Hurricane Beryl hit Houston after the Fourth of July holiday. It was a bit of a surprise in many ways. First it turned northeast at the last minute and headed towards the city. Second, it was a Category 1 but was extremely destructive. It caught the city off guard.
The biggest impact was the grid failing due to so many trees falling over and breaking power lines, and also utility poles and wires breaking from the intense wind speeds of Beryl. There was also some secondary flooding that made some streets impassible and flooded a few neighborhoods.
A lot of lessons were learned about preparing for climate change fueled disasters.
Summary of Lessons Learned
No good plans survive first contact with the enemy. Or to quote Mike Tyson, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Even though The Climate Advisor is all about adapting to our ever worsening climate extremes, some of our best laid plans can fail. Here’s a quick list of failures and successes with Beryl…
- Fail
- Being overly confident in my preparations — I had a plan and thought I was good.
- Not fully practicing my emergency plans — related to the first item, I had practiced my plans to cool part of my house, but I didn’t do a full up test to include the next step of recharging my big solar generator (SoGen) battery, so I quickly ran low on juice.
- Not taking threats seriously — Beryl seemed like a low risk storm, maybe some torrential rain, but nothing too bad. However, every hurricane is different, and not all threats are known in advance.
- Success
- Easily powered the fridge, internet, electronics, and small appliances with portable power banks
- Recharged small SoGens with portable solar panels in just a few hours each day
- Able to charge large SoGens with my Plug-in Hybrid Vehicle (PHEV)
Some info about Beryl and its wake of destruction
Beryl was one of the earliest major hurricanes ever recorded. It swerved toward Houston as it approached the coast, made landfall at Matagorda, Texas and swept southwest to northeast across Houston, the country’s fourth most populous city.
An excellent summary from Wikipedia… “Hurricane Beryl was a deadly and destructive Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that impacted parts of the Caribbean, the Yucatán Peninsula, and the Gulf Coast of the United States in late June and early July 2024 (Beryl was Cat 1 when it hit the Gulf Coast). It was the earliest-forming Category 5 hurricane on record and the second such storm in the month of July, the other being 2005‘s Hurricane Emily. Beryl was also the strongest hurricane to develop within the Main Development Region (MDR) of the Atlantic before the month of July. The second named storm, first hurricane, and first major hurricane[nb 1] of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, Beryl broke many meteorological records for the months of June and July, primarily for its unusual location, intensity, and longevity.”
Something I learned from this snippet above is the term “Main Development Region”, which is the area of ocean right off the west coast of Africa along the equator. I knew that’s where many hurricanes start, but I didn’t know it had a name. I check that region once a week or so during hurricane season using the MyRadar app to see what’s cooking in the Atlantic. (The MyRadar app is excellent, one of the few apps I pay to use every year.)
When Beryl hit the Gulf Coast it was a Category 1 hurricane, due to some dry air feeding into it, which reduced its power. Also, one thing I checked was the sea surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico, which were warm, but not excessive as it’s still early in the season.
Warm sea surface temperatures can cause the rapid intensification phenomenon, feeding energy into storms. And as I am fond of saying in this blog and when I do talks about climate change… climate change is feeding energy into the atmosphere — energetic things are going to happen. This means earlier hurricanes, more hurricanes, more storms, more heat waves, more torrential rains, more flooding, more drought, more extreme snow storms (snow storms are energetic events!), generally more extreme weather and impacts all around.
Impact on Houston
I could tell people weren’t taking it seriously because all the grocery stores were fully stocked, with no empty shelves as happened with Harvey.
Intense rain proceeded the wind. The rain wasn’t too bad (for Houston), but the wind was intense. Lots of trees were knocked down, ultimately leading to a huge blackout for over 2 million people in the Houston area. A few people were killed by falling trees, sadly, but the biggest large scale impact was the loss of power, which lasted anywhere from a day or two, to two weeks for some people.
There was lots of finger pointing after the storm, but I think impacts are hard to predict, as every hurricane seems to be unique in some way. Centerpoint did a fine job of restoring power, considering how widespread the impacts were. I had power back after three long days, some didn’t get power until almost two weeks after the storm. Another thing I like to say which will be true for more and more people as the world continues to heat up, air conditioning is not a luxury here, it’s life support.
Deeper dive into lessons learned.
Getting prepared. I filled up my water containers. If the grid goes completely down, then sometimes municipal water systems lose pressure and you will have no water. I have the water jugs seen in the picture above, giving me 23 gallons of drinking water. I also have several ways to purify water. Don’t forget the wine!
First morning after the storm making coffee. I could use a backpacking stove, like I did during Harvey, but I decided to try using one of my small solar generators, a Bluetti EB3A, to power my small coffee maker. It drew about 500 watts and used up about 10% of the battery. When using SoGen battery power, you have to balance whether or not what you’re doing is worth expending your energy reserves. Coffee is obviously top of the list of worthy uses. 😉
Left, using a small solar battery to power my bathroom, using my Bluetti EB3A, which is handy to carry from room to room; middle, cooking dinner on the grill the first night; left, hooked up my small heat pump A/C for a cool night’s sleep. That thing uses a lot of power if you leave it running, a bit more than the coffee pot, about 700 watts draw when it’s running at full blast. I ran it hard the first night and it used a lot of power, which led to problems later.
