A lot of gas power plants have at least a few hours of onsite storage. Probably more storage than you have battery time.
I believe that the vast majority of power failures, even long ones, are transmission and distribution issues. Not all of them, but it’s absolutely the dominant failure mode I’ve heard about. That makes sense; plants are pretty hardened, and there are a bunch of them. The distribution infrastructure is spread out, exposed, and not nearly as redundant as you’d like to see. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages .
… but how much do you even care about backup power for an outage so short that you could feasibly ride it out on batteries? Power failures are great; all the fans and pumps shut down and things get quiet. Unless of course somebody decides to fire up a damned generator...
Older furnaces and stoves have pilot lights, which constantly release a small amount of gas and burn it. If the gas went out the pilot would too, and then when the gas came back on the house would slowly fill with gas.
Appliances with pilot lights have thermopile safety valves to prevent that. If the pilot flame goes out, the thermopile gets cold and the valve closes until somebody manually overrides it (which requires a press-and-hold action). The safety valve normally turns off the main burner as well as the pilot light. I learned to light a pilot in the late 1960s or maybe early 1970s, and I have never in my life seen a pilot light appliance without the safety valve. Here’s a patent from 1961 that says it offers an improvement on the “commonly used” thermopile.
I don’t know when the thermopile valves became absolutely universal, but I don’t think I’d want to use a gas appliance so old that it did not have one. The pilot light would be the least of my worries. Burners rust out, especially old ones. And orifices clog and control valves go bad.
Even if the safety valve sticks open, which is probably its rarest failure mode, a pilot light isn’t going to fill a building with a dangerous level of gas. But it might manage to fill your water heater closet with a dangerous level of gas.
Now, the main burner can definitely put out a dangerous amount of gas if it decides to come on with nothing to light it. But that also applies with an electric igniter if nothing checks to make sure the burner actually lights. I had an electrically ignited gas stove that would happily spew gas all day if the igniters failed, which they did. Apparently it was really fun when houses were full of match-lit gas lighting that might be left running unattended all night...
I’m not saying there’s no risk from pilot lights, but you make it sound a lot worse than it is.
I suspect the bigger problems are that (a) if, say, a manual stove burner valve were left open, it could spew a lot more gas than a pilot light, and (b) a lot of people simply wouldn’t know how to get their pilots going again… although I wonder how many pilot lights are still even out there.
Even now, gas is pretty scary stuff to be piping into your house. At least electricity mostly stays in the wires...
how much do you even care about backup power for an outage so short that you could feasibly ride it out on batteries?
That isn’t what I’m worried about, yes. The post is about prolonged blackouts.
Appliances with pilot lights have thermopile safety valves to prevent that.
Maybe some of them? I’ve worked with a stove with a pilot light for each burner, where if one of them went out you would start to smell gas, and you could relight it with a match even if it had been hours.
If you look on gas company websites, they all say that they will need to send technicians door to door before they’re willing to turn the gas back on, and that is what happened here for people who turned their own gas off out of caution around the Lawrence explosions.
My impression is that gas companies use a procedure like this out of an abundance of caution / because there are still very old gas appliances that could be around which could have this issue. But I don’t think it would be legal to sell them now, or has been for a long time.
EDIT: Apparently I am wrong about this, heaters require them but stoves (in the United States) do not. :-( This according to some undated forum posts, plus Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_supervision_device—“SD usage in consumer products differs among political units – in the U.S., FSDs are not required by law or regulation for gas range (or gas stove) top burners and consequently are not present on ranges in the U.S. [citation needed]”.
But I get the impression that modern gas stoves are always pilotless, in which case only the cooking flame would be an issue, which would hopefully always be supervised.
That isn’t what I’m worried about, yes. The post is about prolonged blackouts.
Sorry, I thought you’d said that the solar batteries were your solution.
We have a little dual-fuel generator that can run for quite a while on a barbecue tank (there’s usually a full spare around here), and for longer than that on gasoline that could usually be siphoned from the car. It’s not hardwired, and it won’t heat the house, but it and a couple of long extension cords can keep the freezer from thawing out or the pet snakes from dying of the cold.
I’ve worked with a stove with a pilot light for each burner, where if one of them went out you would start to smell gas, and you could relight it with a match even if it had been hours.
Hmm. I guess it might not be universal for stoves, since they’re small burners that are always supposed to be used under direct supervision? It’s true that an N-burner stove would have to have N thermopiles, too. I’m not sure I’ve ever used a stove with pilot lights, which may explain my not having seen anything without the thermopile. The pilot-light appliances I’ve used have been house heaters and water heaters; things with big burners that start by themselves.
I absolutely do believe that they send people around, regardless. I mean, even if you have safety devices, things can happen. And I do think that even a stove could probably be dangerous, if say you were heating water for pasta when the gas went out and forgot to shut off the burner...
