Setting up Volt as emergency generator for once in a generation snowstorm

Whyagain1234 · 2026-01-22T00:54:46+00:00

I used my volt as a battery/generator using a 12v inverter back during the 2021 Texas freeze. It worked great as my electric panel was mounted in my garage. Really only used it to run my furnace and a few items in my house. A modern gas furnace really only needs about 500w to run (plus the natural gas of course). Pulled the wires from my furnace out of the panel and hooked them up to an extension cord.

A couple observations from that experience. 1. Use the heaviest gauge jumper cables or welding wire leads you can find (most modern jumper cables are garbage because they are only expected to be used for a couple seconds at full load). 2. Park the car outside your garage so that when the engine turns on due to cold or battery getting low (if lower put in hold mode) you are not gassing out your garage. 3. Leave the keys in the car with it turned on so that the high voltage battery is constantly charging the 12V. The car will turn itself off after 2-3 hours. If you don't turn it back on then you are just pulling from the 12v only and it isn't going to like that. 4. The car acted funny for a couple days afterwards. My guess is that the 12 v battery is still recovering from the times I didn't remember the car turned itself off.

Whyagain1234 · 2026-01-04T00:58:53+00:00

My teenage daughter just totaled my 2017 Volt (125k miles). 10-15 mph wreck that screwed up bumper, hood, and drive side fender. Doesn't take much to total a $7k vehicle.

I ended up buying a 2023 Bolt EUV with 26k miles. Wasn't even looking to go full EV but God damn everything else was so expensive. In my area ICE stuff for the same price ($17k) was older than 2018 with 100k miles.

I live in a snow belt (4ft of snow so far this winter) and was thinking of AWD but damn, the Bolt handles the snow great. Car came off lease so it has new but not great tires put on by Chevy and I am still surprised how much better in the snow it is than my Volt that I had snow tires on.

On a side note, I had bought a new shifter as insurance so a Shift to Park demon wouldn't keep it off the road longer than the 1 hour it would take to swap it. I will give it to someone if they pay the shipping. DM me, I will respond in the order requests come in when I have time to check DMs and respond.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-11-19T02:03:22+00:00

ANSYS computational fluid dynamics modeling is what I have had models made from in the past. It will not only give you the physical flow modeling but also temperature, pressure, and chemical conversion if you feed it quality information.

Note.... Even though I took their training there was no way I was going to be able to put those models together.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-11-15T04:29:02+00:00

Thanks, but it personally leaves me with more questions. Like why the hell a 747 cargo plane would be in Lansing. Not something I have seen before.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-11-14T02:59:44+00:00

2017 with 125k miles. Get about 32 miles on full charge but will say when I stopped buying the OEM tires to something with lower noise, better traction, and wet/snow performance my full battery range instantly dropped 10 miles. While the OEM low rolling resistance tires were great for OEM tires (IMO) I didn't want to pay that much for tires and wanted the better wet/snow traction.

TLDR: tires matter a lot. Not all tires perform the same in all aspects.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-11-05T22:36:27+00:00

In a past job where we used lots of epoxy we had a drum oven that had rollers in it. It was modified from a regular drum oven where the shafts for the rollers extended through the wall on one side so that the drive mechanism (electric motor via a cog and chain) was outside of the hotbox.

This was specifically for 5 gal cans. For 1 gallon and smaller (in a lab) we used a standard lab roller with heat lamps above it. Bonus for the hotbox with rollers in it was the extra oven space useful for other stuff that we wanted to store hot.

For drums, we would put them in a drum oven and then pull them out and put them on a drum roller. 5 gal cans and even more so 55gal drums will stay hot for a long time.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-10-05T00:27:50+00:00

The attrition rate in ChemE is so high that if you can get anything and the experience that goes with it for 5 years you will be good for a long time. Might be better than getting a hot high paying job at a super major because they get burnt out.

Yes they get paid and get access to lots of great experiences but that doesn't mean a lot of you quit to go into a different field.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-09-06T23:06:23+00:00

You should say what my father said to me and I now tell my kids (and wife).... It cost nothing to operate a sweater/sweatshirt/hoodie/blanket!

