfortable temparature; TVs are
coming on, et cetera. Our current reality is probably somewhat different, because
many people are stuck at home during the day either as a function of COVID-19, the
winter weather, or (likely) both.
Temparatures have been gradually getting warmer — we reached the mid-20s
yesterday and we're there again today. Not warm enough to melt snow, but also
not -2°F. We're supposed to start really warming up tomorrow, and the news
broadcasts have been warning us all to watch for pipes to burst.
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