A lot of gas power plants have at least a few hours of onsite storage. Probably more storage than you have battery time.
I believe that the vast majority of power failures, even long ones, are transmission and distribution issues. Not all of them, but it’s absolutely the dominant failure mode I’ve heard about. That makes sense; plants are pretty hardened, and there are a bunch of them. The distribution infrastructure is spread out, exposed, and not nearly as redundant as you’d like to see. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages .
… but how much do you even care about backup power for an outage so short that you could feasibly ride it out on batteries? Power failures are great; all the fans and pumps shut down and things get quiet. Unless of course somebody decides to fire up a damned generator...
Appliances with pilot lights have thermopile safety valves to prevent that. If the pilot flame goes out, the thermopile gets cold and the valve closes until somebody manually overrides it (which requires a press-and-hold action). The safety valve normally turns off the main burner as well as the pilot light. I learned to light a pilot in the late 1960s or maybe early 1970s, and I have never in my life seen a pilot light appliance without the safety valve. Here’s a patent from 1961 that says it offers an improvement on the “commonly used” thermopile.
I don’t know when the thermopile valves became absolutely universal, but I don’t think I’d want to use a gas appliance so old that it did not have one. The pilot light would be the least of my worries. Burners rust out, especially old ones. And orifices clog and control valves go bad.
Even if the safety valve sticks open, which is probably its rarest failure mode, a pilot light isn’t going to fill a building with a dangerous level of gas. But it might manage to fill your water heater closet with a dangerous level of gas.
Now, the main burner can definitely put out a dangerous amount of gas if it decides to come on with nothing to light it. But that also applies with an electric igniter if nothing checks to make sure the burner actually lights. I had an electrically ignited gas stove that would happily spew gas all day if the igniters failed, which they did. Apparently it was really fun when houses were full of match-lit gas lighting that might be left running unattended all night...
I’m not saying there’s no risk from pilot lights, but you make it sound a lot worse than it is.
I suspect the bigger problems are that (a) if, say, a manual stove burner valve were left open, it could spew a lot more gas than a pilot light, and (b) a lot of people simply wouldn’t know how to get their pilots going again… although I wonder how many pilot lights are still even out there.
Even now, gas is pretty scary stuff to be piping into your house. At least electricity mostly stays in the wires...
That isn’t what I’m worried about, yes. The post is about prolonged blackouts.
Maybe some of them? I’ve worked with a stove with a pilot light for each burner, where if one of them went out you would start to smell gas, and you could relight it with a match even if it had been hours.
If you look on gas company websites, they all say that they will need to send technicians door to door before they’re willing to turn the gas back on, and that is what happened here for people who turned their own gas off out of caution around the Lawrence explosions.
Ex: https://www.centerpointenergy.com/en-us/safety/pages/understanding-the-gas-outage-restoration-process-.aspx https://myenergycoop.com/restoring-natural-gas-outages/
My impression is that gas companies use a procedure like this out of an abundance of caution / because there are still very old gas appliances that could be around which could have this issue. But I don’t think it would be legal to sell them now, or has been for a long time.
EDIT: Apparently I am wrong about this, heaters require them but stoves (in the United States) do not. :-( This according to some undated forum posts, plus Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_supervision_device—“SD usage in consumer products differs among political units – in the U.S., FSDs are not required by law or regulation for gas range (or gas stove) top burners and consequently are not present on ranges in the U.S. [citation needed]”.
But I get the impression that modern gas stoves are always pilotless, in which case only the cooking flame would be an issue, which would hopefully always be supervised.
Sorry, I thought you’d said that the solar batteries were your solution.
We have a little dual-fuel generator that can run for quite a while on a barbecue tank (there’s usually a full spare around here), and for longer than that on gasoline that could usually be siphoned from the car. It’s not hardwired, and it won’t heat the house, but it and a couple of long extension cords can keep the freezer from thawing out or the pet snakes from dying of the cold.
Hmm. I guess it might not be universal for stoves, since they’re small burners that are always supposed to be used under direct supervision? It’s true that an N-burner stove would have to have N thermopiles, too. I’m not sure I’ve ever used a stove with pilot lights, which may explain my not having seen anything without the thermopile. The pilot-light appliances I’ve used have been house heaters and water heaters; things with big burners that start by themselves.
I absolutely do believe that they send people around, regardless. I mean, even if you have safety devices, things can happen. And I do think that even a stove could probably be dangerous, if say you were heating water for pasta when the gas went out and forgot to shut off the burner...
Yup: solar, which works for a prolonged blackout (unless the panels are covered by snow or it’s fully cloudy).
And then a small amount of batteries (~1kwh) for times when we need some power and there’s no sun.