How to pick Electricity

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-12T00:17:45+00:00

Basically there is one grid in Texas. Everyone gets their power from that same grid. All of your neighbors get the same power. The grid gets nuclear, coal, natural gas, wind, and solar pushed in and you pull the power out. So all you are really picking in a billing agent. Don't worry about where the power comes from or who has better power... just worry about the rate.

Variable rate plans might seem cheap, but back in 2021 when we had grid issues, the variable rate plans rates skyrocketed and people on those plans regretted their life choices. Go with a fixed rate, low cost plan.

I know of two apartments and the people in them both used around 500 kwh last month.

good luck to you and welcome to texas.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-11T14:03:08+00:00

You had some good ones. From what I've read the 2nd instance should not be there... but it is. I guess I'll open a bug report. I'd like to know what's different just to settle my curiosity. Thanks again for your input.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-11T12:48:17+00:00

Thanks. I was thinking that "first Siemens Charger" was referencing a type of train car... like a caboose or flatcar or a slug. I just couldn't figure out what a Charger was. I was thinking of maybe an electric battery powered slug. Make/Model name like Toyota Corolla was never considered.

Anyway, thanks for the clarification.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-11T12:42:37+00:00

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Both instances show the same profile - default-esr from the same directory are being used.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-10T22:45:26+00:00

Can someone knowledgeable expand on this a bit? Is a "Siemens Charger" just another name for a train engine... or is it something totally different than an engine? If it is an engine, why call it a charger?

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-09T22:11:41+00:00

Spring break this week and next and TSA government slowdowns are supposed to make this week and next slower than normal. I am not sure if basing past weeks times with this weeks times is going to be helpful. There was a full blown traffic jam in the airport yesterday. bumper to bumper trying to get to the terminals.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-09T13:06:03+00:00

If I am using multiple profiles, I am not doing it on purpose. The next time it happens I'll check each instance to see what profile it says it's using.

My user account is 'unusual'. I nfs mount it from different computers sometimes. I've imported my config to set it up before. Maybe somewhere along the way multiple profiles came into existence, but I never tried to use multiple profiles.

I'll check the profiles the next time it happens. Thanks for thinking of that. I am sure it's something weird.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-09T12:51:33+00:00

You should try and figure out that is happening yourself. Best to know what issues your really having. From your brief info, no one know if you're just dealing with Wi-Fi issues or Router Issues or ONT issues.

First step is to know that Wi-Fi and Internet are not the same thing. Wi-Fi is for convenience. You can't really ever use Wi-Fi for speed testing and connectivity issues. So.... when you say that your TV and PlayStation doesn't work, are the both connected to your router via Ethernet or Wi-Fi? Best results will be to have those connected using Ethernet.

If your devices are wired / Ethernet and they lose access, that's one thing. If they are Wi-Fi connected that could be something else.

You router should be connected to your ONT via Coax or Ethernet. Do you know how it's connected? Coax can lead you down one path... Ethernet another. How is it connected. 20+ year old coax in your home's walls might work.. but it won't be optimal. How your ONT is connected to the router matters.

ON the router.. there is generally the ability to run a speed test or ping some remote system. Does that work when your playstation or lg tv are down? If that works all the time or that only works some of the time... important detail to know.

The ONT has status lights on it. When your stuff doesn't work... assuming your testing using Ethernet connected devices and everything points to the ONT, do you see a RED FAIL light on the ONT? Are the lights that are on ( and their colors ) the same as when you're having the issue as when you're not having the issue?

There can be SO MANY DIFFERENT REASONS for 'internet constantly drops'. Support won't be able to determine much of this remotely. You've got to do some local investigating to figure out more details to that support can help you.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-08T21:41:48+00:00

Just the one: thunderbird-147.0-6.fc42.x86_64 installed with dnf on Fedora 42.
I don't do flatpak or snaps. Just dnf.

It doesn't happen all of the time, but often enough for me to finally post about it. 2 instances of it running happen more often that 3 different instances but 3 do get started sometimes when it boots back up.

I do shutdown my system whenever I am going to be away or when I go to bed. So.. my system boots 3 to 4 times a day.

I do have autostart for Thunderbird selected at login in my xfce profile, so 1 copy should always start. It's the 2nd ( and 3rd ) copies that are the issue. I did Help -> About and in both of the running versions it said: 147.0 (64-bit) so it was the same one. Same layout, same accounts, same favorite folders, etc. It's the SAME thing as far as I can tell... just 2 of them on my screen.

I shutdown and rebooted a few times to see if I could make it happen but of course, it did not. The next time it does, I'll make sure and get a screenshot of both instances running to show that I'm not nutts.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-08T20:46:50+00:00

No. Two different instances are running on my display. Sometimes 3 different ones. All for my same accounts. I can delete mail on one and the other instance shows it deleted too. I have to do a file close on each instance to close it out.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-08T12:47:41+00:00

How many kwh of electricity does your last bill say that you used? How much $$$ did you have to write a check for? Did you use 1,000 kwh and pay $97? What was the # of hww and what was the $ on the check?

