Electric-Car Owners Hard Hit by Massive California Power Shutdown

Well lets use critical thinking.....All the power is off so the gas stations have no power to run there pumps.....So gas cars are in the same situation as electric ones..... LOL....Thats how stupid this argument is....But when I expect a stupid argument I know I will find it here!..........

 

Safety, if the system was to back-feed the distribution grid it could end up electrocuting a lineman working on what should be a deenergized grid, now truth be told any lineman with a days worth of experience will ground the distribution phased to neutral making the lines safe to work on and maybe burning up the solar inverter in the process.

 

Not really gas powered cars can travel to a station that has power and fill up, cannot do that with a dead or dying EV, plus gas stations are everywhere chargers are not.

 

In some states such as Florida if a station pumps over a set amount per month they are required by law to have a on-site generator that must be capable of running the pumps, if the owner want to install a larger one to keep the store open he will have a line of people out the door trying to buy cold drinks, beer and ice.

In this part of Florida outages are very frequent, we get thunderstorms with 90+ MPH winds and lightning plays havoc on the distribution grid. As such lots of people have generators and Georgia credit cards to siphon gas out of their vehicles to keep the genny running.

Some us go way over the top such as I did, 6.5 Kw Generac generator in a sound reduction housing with forced downdraft cooling and a 100 gallon gas tank with a 15 GPM pump to fill the vehicles as needed.



This setup keeps my home powered 24 hours a day for about 8 days with the A/C on in the bedroom, and you cannot hear it running at 10 feet away.

 

So your solution is to drive 200 miles - fill up with gas - and then drive 200 miles back - at which point you are out of gas again. That doesn't sound like a good fix to me.

 

That's a transfer switch, they can be had both automatic or manual, if automatic the Code NFPA 70 the National Electrical Code requires the generator to be matched to the calculated load of the home which can require a rather expensive seriously fuel consuming generator, if a manual transfer switch is selected any size generator meets Code.

Another device is known as an interlock which is what I installed, it interlocks the generator backfed breaker with the main breaker, at no time can the both be on which could back-feed the grid.

 

Or drive 18 miles to outside of Clewiston and fill up.

Most outages are localized, but even after Wilma when most of SFL was out of power for 4+ weeks I just drove 90 miles up to West Palm Beach and simply filled up a number of gas cans and brought home a couple of weeks worth of gas for both of our trucks.

Since no one has invented the electric can yet that cannot be done with an EV.

 

Fair point - however if the outage was more widespread - your solution would not work so well. Someone could just as easily drive 18 miles with an electric vehicle. Good analogy with respect to the gas can.

 

And the solar homeowner would probably end up in the ER after sliding off the roof while trying to get the snow and ice off the panels, snow or ice pretty much shuts down solar and even though panels that far North would be almost vertical they still ice up badly.

I designed a system for a off grid site in Colorado, there was commercial power on-site, but during the winter it was known to go out for weeks at a time because the utility could not get snow-cat access to make repairs.

Because of that it was decided to go full solar with on-site storage.

Lacking cocktail napkins to do my calculations on I use an app my employer supplies, you enter the load calculation, the latitude, longitude, elevation and reliability factor which was 99.9%, we normally shoot for 99.999% for macro sites, but that would have required a solar system so large it couldn't be installed due to lack of space at the site.

Well at 99.9% I needed 65Kw of solar and I believe it was something like 2400 Amp Hours of storage, the total calculated cost was just over $300K not including contract labor which would be bid out.

I thought my manager was going to crap his pants when he saw my estimate, he thumbed through my design looked up and stated "looks good, I'll send it over to corporate real-estate to get a bid out."

Found out later the site was budgeted at $7 million for land, a 2 pre-fab Oldcastle huts and a 65' tower, later I asked my manager a dumb question as to why didn't we just install a large diesel tank and set a generator, I was told for a few months during the winter there is no access to the site and fuel would have to be delivered by helicopter, if weather permitted a safe flight, so solar was demanded by corporate real-estate, still a generator would be installed in another hut adjacent to the communications hut to back up the solar.

Wireless is not a business for those with thin wallets.

 

Just another example of how shallow the thinking of hyperliberals actually is! They never think ANYTHING all the way through. So now I hope they use the time they have, sitting inside electric cars with dead batteries, to mull the reality of this stupid situation over....

 

Very true but the problem is EV's are not entrenched enough yet for gas stations to also have charging stations, that may happen some day but where not there yet.

Example, back in 2012 I designed a solar system that was placed on the roofs of covered parking at a office complex in Plantation Florida, the system was designed to run 6 EV chargers, the location is only a mile or so of Jacaranda CO which I visit from time to time to meet up with some ex-coworkers, so on the way back to I-595 I drive by just to see how well it has been accepted.

