Hurricane Beryl

+SpiceWare · July 11

Well that was unexpected - Hurricane Beryl was originally forecast to hit Mexico, just below the Texas border, but instead veered a few hundred miles north to hit the Houston metro. Only a category one, but lots of damage.

The morning of July 8th the grid bounced off/on five times as the storm arrived, then went offline at 5:06 only to return 3 days later at 11:08 am on July 11th.

There's still over 1 million without power

My house survived intact, though I did have some broken branches I had to cut down and lots of debris in the yard that I cleaned up on Monday and Tuesday:

Ended up filling 10 yard size trash bags - 5 for debris in the yard, and 5 for the branches I cut down (and chopped up).

My folks lost some shingles and had water make its way inside

My solar and 1 Powerwall provide limited power - not enough to run my home's AC, nor my normal 14-50 outlet for charging my car but enough to run some fans and keep my food in the fridge from spoiling. During the day my folks came over and sat in the living room with fans running while their electronics and large portable battery recharged via my solar. The large battery powered a couple fans overnight for their bedroom. The first night was "cool" so I slept in my bedroom with the ceiling fan running all night, the Powerwall made it through to the next morning then recharged to 100% again via solar. Next couple of nights were very warm so I used Tesla's Camp Mode for the first time and slept in Talith, my Model 3.

Talith used 63 miles of range, about 20% of the battery, to run the AC for 11 hours overnight. Even by myself it was a bit cramped, but the AC was awesome. Here's a few daytime shots of my sleeping arrangement:

During the day I was able to use my 14-30 dryer outlet to recharge Talith. Faster than a standard 120v outlet, but not as fast as the 14-50 outlet I normally charge with.

I setup some fans for my home office so I could work yesterday and this morning. The dyson blows air into my office while the box fan sucks air out. My thinking was hot air rises, so I put the box fan up higher.