Here in Northern New York, a “heat wave” is when the temp gets to 90 for more than two days. (A “cold snap” is when the temps drop to -30F from mid-January to mid-February.)
During our cold snaps, no one ever says “conserve electricity.” We occasionally get that advice during a heat wave.
Now there are places in the country where triple digit heat occurs regularly & so do advisories to conserve electricity and even rolling power cuts.
How does one go about charging their Tesla or Ford Lightning F-150?
EV's, Heat Waves & Brown Outs
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It’s hot here in Scotland but we are also getting some welcome downpour’s which brings a little relief
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I remember last summer Gavin Newsom literally asked Californians to NOT charge their EVs. A few months later they were taking another major power plant permanently offline.
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I was once at the coast when an evacuation order was issued due to a hurricane. We headed to a friends house 65 miles away. It took 7 hours to get there. It was stop and go the whole way. Does an EV starting with an 80% charge complete the trip?
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Good question. I wanted to pile on to the EV so I did a quick search. Found a conversation on a Tesla forum about that very subject (slow stop and go). If what I saw was accurate, it seems that EVs like to go slow with a max range speed around 25. Fortunately for our hypothetical evacuee, (or unfortunately for my desires of piling on) it seems that slow stop and go is a pretty easy task for EVs and you only lose a little range. I was surprised to read that consistent high speed (80) is a bigger draw than slow stop and go.
That somewhat makes sense to me, but what about something like running the AC? When we had massive backups on the freeways getting out of Houston before Hurricane Rita people were stranded on the roads, could not move, running the car for hours without moving. It was over 100 that day, so people needed the AC.
AC has to drain the battery on an EV when run for hours.
I guess that was an extreme circumstance.
I agree. I don’t know how they run the AC compressor without a flywheel to drive it or similar without just killing the battery. I was surprised when a friend got an EV and it would run the AC without the car moving. It seems like it should be a pretty significant power drain.
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All these factors to think about are making me want to just stick with acoustic vehicles.
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Golf carts are the preferred mode of transportation around the costal vacation areas. FWIW, the gas powered carts far outnumber electric.
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