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Wikipedia says the 2000-01 California energy crisis was caused by Enron. I believe it will take years of engineering-driven investment (upgrade lines; trim tree

by cbhl 6y ago

Wikipedia says the 2000-01 California energy crisis was caused by Enron. I believe it will take years of engineering-driven investment (upgrade lines; trim trees; clear flammables from the transmission corridors) to make power reliable in California again, but the California energy companies are bankrupt (again?) after judgments in recent years' wildfires. I believe the reliability problem is worst in California and is less of a problem in other states and countries. (But offset in part by the large number of charging stations in metro areas, at least in SFBA.) That said, a replacement doesn't need to be as reliable as its predecessor, it only needs to be reliable enough. Cell phones, for example, will go down a few hours after a power outage, whereas POTS phones were engineered to stay up (and provide power to corded phones) during power outages and weather events. Cell phones are more convenient. EVs have two nice properties: faster acceleration than gas cars (which some view as a safety feature), and they're cheaper to fuel than gas cars. This can tip the balance in favor of an EV for day-to-day use. If you are prepping, I think it still makes sense to have at least one conventional gas-powered car. Just make sure to keep the tank at least 3/4s full; gas pumps tend to go down during blackouts.

theshrike79 6y ago
> If you are prepping, I think it still makes sense to have at least one conventional gas-powered car. Just make sure to keep the tank at least 3/4s full; gas pumps tend to go down during blackouts. If you're really prepping, also have a fucking bicycle. You provide the fuel and they're cheap to maintain. The irony is that the only time it's actually safe to ride a bicycle in an average American city is during a post-apocalyptic event when there are no cars on the road =)
eigenvector 6y ago
Nothing inherent to cell phone networks causes them to go down during power outages. Just like POTS they need a backup power supply for their infrastructure to remain functional when the power grid is down. Usually this takes the form of diesel generators. The main difference is that the cell network doesn't power the handset but modern cell phones use so little power than a $50 consumer UPS would recharge a cell phone many times over. Keeping phone networks up during power outages is very important for public safety.

by cbhl 6y ago

theshrike79 6y ago

> If you are prepping, I think it still makes sense to have at least one conventional gas-powered car. Just make sure to keep the tank at least 3/4s full; gas pumps tend to go down during blackouts. If you're really prepping, also have a fucking bicycle. You provide the fuel and they're cheap to maintain. The irony is that the only time it's actually safe to ride a bicycle in an average American city is during a post-apocalyptic event when there are no cars on the road =)

eigenvector 6y ago

Nothing inherent to cell phone networks causes them to go down during power outages. Just like POTS they need a backup power supply for their infrastructure to remain functional when the power grid is down. Usually this takes the form of diesel generators. The main difference is that the cell network doesn't power the handset but modern cell phones use so little power than a $50 consumer UPS would recharge a cell phone many times over. Keeping phone networks up during power outages is very important for public safety.