3 ms·

Can you elaborate? I didn't realize there were places in the US without reliable electricity (other than during storms or whatever). How common is that, outside

Can you elaborate? I didn't realize there were places in the US without reliable electricity (other than during storms or whatever). How common is that, outside of people who are willingly "off the grid"?

giardia 4y ago
There are quite a few places in densely forested areas. But it's not just a matter of uptime (which is an issue), but of capacity. If you live 50-100 miles out of town in a small community, the community can't afford to upgrade those lines. The county won't pay for it, and neither will the state or feds. That kind of range also means you need to charge fairly often.
- hedora 4y ago
  Unless you are talking about fast DC chargers, an EV's current draw is comparable to a households appliance, such as an electric range, dryer or furnace. I'd be surprised to hear of a community with trunk lines that actually can't handle 1-2 EVs per house.
  - fwungy 4y ago
    Yes, but these things are the big electric consumers so adding a new class of high load appliances on a mass scale is a big deal.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Is the hardware limited by peak usage or just overall daily consumption? If people mostly charge at night I can't imagine it'll impact peak consumption that much
hedora 4y ago
For us (SF bay area) PG&E didn't manage 2 nines last year or the year before, and it is already mathematically impossible for them to get 2 nines this year. Edit: Having said that, we are in the middle of an extended outage, so I just charge the EV in town. There are fast DC chargers in grocery store lots and near restaurants, so this isn't inconvenient at all. Our ICE pickup wouldn't fit well on the (often one bidirectional lane) roads this week, due to slides, debris, and rerouted heavy equipment / repair trucks. The EV has 135 mile range (more like 100 in current conditions). EVs are fine in rural areas (probably up to abput 100 miles from town, assuming a car with a 300 mile EPA range). Also, we'll be buying a generator, ASAP, for other reasons. We could use that to charge the car on cloudy days after a Puerto Rico style grid collapse.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Is it one 3 consecutive day outage? Or a bunch of 2-3 hour outages here and there? I think the latter is not a big deal, especially if it's localized and you can just drive into town to use a charger (like you said).

giardia 4y ago

There are quite a few places in densely forested areas. But it's not just a matter of uptime (which is an issue), but of capacity. If you live 50-100 miles out of town in a small community, the community can't afford to upgrade those lines. The county won't pay for it, and neither will the state or feds. That kind of range also means you need to charge fairly often.

hedora 4y ago
Unless you are talking about fast DC chargers, an EV's current draw is comparable to a households appliance, such as an electric range, dryer or furnace. I'd be surprised to hear of a community with trunk lines that actually can't handle 1-2 EVs per house.
- fwungy 4y ago
  Yes, but these things are the big electric consumers so adding a new class of high load appliances on a mass scale is a big deal.
Rebelgecko 4y ago
Is the hardware limited by peak usage or just overall daily consumption? If people mostly charge at night I can't imagine it'll impact peak consumption that much

hedora 4y ago

For us (SF bay area) PG&E didn't manage 2 nines last year or the year before, and it is already mathematically impossible for them to get 2 nines this year. Edit: Having said that, we are in the middle of an extended outage, so I just charge the EV in town. There are fast DC chargers in grocery store lots and near restaurants, so this isn't inconvenient at all. Our ICE pickup wouldn't fit well on the (often one bidirectional lane) roads this week, due to slides, debris, and rerouted heavy equipment / repair trucks. The EV has 135 mile range (more like 100 in current conditions). EVs are fine in rural areas (probably up to abput 100 miles from town, assuming a car with a 300 mile EPA range). Also, we'll be buying a generator, ASAP, for other reasons. We could use that to charge the car on cloudy days after a Puerto Rico style grid collapse.

Rebelgecko 4y ago
Is it one 3 consecutive day outage? Or a bunch of 2-3 hour outages here and there? I think the latter is not a big deal, especially if it's localized and you can just drive into town to use a charger (like you said).