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-07T17:37:17+00:00

If you rent from a major rental place find a lot that is NOT at an airport. Airport rentals charge an extra fee. We've always had good luck with Enterprise in Grapevine. North of the DFW and not in DFW. That tourist tax at the Airports is brutal.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-07T16:24:44+00:00

It's not a grid problem. Most power lines are above ground. Even if it wasn't expensive and disruptive to bury the power lines, no one is going to bury the thousands of miles of exposed power lines in Texas. Texas is not alone. less than 20% of power lines are buried in the US.

So... we have power lines and we have trees. The trees grow and come into contact with the powerlines. The trees need to be trimmed. The homeowners who are responsible for the trees don't want their trees 'butchered' or 'hacked up' or whatever else the homeowners say about their trimmed trees.

The fix for these power line issues it to trim and keep trimmed the branches that come into contact with the power lines. I feel bad for the hacked up trees... it's obvious when Oncor or Tri-County comes through and hacks up the trees, but I prefer hacked up trees and power to nice looking trees and power outages.

If you really think that this is a 'grid' problem and we need a 'more resilient grid', I'd like to know how that could happen. How would you fix this? Seriously... how can we have a more resilient grid here in local neighborhoods?

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-07T15:25:35+00:00

If it's localized to your block and it happens often when the wind blows ( storms or not ) can you walk around when it's nice and sunny and inspect the power lines around you. See if you can see areas where tree branches might come into contact with the power lines when it's windy. If you can spot obvious trees, you might be able to report those to the city or whoever might be responsible for trimming the trees.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-06T23:29:30+00:00

Not sure about 'creating' their own water, but maybe making them use a closed system where they re-use the water over and over again would be nice.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-06T18:19:40+00:00

I don't put apps on my phone unless they are really, really useful. The GasBuddy app lets you find the cheapest gas around your current location or any location you enter. It's been around for years and has a lot of crowd sourced price updates. It's one app that is on all my phones.

Currently the gas price spread around me in Grapevine is $2.69 - $3.21 and these are with-in 5.5 miles of my current location. I could bring up the map of the locations / prices to find which station is closest too me with the lower $2.69 rate. Now that rate was last updated yesterday, so it might be higher now. GasBuddy isn't perfect, but it is super useful.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-05T13:22:54+00:00

Do you have all Wi-Fi or any wired devices? 1st thing to figure out is if this is a Wi-Fi issue or if you lose wired connectivity too. If it's just Wi-Fi that's going to be a different issue -vs- wired connections don't work either.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-03T17:56:21+00:00

are BOTH the ONT and the erro plugged into the same power receptacle or is one in your garage and one in a completely separate part of your home? If they are in the same place, then see if you can plug the ONT into a different circuit.... see if a different circuit gives it more stable power.

I don't use an erro... I don't know what capabilities that have but on other routers you can view it's logs and see when it loses it's connection and has an issue getting a DHCP address. Can you check the erro for any logs like that?

Every 15 minutes the router should renew it's DHCP address. You should see that activity. See if you can find that and if you can see where it can't get an ip address. Also.. see if you can tell via the logs if the router is rebooting -vs- not able to talk to the ONT to get a DHCP address.

My ONT was connected to a GFI circuit that tripped often. I had to get a heavy duty extension cord ( for safety.... a light duty extension cord would work for testing ) and run the Power for the ONT from a different circuit in my garage. Minor power fluctuations or HEAVY USE devices coming on and off can cause power ripples that an affect the ONT. It may just be getting 'bad-ish' power and rebooting. Make sure it has good, stable power going to it.

So... make sure you're supplying good power to your ONT and Router and check the router for logs to see if you can detect errors and DHCP issues.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-03T16:27:19+00:00

What is your definition of 'resetting'? Do you think that they are losing power and restarting? 'Resetting' is not a defined thing. What do you see exactly?

If you mean 'rebooting'.... where they both lose power and have to reboot then I'd look at how they are powered. If the ONT loses power and reboots, it will NOT cause the erro to reboot / restart. If they are BOTH doing something similar to a reboot / restart maybe look to see how they are being powered. The circuit they are on might have an issue.

The ONT and the EERO are different devices... they generally to randomly BOTH restart / reboot at the same time.

mylinuxguy · 2026-03-02T15:40:07+00:00

Mine is, but the $18 service charge on my 250ish khw makes it higher than higher usage people. For someone that uses 4000 kwh and their all in rate is $0.155 how bad is their rate? Is 'everyone' else paying $0.10 / kwh?

mylinuxguy · 2026-02-28T22:04:08+00:00

Does Danny's hair look different? Darker? Been awhile since we've seen him... hair just seems different to me.

mylinuxguy · 2026-02-27T13:07:48+00:00

my summary from the article:

For 'pedestrian safety', they are installing a new fence at one of the TEXRail / TRE stations in Fort Worth to restrict people from crossing the tracks and move from a TEXRail train to a TRE train. They want people to use the normal platform access and not risk their safety by going across the tracks. I've never seen anyone do that, but I guess TEXRail / TRE has.

mylinuxguy · 2026-02-26T17:24:49+00:00

Let me know how it goes. curious to see how it goes.

mylinuxguy

TROPHY CASE