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EVs and disaster area evacuation

2K views 18 replies 14 participants last post by  Upper5Percent 
#1 ·
Given all the problems with gasoline availability and power outages after Irma, what will be the scenario if we jump ahead 10-20 years and and the majority of vehicles are EVs?

Gasoline and diesel have many obvious disadvantages as motor vehicle fuels, but one advantage they do have is that they are easily transported. You can hand someone a container of fuel, or siphon some from one vehicle to be used in another, but you can't readily do that with kWh's of battery storage (at least with current technology).

Sure, some gas stations in Florida had fuel in the ground that could not be accessed because there was no power for the pumps, but that's an economic decision by the vendor not to have a backup generator, not a technical impossibility. However, no power means no way to charge an electric vehicle and a small generator really doesn't help that situation. All the Supercharger stations in the world are useless without the grid there to supply them. Solar panels are easily damaged in a major storm and you need a whole heck of lot of them to supply enough energy for many vehicles.

So how do we address this?
 
#2 ·
If you have a long range EV and charge at home, you start off every day with a full battery. No need to get in line for gas at the start of your trip. Need to evacuate, just get in the car and go.

Part of the fuel problems in Florida was all the cars that normally tank up once a week or every other week all tried to refuel at once.
 
#5 ·
Part of the fuel problems in Florida was all the cars that normally tank up once a week or every other week all tried to refuel at once.
Another part of the problem is that a gasoline engine at low speeds, stop and start, and sitting at idle, will run out of gas faster than an EV will run out of battery.
 
#3 · (Edited)
An interesting first world problem. Electrical transmission infrastructure will have to go underground which costs more (both to put in and to repair). Our condo community which is southeast of Tampa did not lose power at all. Tampa Electric (aka TECO) has buried the lines and given what has happened around the state, it worked. Where the wires were above ground (nearby Ruskin), power was lost.
The delivery of fuel (gas and diesel) in Florida is hampered by legislation more than anything which mandates that it must be delivered by US flagged and manufactured vessels with US crews only. This protectionism is not the kind of thing that a Trump administration will get rid of because it is designed to protect American jobs (in this case, at the expense of it's citizens - go figure). The government did relax the regulation for this storm, but it remains in place. Bury pipelines too!
As has been pointed out elsewhere Florida needs to be better prepared for hurricane season. In the northeastern states, the assumption is that bad winter weather WILL happen and budget for expensive resources necessary to deal with it. Sometimes a mild winter makes it unnecessary, but they remain ready nonetheless, year after year.
 
#4 ·
The delivery of fuel (gas and diesel) in Florida is hampered by legislation more than anything which mandates that it must be delivered by US flagged and manufactured vessels with US crews only.
In the First Congress, on September 1, 1789, Congress enacted Chapter XI, “An Act for Registering and Clearing Vessels, Regulating the Coasting Trade, and for other purposes”, which limited domestic trades to American ships meeting certain requirements.[3]
 
#6 ·
EV's, gas, no difference. We live in a technological society that is very dependent on infrastructure. I remember well the example used by James Burke in his first episode of "Connections." It described a group of people trapped underground in a subway during a 1965 blackout.

The only real solution is to build yourself an off-grid cabin and bone up on your hunting and fishing skills.
 
#7 ·
Hurricane Harvey increased my appreciation for my Volt. I purchased an inverter to turn it into a generator if I lost power, which we did, but only for 3 hours, which my UPS's were able to handle. And being electric, I can drive by the gas stations with gas costing upwards of $2.50 now. It was under $2 before Harvey, here in 'let's keep the oil flowing' Houston.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Given all the problems with gasoline availability and power outages after Irma, what will be the scenario if we jump ahead 10-20 years and and the majority of vehicles are EVs?
It's a very valid question (even if the assumed timeline for EV adoption is very optimistic.)

But it's also probably important to keep in mind that Florida is very unique in that the whole state is a long, low-elevation peninsula and almost all of the main population centers are on the coast. So other states wouldn't face nearly the same difficulties in terms of the number of potential evacuees and the distances they'd be travelling.

Maybe Florida would have to subsidize the installation of extra DCFC stations beyond what normal supply and demand would support.(?)

Maybe most 2-car households in south Florida would try to keep at least one car with an ICE (PHEV or otherwise).(?)

Maybe some EV owners would choose to only drive a relatively shorter distance inland to higher ground rather than leaving the entire state.(?)
 
#11 ·
Look, folks, pay attention to what you're concerned about:

For evacuation: that happens before the storm. Power exists. Most people's cars are charged. You don't have to worry about hoarders because if hoarding electricity were any damn good in the first place, the problems around solar and wind power would be solved. Gas can be hoarded by people buying 250 gallons to sell on the freeway for $10 a gallon. Once it's gone, it's gone because tanker trucks probably aren't going to be driving into evac zones to resupply stations. Electricity, however, will flow because that's what it does. The generation and distribution doesn't change until something actually breaks. And it hasn't yet, because the winds won't come for hours yet.

Returning: That's when there might not be power. S'okay. You're safe. There's probably no gas either. It'll just take a while to get home, but your car is snug, nobody can siphon it out while you nap waiting for for your turn at the EVGo plug.
 
#15 ·
...Imagine future wind generators sucking power from hurricaine winds...
At what speed do wind turbines shut down?

The controller starts up the machine at wind speeds of about 8 to 16 miles per hour and shuts off the machine at about 55 mph. Usually turbines don't operate at wind speeds above about 55 mph because they may be damaged by the high winds. Typically they turn (or pitch) the blades out of the wind to control the rotor speed, and to keep the rotor from turning in winds that are too high or too low to produce electricity.
 
#16 · (Edited)
In the future world you imagine, BEVs will probably all be long-range. If everyone in a evacuation zone started with a full charge and could travel several hundred miles without charging, then in most typical scenarios, everyone would either be in a safe area, or at least well out of the most dangerous areas and flood zones, etc. That would have been the case in the recent Houston hurricane or the Katrina storm in New Orleans, etc.

Now Irma was a bit of a special case the way it tracked up the peninsula. I could see someone evacuating from Key West and wanting to get to northern Florida is in a bit of a pinch, but that is an unusual scenario. Most of the time, just driving inland even 30-50 miles can make a huge difference. And hundreds of miles even more so. So those first few hundred miles of evacuation would actually be a lot smoother with an EV fleet than with the ICE fleet. Many of the ICE vehicles had to refuel, which created shortages. So some of those cars had trouble even getting started on the evacuation. BEV owners are typically topping off every night.

Also consider that in this future world, we may have significantly more public charging infrastructure. Look at all the gas stations we have today. Doesn't it make sense that in a world where most people drive BEVs, there would be a lot of public charging stations? Also consider that electricity is widely distributed. Electrical outlets of at least 120 Volts can be found throughout virtually every single building that exists in the US, and typically there is at least one or two higher voltage outlets as well. Each one is a potential charging point. So if things got really desperate, resourceful people could find a way to get some charge one way or another, given time and patience.
 
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