A pleasant surprise. The fridge is very efficient and only draws about 150 watts, so my mid-sized Bluetti AC70 powerbank was able to run the fridge for about 4 to 5 hours on a full charge. This powerbank charged up easily when connected to solar panels. The image on the right is the temperature of the freezer while running the fridge off battery power.
Left, trying to figure out why my big solar battery is not charging. I tried to hook up a solar controller from my landscape lights, which didn’t help. Right, foldable solar panels work great! I had one Bluetti 200 watt solar panel, two Allpowers 200 watt panels, and one 100 watt BougeRV panel.
I finally ended up charging the Bluetti AC200max and Ecoflow Wave 2 heat pump via my plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV). It barely made a dent in the vehicle’s charge. This demonstrates something coming soon to your home.
Soon people’s cars will provide backup power for their houses, and also may back up the grid during periods of high demand. This PHEV has a 24kwh battery in it, which is equivalent to about 2 Tesla Powerwalls. A battery in a full EV ranges from about 50 to more than 100 kwh, which can power the average home for 2 to 3 days. And that’s without trying to conserve any power. You could probably stretch that out to a week if you were careful with your power use.
Video of my nice and quiet solar panels. The neighbor behind me found out the hard way that solar panels by themselves do NOT work when the grid is down, unless you have batteries and/or a generator. Second night I heard him fire up a generator. I can only assume he went out and bought one! LOL! The constant drone of a generator is pretty annoying. Another advantage of solar and batteries… peace and quiet.
Finally figured out that my big generator wants high voltage and low amperage. You can hook up multiple panels in parallel or in serial. Serial hookups give higher voltage at constant amps, which is what my Bluetti AC200max wanted. This is a pic of the Bluetti app showing that the Bluetti AC200max is charging at about 370 watts. The “grid” side is an adapter that allows me to hook up more solar panels to the AC200max. It went from 20% to 80% charge in about 7 hours of full sun. If I had gotten up earlier it probably would’ve charged all the way. But by then, we had power back and I slept in like an air-conditioned rock!
Revisiting… Which company is better, Ecoflow or Bluetti?
After using both Bluetti and Ecoflow solar generators in an actual grid-down situation, I have some further thoughts on the battle of the SoGens.
I’m on Team Ecoflow now. The Ecoflow batteries were easier to use and to recharge. Bluetti instructions are poor, the display on my older AC200max is hard to read in the sun, and the Bluetti app doesn’t have much functionality. Ecoflow instructions are better, and the app is hands down the best, giving you control of a lot of things you can’t control via the buttons on the SoGen itself.
The Bluetti website is a confusing mess to navigate, and the website and instruction booklets are written by someone whose first language is definitely not English. The Ecoflow site is easier to navigate and reads well, though they do have an annoying number of pop-ups.
Bluetti is trying to be all things to all people. They have a confusing naming convention for all the different models of batteries they seem to put out every few months. They are trying to get into home solar installs. I called one of their home solar reps to get the scoop, and ended up played email/phone tag with them before giving up. Their excuse for missing my calls/emails was that they were “on vacation”. That’s fine, but you can’t spin up a whole new service if you don’t have people in place to run it. Weak.
Bluetti’s customer service is the worst. I have been given the runaround by them on purpose. Then when I posted a bad review on Amazon they kept bugging me to take it down in exchange for Bluetti Bucks (their loyalty program). Ecoflow support is professional and quick to respond. Ecoflow’s loyalty program is not quite as generous, and I see that as a good thing. They are being careful with their resources.
Funny thing is that Bluetti is supposedly a U.S. based company, while Ecoflow is based in China. I am not sure, but Bluetti seems to outsource their *entire* operation.
To be fair, both Bluetti and Ecoflow have excellent technology, and I really like the feature set on some of the Bluetti SoGens, however… Ecoflow is the better run company overall, it seems.
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If you want to learn more about SoGens, solar panels and other gear on YouTube. I like these guys… Professor Hobo and Jasonoid.
Summary
There it is. Hurricane season starts with a bang. Beryl was good practice for what’s to come. Especially considering hurricane season lasts through October. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get hit again. If not us, someone else is going to get spanked for sure.
The single biggest lesson learned is to run through your emergency plans from beginning to end — before you need them. I might turn the power off one day a year, just make sure I remember everything I need to keep me and mine safe and comfortable.
What are the odds that people will have multiple family members affected by climate change fueled disasters, across a continent, at the same time? I’d say those odds get smaller every year.
My uncle’s house just burned to the ground in Ruidoso, New Mexico a few weeks earlier. It was not entirely unexpected, living in a forested mountain region of the Southwest U.S. However, like most forest fires these day, it blew up quickly and got out of control. The new normal.
In these times of changing climate, it’s all about being ready to face the storm… or to get while the getting is good. Though in the case of climate change — you can run, but you can’t hide. It’s here and now, and coming for us…