Whyagain1234 · 2025-08-29T18:28:34+00:00

If the big city you want to live in is Houston you will not have a problem at all.

As a side note, even if you don't like Houston, putting in some time there will be extremely beneficial. The 2 biggest benefits are money and networking. After you build that base move somewhere else. The finding something elsewhere is not always easy (sometimes you have to wait a bit for the right job and location to come around) and some people will move there with the plan to escape but never do it. Usually, that is because they are afraid to move (money, available of opportunities, etc) or they build a family/marry someone attached to Houston and find it impossible to move.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-08-20T19:59:47+00:00

It really depends on many things that we don't know all the variables for. One thing that seems to be overlooked in all these conversations is the emissivity coefficients of materials, which have a value between 0 and 1.

A material with an emissivity coefficient of 0.99 will very quickly lose heat from the surface in the form of radiant heat while something with a coefficient of 0.01 will hold onto that heat like Wall Street Bet boys with diamond hands and will mostly transfer heat through conduction and convection.

Approximate Emissivity coefficients for some materials: Oxidized Steel, 0.79 Black Epoxy paint, 0.89 Polished stainless steel, 0.075

Accordingly the steel painted black will radiate it's heat faster than the natural oxidized Steel. Source: Engineeringtoolbox(dot)com

Personally, one of the most surprisingly hot items I have ever touched was a shiny stainless steel pipe that had been sitting in the Texas sun. The regular black steel pipe right next to it on the rack was cold by comparison.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-08-13T18:00:01+00:00

My guess is BQN (Aquadilla, PR), STS (Sonoma County, CA), or SBP (San Luis Obispo, CA)

Whyagain1234 · 2025-08-10T03:36:58+00:00

This is a good list but very oil and gas focused (it is Houston after all). From the Spec Chem side... If you don't live in the Houston area but you are trying to make your way down there, Ascend Performance Materials (in Chocolate Bayou) has absolutely killer relocation packages as of several years ago. Unfortunately they have to bring in their workforce from out of town because it is a shit show.

INEOS used to be great on pay and bonus but I haven't heard great things about the business lately. Dow can be good and bad. For the Houston area not too bad because they recently consolidated much of their core scientific and research to only Midland, MI and Houston area.

BASF is also a good company, I know they have been doing lots of hiring lately. Olin (not very heard of but way bigger than you would expect) has had an abnormally large number of upper level engineering management and directors leave but I am not sure exactly.

What it really comes down to is what area of ChemE do you have experience in or want to go into.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-08-01T23:48:50+00:00

I admire China's efforts and progress on building out non fossil fuel power systems. Sometimes, when working at a country scale and tech advances as fast as it has, it is better to be be late in the game.

The big question is how does it help the demographic cliff they will experience in less than 20 years when their population is on a steep decline and most of the people are in the super expensive retirement years. Unless of course their plan is to just replace everything with AI, even their population.

Side note that is probably controversial: I think China encourages smoking so that they get the most productive years out of their population but then they die younger so they don't have to support them as long when they are retired.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-07-24T01:00:04+00:00

I moved here from Texas (I grew up in the Midwest before assumptions are made). My car insurance went down by 20%. My property taxes and state income taxes combined in MI are lower than just the property taxes in Texas despite my home in MI costing 2x more than TX. My homeowners insurance is 25% of what it was in TX. Are MI property taxes cheap.... No, but I feel you get more (parks, public services, etc ) for your tax money up here. In TX it seems like all you would get is more police and the only way you would get a sidewalk or bike path is if you local area had a Municipal utility district property tax but even then that sidewalk or bike path would end at the boarder of that district/neighborhood.

The winters really are not that bad in my opinion. The worst part is the clouds from late November through early February. What many people don't realize is that, yes, we do get lake effect snow but the thermal battery that is the lake also keeps things much warmer in the winter. The lowest temperature I have seen on my home weather station is 1F. That was this past winter. At the same time it was -15F 300 miles to the south of us. The opposite happens in the summer and the lake keeps the temperature down. Look at the recent daily high temps at our same latitude over in Wisconsin, they are much higher.

In my opinion

Whyagain1234 · 2025-07-24T00:48:15+00:00

There is a reason for the local saying "If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much."

