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[cirrus pete]

So, my house is one of the lucky 25% in our town that kept power during Sandy. Consequently, we have become a daycare/business center for our friends. I have had to commute across Westchester to access a different rail line into the city since my was not running as a result of it being fully submerged during the storm. I can say this because I have power: Look at what I have been able to avoid thanks to my Zero:

[Richard230]

Congratulations on surviving Sandy relatively intact, Pete.  That storm sure made a mess of the area.  Those gas lines remind me of what it was like during the 1970's "oil embargo".  Memories of how hard gas was to find and to get then are one of the major things that made me want to ride electric.  Most of our electricity in No Ca is generated by hydro and natural gas, both of which are very plentiful around here.  Gasoline, though, is another story.  One burp in the supply line, be it environmental, political, or a refinery screw-up, and gasoline supplies start to turn into vaporware - resulting in the public going crazy, starting to line up for hydrocarbons and willing to pay any price for them.

[cirrus pete]

Indeed.I was thinking that with Solar panels on my house (i have good southern exposure), you would be somewhat insulated to these disruptions. I wonder whether solar panels in the NE could supply enough energy to charge a big battery Tesla S or X when they become available?

[protomech]

Yeah. Gas infrastructure is pretty fragile - not that power is significantly better. But you can't refine gas at home.

***

Re: the Tesla S, depends on your usage.

The EPA rates the Tesla S at 38 kWh/100 miles (at the wall).

Figure you need about 25% more nameplate power rating for the panels, then figure out how many miles you want to do during the winter.

If you want to do 50 miles (on average), you need about 19 kWh of energy/day. If you get the equivalent of 3 hours of sunlight during a clear winter day, you'd need a (19 / 3) * 1.25 = 8 kW solar system, just to supply the car (approximately 32-36 large panels). Of course, you either have to keep the car at home when it's sunny or else store energy in batteries, as offthegrid does.

It certainly can be done, but you just have to keep in mind that a car like the Tesla S uses significantly more energy per mile (about 3x) than our bikes and build out accordingly.

[mehve]

Ditto the sentiment. Glad you didn't need to get in that line. I think we'll invest in a solar array sooner than later since we plan on getting another EV besides my '12 SZF9... Anybody have a recommendation on where to start putting one together?

+ m

[protomech]

Check out www.wholesalesolar.com.

[protomech]

Btw, a thought..

Range, charge time (wall vs your time wasted)

Typ gas bike, 200 miles @ 50 mpg, 2 hours waiting in line vs 2 hours waiting in line

Zero S, 50-100 miles, overnight vs 10 seconds

In the applications electric works best in, charge time is effectively zero.

[NoiseBoy]

Very true protomech.  My ICE bike did 100 miles to a tank which meant once after work and once each weekend i had to divert from my route home by 10 minutes and spend 10 minutes filling up.  That is 40 minutes a week that i am saving by having a zero, all i do now is spend 4 seconds plugging it in when i get home.   34 hours a year is nearly a working week saved.   That is before i get started on all the time i spent servicing and washing the bike (the zero is incredibly easy to clean and i don't have to get the oil off my hands afterwards.)

[kcoplan]

Lotta fun to zip past the gas lines in my electric motorcycle --- power not back on at the house, though, and solar power doesnt work as well when the sun is low in the sky and it is cloudy most the time.  At least all the shade is gone, with the leaves off the trees! Fortunately, I can still plug in at work.

[JohnSki]

This sounds sweet if your power stayed on.  I am in the Philadelphia PA area and lost my power for 5 full days.  They were estimating that it would be 8 days.  Everyone was throwing all of their food in the trash after 3 days. There were no flashlights of any kind at any store.  I am thankful I did not have an electric hot water heater. The temperature here was going into the low 40s at night. I had a 1750 watt generator that made life a lot easier but I still needed a wood stove running for heat.

This would have been a little easier without a wife and kids. I am sure many were not prepared.  I know I learned a lot of lessons.  It really makes you think what others not so fortunate went through.

[cirrus pete]

One hidden trap on solar is that many of the arrays around here don't function without the grid being up. My assumption is that these suburban systems are designed to dump the excess energy into the grid to run the meter backwards but don't have local storage capability. I know our neighbors with solar panels lost their power when the electricity went out.

[protomech]

Yep, cirrus. In order of ascending difficulty: grid-tied, off-grid, grid-tied with local storage. The utilities make sure when they grid-tie your system that it will disconnect in case of grid power failure, to prevent a utility worker from getting killed working on what he thinks is a dark grid.

[NoiseBoy]

Makes you think doesn't it.   We have generally had very reliable power locally until recently. It was something silly like no failures greater than 15 minutes in 15 years and then we had a couple of 3 or 4 hour outages after switching to an undersea cable from France instead of generating power locally.   When the power went out it caused all sorts of problems, backup generators failed to start at server sites, pretty much every VOIP phone network on the island failed, even Tetra which is the comms for emergency services had problems. People even started panic buying non-perishables after only a couple of hours!  I can't imagine what would have happened if the power failed for a few days.

I read an interesting article about a fellow radio ham that runs a Prius, he modified it with a 120VAC and 12VDC outlet on the back of the car so he can run his radios and he also has 2 leads to the house.  An input for charging the onboard battery and an output for a feed-in.   When the power fails the house runs essentials from the pack on the Prius, when the battery runs down the engine automatically starts and the Prius acts as a generator.  Its a very neat solution and cost virtually nothing.  A possible marketing goldmine for hybrid car makers if they provided a factory option to do this.

[Richard230]

I read an article a month or two ago that our No CA utility company, PG&E, recently bought some normal-size utility trucks that incorporated generators that could be used as an emergency mobile power supply. I assume that they would be able to respond to a location a lot quicker than a typical towed generator.  Needless to say, those trucks were not cheap.

[cirrus pete]

Now we have a bloody nor'easter bearing down on us with rain/snow! hope I can make it up my hill from the train station tonight. I forgot to put the chains on my bike tires