I went by there last Monday and their where only 2 EV's charging, very sad, because the power is free for anyone who works in that office building.

When I got involved in the project I wasn't looking to make a lot of money for the design, I would have done it for free because I thought it was an excellent concept, entice people to go with EV's because they would get free fuel while at work, a nice benefit for the companies to offer to their employees.

And it made total sense, normally EV's go home to be charged, this puts a huge load on a residential distribution grid, which is already overloaded in the evening, so much so many utilities are requiring EV chargers to be on a separate meter or have a utility load demand switch installed so the power to the chargers can be turned off by the utility from 6:00 PM until around 11:00 PM to 1:00 AM depending on the grids load.

I and the folks I was working with believed we had a killer concept, free power as an employment perk, the problem was we where too far ahead of the times.

I am quite sure it will become the norm someday, but that day is not here yet.

 

Some of our local stations have their own generators or bring them in to power the pumps and store.

 

Help is on the way. https://www.alibaba.com/product-det...spm=a2700.details.maylikeexp.3.349e6ce4EGNnsC

 

Years ago my brother worked at Home Depot and he told me the story about a guy came in to buy a generator and then asked for an cord so he could plug it into one of his receptacles to power his house. They refused to not only the cord but the generator to him. I believe there is now a law against hooking up your house unless there is a complete break from the grid and if a lineman is injured you can be charged with a crime.

 

Gas stations run off generators to pump gas.................what a stupid argument to make that they don't.

 

True in many ways, EV's and solar have introduced a number of unexpected problems.

One problem being studied by NFPA is EV battery hazards, unlike gas powered vehicles which commonly run on 12 VDC with a small lead acid battery, EV's have large high voltage and very flammable batteries.

https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Resea...nt-Involving-Electric-Vehicle-Battery-Hazards

The other problem with solar is the risk to firefighters, they can yank a meter or have the utility cut the power to a structure, but as long as the sun is shining, PV panels produce an extreme risk to firefighters, and can actually contribute to making the fire worse due to short circuits both on the roof top and into the structure by the cabling to the inverter.

https://www.nfpa.org/News-and-Resea...nders/High-risk-hazards/Photovoltaics-Systems

 

That is the elephant in the room that none of the solar power advocates want to address or factor in that cost. Let's say the solar generation plant is 60% effective, can supply the needed power 60% of the required time. That means the back up is going to be sitting idle 60% of the time. Now for a power generating company to put tens of millions into the plant and equipment that is only going to be making a product it can sell 40% of the available time does not sound like a great business plan. It also cannot just be shutdown and everyone sent home only to be called back when they need to run it. It has to be in a standby mode with operators there ready to kick it in. That is even more cost, regular cost.

 

I am skeptical of electric motors for remote adventures. Partly because I know how to do a full rebuild on my engine as it is and fix most common issues, partly because quadrupling the number of engines quadruples the chance of one of them blowing.

On the other hand, I would adore an electric car as a daily drive.

In 20 years this view I just expressed will be considered worse than Nazism.

 

It's a worthy cause to have a miserable 30 min break to safe a planet.

Plenty of sunshine to power up your battery between here and Neptune.

An electric car does have far fewer moving parts that wear and tear. There is no combustion that takes place. I haven't changed my "oil" in my electric vacuum cleaner as of late. Dunno when.... "maybe" never.

So you're too poor to buy a new car. I am sorry. But so what.

 

Same with some 2nd hand electric car,... when they eventually hit the market. It's all new now.

For all you know, them electric companies will start making electricity themselves from sunlight.

 

I agree that we will not be seeing EV take over in the short time period suggested - sans technological innovation but - even if this did happen it still would take time.

Lithium is somewhat rare - the market is very inelastic so a small increase in demand can have a big impact on price. Think we are perhaps at 1-2% -- to double this to say 3% would mean a doubling in demand - of this sector - for lithium.

10% ? wow .. that is huge increase in lithium demand ... way to expensive using this current technology. Never mind getting to 50%.

Global Oil consumption increases by over 1 million bpd ... every year. Given this reality - we need to be trying to make sure that the consumption of this oil is done in the most environmentally friendly way possible (rather than pretending we are not going to be using oil next year) ... which means .. more pipelines .. more clean North American Product ... as much as we can supply.

If we don't supply it - someone else will - the demand is the demand - and many of those other nations are heavy polluters of the Ocean - heavy metals - Persistent Organic Pollutants .. and a bunch of other things . poor labor standards .. Nations that we should not be buying from to begin with - never mind the increase to pollution from buying from these nations.