BrianW

Going to be a great spring with lots of already green lawns and flowerbeds that were preserved in snow. The amount of surface water down here is nuts. Everyone's sump pumps are running like crazy the last few days.

I have had a heat pump water heater since 2012 and love it. They are just insanely efficient and inexpensive to run. They use a 350 watt compressor to heat the water and they dehumidify your basement as well. From an energy cost perspective mine averages around 1-2 kwh in electricity consumption a day and around 600 kwh a year. Even with New Englands expensive electricity around .30 or more its still absolutely blows away oil/gas in operating cost. I have solar but if I had to pay for all the electricity it would have cost me like $180 in electricity for hot water for the year. Thats $15 a month for hot water. Yesterday my tank used 45 cents in electricity for hot water. People using the now nearly $5 heating oil will burn that equivalent money in seconds. As far as cost goes almost every New England state has like a $700+ state rebate on them and there was a federal rebate up to recently. They are like $1200 and the rebates makes them like $300 the same cost of a regular electric one. In CT right now the rebate is $900 here at https://www.energizect.com/explore-solutions/water-heaters/heat-pump-water-heaters-details I dont think many people realize oil burners run at close to 1 gallon per hour consumption when its running. With $5 heating oil your most likely burning a gallon a day minimum for hot water . With current prices thats $150 a month right now. Thats practically my entire yearly cost for my hot water for 1 month. Here is my last years usage and weekly usage from my Rheem 50 Gallon heat pump water heater.

I am fortunate that I can clear my panels really easy by just standing on my deck with a broom on an extension pole. Most of the time I just clear the bottom 2 feet and it melts or slides off. Took me quite a bit more work though in that big storm but I remove the snow regardless as I dont want ice dams. I definitely wouldnt be climbing up on a ladder or anything crazy like that to clear it. If I had a ton of land I would do a ground mount in New England. Production is really starting to ramp up with that increasing sun angle. Here is the production from my small 1.2 kwh system that really shows the increase well.

I am actually using 2 12k btu high efficiency mini splits. 1 floor console upstairs 1 wall unit downstairs. Works great for my open 1800 sqft split level that is very well insulated and air sealed. These things operate at just stunning efficiencies at low speed. They can run as low as like 100-200 watts at their minimum with the compressor on. I literally never turn them off and they just run low and slow all day. They were rated 30.5 SEER 14 HSPF which was like double any other heat pump available at the time. I have been monitoring my solar/electricty consumption including my heat pumps for almost 10 years. My average winter usage has been around 2500 kwh for Oct-Mar heating usage. Its been steadily around.5-.75 kwh per HDD. So last month BDR had 1000 HDD and it was crazy cold and I used 644 kwh for heat. So .64 kwh per HDD but often much lower in mild months. This is almost all powered from solar. Ive run short around 500-1000 kwh a few winters due to clouds. Even if I had to buy the electricity at CT's crazy high rates last month would have cost me 644 kwh x .33 it would have cost me $212 to heat my house. The one big benefit with electricity for heat pumps in the winter people often overlook is the stable electricity fuel price. Electricity in almost every market is adjusted twice a year for summer/winter. So your fuel cost doesn't skyrocket over night like the now nearly $5 a gallon heating oil. Electricity prices actually went down here at the winter rate change and doesn't adjust untill June 1st.

You forgot about solar and heat pumps. I converted my entire house to electric/solar in CT in 2017. I bought my panels in cash and it took 5 years to reach my return on investment. My electricity bill from Eversource has been the $9.62 minimum connection charge since I installed them. Here is a snapshot from a sunny day earlier in the week. You can see my 2 mini splits and entire house being directly powered from my solar panels from 930-330. I have 1 to 1 net metering so all that excess I send out in the day I can use at night. Powering heat pumps directly from solar is basically free heat that is also the cleanest form of heat probably on earth since there is no combustion. Your also getting an coefficient of performance with an effective efficiency of like 300-400% compared to burning wood/fossil fuels since your just moving heat. You can also power heat pumps from other alternative clean energy sources like wind.

I saw some posts there recently where trees were budding and some plants were flowering already. Spring is like 2 months ahead there.

18 Branford

Still 230k outages in Eastern Massachusetts. Look at those outages on the cape. Total grid failure. Surprisingly Eversource in CT is only reporting 600 outages.

Narragansett Camera. Stop sign looks like it's about to blow away. https://control.videolinq.com/public/eLmGC3P9

Just measured around 14 here in Branford. Absolutely dumping snow here.

Days and days.. Eversource: Update: We have upgraded the severity of our event response based on current forecasts. Restoration could take 2-6 days versus the previously communicated 3-5 days once it is safe for crews to respond. We encourage you to monitor forecast and ensure you are prepared. See storm center: eversource.com

Neighbor is a lineman says they are expecting it to be really bad. They have pretty high standards for not working over a set wind speed for safety reasons. There is going to be a long duration where they can't work on any lines with this storm.

Light snow here with a small band setup over New Haven the last hour or so. Can even see its slowing traffic down on 95 and the Meritt west of HVN.

What a winter for BDR and HVN. First time I've ever heard upton mention 3 foot totals On the higher end, the NBM (01Z) supports 23 to 30 inches across the area, due to a bit more QPF and the aforementioned higher ratios. Its 90th percentile supports close to 3 ft across much of the area. The NAMNest is also on the higher end with 2 to 3 inches of liquid equivalent. This is likely due to its more westward track. The 06Z HRRR which is similar in its track is very much in line with the current forecast. However, a reasonable worst case could put totals up to 3 ft. While the highest totals are expected along the coast, heavier bands of snow (strong frontogenetic forcing) can rotate inland and usually on the cold air side of the best forcing. These bands are ofter a challenge to forecast and often leads to localized higher amounts.

Yeah. There is zero road salt in New Haven. That mountain is completely gone. That's the only import and storage area in the state for salt. I believe it also supplies the 91 corridor up into New England.

This deep snow really helped preserve lawns around here. Pretty incredible how green my lawn is under the snow.

Ripping in Narragansett. https://www.georgesofgalilee.com/sky-cam/

Warm night at BDR. Spent most of the night at 28.

New Haven Harbor has a ton of ice. I think 2012/2013 was the last time it happened. There are stories that in the winter of 1934 they drove cars and trucks across the ice was so thick.

Yeah. I remember the thermometer in my car reading-25 one morning.

I think you were up in BTV back in the early 2000's? I spent a few years up there when my wife was finishing up school at UVM. I remember this January cold shot of yore..

You can really see it increasing on my small 1.2 kw solar array facing due south in full sun all day....

BDR'S reports come up as Official NWS Obs. I assume that means they have an observer on site? Seems they have a good observer as I work in the area all the time and they seem spot on.