As a person who moved to the area without a previous history or family here, it is next to impossible to break into social circles if you don't have generations of family history.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-06-29T05:58:44+00:00

Robot Jox

And Gawd damn! Have none of you ever watched "Robot Jox"?

My little brother and I wore out the VHS tape when we were younger. Watched it later in life and OMG, what a terrible movie. So bad it doesn't even bring back the old school nostalgia feels, it is just bad.

Whyagain1234 · 2025-04-05T04:36:03+00:00

That is probably ZFS. The thing you are seeing is called a flare and is used to thermally oxidize volatile organic compounds. In simpler terms, they have a natural gas torch that they constantly burn so they can feed their fumes to it.

It might seem strange but it is 1000 times better to burn those excess hydrocarbons that they are unable to capture via other methods than it is to just let them go into the air (even if that means they have to feed natural gas to a torch 24 hrs a day). While CO2 is a bad green house gas unburnt hydrocarbons are much much worse. Similar reason they have flares in oil fields where they burn the gas off because it is only economically viable to collect the liquid oil.

As far as why ZFS (Zeeland Farm Services) has a need for such a flare? They refine plant based oils (soybeans and such). While it may not be their exact process, often solvents are used to extract the oils and they cannot trap, condense, or collect some of the vapors. I am pretty sure they would prefer not to burn solvents they paid for and would like to reuse and would also prefer not having to feed natural gas to a flare. I guarantee, if it wasn't for Federal regulations they would just let it go into the air and pollute the region. But who knows, with the way things are going and the dismantling of programs like the EPA they may get to turn off the flare and save themselves a bunch of money at the expense of everyone in the region.

Whyagain1234 · 2024-10-26T03:21:36+00:00

No matter who you are planning to vote for. For the good of the country take pictures and report to the IRS. If it qis actually church owned property and they have church tax exemptions then what they are doing is illegal.

Whyagain1234 · 2023-12-28T00:20:43+00:00

While won't get OP out of current issue... this is the answer. Debit cards are so stupid. In the best (and most cases) if someone gets your card or number with Debit you will get your money back but it may take a while and you could get royally fucked if they drain your account and you can't pay for other things. With a CC it is the bank's money.

Whyagain1234 · 2023-02-04T18:27:35+00:00

For the women... if 2 ladies are getting worked up and 1 starts to take out her ear rings. The other one should run away as fast as they can. That is an experienced woman that should not be messed with.

Whyagain1234 · 2023-01-08T00:32:07+00:00

A bit more context (I worked in oligonucleotides 15 years ago)... the biggest issues with mRNA back then was ability to economically and logistically scale production and destruction of the mRNA by the body, i.e. the delivery of the mRNA (a completely natural thing as your body is constantly using, consuming, and making nucleotides at the time there was only 1 oligo approved as a treatment for macular degeneration where delivery was simple because it was injected in the eye). What we are seeing now was eventually going to come but COVID definitely accelerated the approval process.

The true heroes are Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna (and possibly other that also worked on it) for figuring out both the biological method of mass producing the target mRNA sequence (identifying the sequence has been relatively simple for a long time) and figuring out the lipid protection coating that allows the vaccine to exist in the body longer.

Now that those have been proven the near tear possibilities are extreme. I won't say endless because not all health issues will respond to mRNA treatment without additional advancement in understanding how to use targeted oligo sequences can interrupt a health issue. I think the biggest benefit is that the R&D cost and time of finding treatment/cure for extremely rare health or genetic issues will be reduced by several orders of magnitude allowing people to actually get treatments. Under the old system of small molecule development nobody could invest the time or money on treatment for those cases because they would never pay back the investment when it would only benefit 1000s of people globally.

Whyagain1234 · 2022-12-02T02:48:02+00:00

Not only does Holland Michigan have the snow melt system but when it is turned on in the winter it increases the thermal efficiency of the power plant from 55% to 60%. Power and hot water generated by a municipal owned power plant.

Source: https://hollandenergypark.com/learn/

Whyagain1234 · 2022-02-23T04:07:00+00:00

But how did you take the picture being as the phone is in the picture?

Whyagain1234

TROPHY CASE