Time to buy those UPS Backup Batteries for your Electronics!

With working at home and having the kids on the computer attending virtual school, have you noticed that the lights will suddenly dim? Sometimes the router will reset suddenly and your kids have lost connection with their classroom for the next 5 to 10 minutes while it takes its sweet time booting back up? Ever have this happen more than once in a day?

Welcome to the drop in voltage in the electrical grid called a "brownout"! In my location, with Centerpoint managing the electrical lines, this happens roughly 100 times a year. They are hard to track, because I don't have a recorder hooked up to my electrical outlet. But they are frequent enough that I notice them around 3 times a month some months and 3 times a day some weeks. What first caught my attention was when one of my dvd players stopped working.

The brownout, the drop in voltage, causes a couple of issues in equipment which can damage it: (a) increase in current or (b) altered voltage pulses [1]. My dvd player would have suffered from the latter. At the time, I knew that the brownouts we were experiencing were likely the cause, and I purchased for several hundred dollars enough UPS backup batteries to protect the rest of my equipment. Back then a lot of work was being done on the power lines after one of our many serious storms. This was 10 years ago. Fast forward to 2020, the year of the disaster, and all of my backup batteries no longer work. Nevertheless, the brownouts continued; however, I was no longer noticing them. Then, I proceeded to lose a TV, another dvd player, a speaker system, and a computer. Damn you, 2020! (And Centerpoint? I'm not entirely sure because the relationship between the Electric Reliability Council of Texas and Centerpoint when it comes to "voltage sags" is opaque.)

Enter the situation that I started this story with. I went out to Best Buy and spent another several hundred dollars on UPS backup batteries. And as I did it, I wistfully remembered that Houston Lighting & Power seemed to do a better job [2]. Centerpoint's solution to our power instability is to have have us spend tens of thousands of dollars on natural gas backup generators [3]. The rub? They are the ones who charge us for the natural gas distribution to our homes. That doesn't seem right. You know what other power backup system I can get for a similar cost? Solar panels [4].

Why do I mention this? Let's say that relative to my damaged electronics, this paragraph in the Houston Chronicle was a buried lede [5]:

"Utilities with their fixed cost structure are especially vulnerable if revenue levels fall. A 10 percent revenue loss for a typical utility could mean a 26 percent drop in cash flow and a 43 percent drop in earnings, according to the report. That kind of drop would be unsustainable, jeopardizing ongoing electricity service quality. [emphasis added]"

So, go out and buy a battery backup or two if this is all news to you. WARNINGS: (1) make sure you get one that's got enough power for your equipment's wattage (no printers, no shredders, no refrigerators...those can't be plugged in). (2) READ THE OPERATOR'S MANUAL/INSTRUCTIONS!!! Nobody does, but THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT FOR YOUR SAFETY.

Questions to ask yourself as you drop at least sixty dollars (likely significantly more) at Best Buy, Staples, Fry's Electronics, what-have-you:

1) Does it feel fair that my effort to save money on electricity means that the quality is going down?

2) Does it feel fair that the Rail Road Commission keeps approving the increases to my electricity bill? [6]

3) I'm spending more every year on electricity. Where is the money going? [7]

4) How much does somebody pay who lives in an area where the electrical company isn't for-profit? How reliable is their electricity compared to what I've got?

Update

After publishing this article here in Patch, I received a phone call from Mr. Pierce Prader at Centerpoint. He sent out an electrician to inspect the electrical connections between the transformer and my house. A loose connection was tightened, and I'm waiting to see if the random brownouts cease. There were two between the time of my publishing this article and the Centerpoint electrician's visit.

References

[1] https://quickelectricity.com/protect-appliances-during-brownouts/

Note: the actual length of time that comprises a "brownout" is not well-defined; a brief scan of the National Electric Code did not provide insight on this aspect of the definition.

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/19970220213715/http://www.hlp.com/this_is_hlp.html

[3] https://www.centerpointenergy.com/en-us/residential/services/natural-gas/natural-gas-appliances/natural-gas-standby-generators/commercial-generators/special-offers

[4] https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/is-the-tesla-powerwall-the-best-solar-battery-available

[5] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Covid-19-power-demand-drop-raises-concerns-on-15697998.php

[6] https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/supreme-court/2014/12-0102-0.html

[7] https://investors.centerpointenergy.com/news-releases/news-release-details/centerpoint-energy-announces-landmark-actions-significant-equity

Elizabeth Jensen, PhD, PE, CSP is the Treasurer of Referee PAC, a non-partisan, non-ideological voter information service. https://refpac.org