What if there is no power to charge the LEAF?

Hundreds of CA and AZ owners are facing their first major obstacle in charging their LEAFs tonight - a widespread failure of the grid, affecting Southern California from southern Orange County down to the border with Mexico (and some of Mexico too), and I don't know how much of AZ:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/14-million-power-west-coast-blackout/story?id=14478198" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But there is still electricity being supplied to the gas pumps?

LTLFTcomposite said:

But there is still electricity being supplied to the gas pumps?

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No. But that's not the point. I know I couldn't get to work tomorrow using the LEAF if I couldn't charge tonight. I'd have to take the ICE (edit: assuming it had enough gas).

BTW, the AZ situation isn't as bad...I guess the outage is from Yuma and points west.

LTLFTcomposite said:

But there is still electricity being supplied to the gas pumps?

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Only if they have onsite generators, I would think.

I heard a statistic the other day that 1/3 of San Diego EV owners have solar PV power. It's at times like this that we really hate that our PV shuts down when the power goes out. It seems so futile, and I'm sure that technology exists that could protect the utility and its workers fixing the lines during outages if solar homes continued being able to use their own power.

Boomer23 said:

It seems so futile, and I'm sure that technology exists that could protect the utility and its workers fixing the lines during outages if solar homes continued being able to use their own power.

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+1.

Good question. Take a vacation day?

Makes future vehicle-to-grid capabilities like this all the more desirable/valuable.
http://www.evwind.es/noticias.php?id_not=12747
http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/08/nissan-leaf-able-power-homes-japan/

Today, I'm thankful to be in central OC.

It was a pretty big spike on the lines I'll bet:

Ref: http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx

JPVLeaf said:

Good question. Take a vacation day?

Makes future vehicle-to-grid capabilities like this all the more desirable/valuable.
http://www.evwind.es/noticias.php?id_not=12747

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+1!

mwalsh said:

LTLFTcomposite said:

But there is still electricity being supplied to the gas pumps?

Click to expand...

No. But that's not the point. I know I couldn't get to work tomorrow using the LEAF if I couldn't charge tonight. I'd have to take the ICE (edit: assuming it had enough gas).

BTW, the AZ situation isn't as bad...I guess the outage is from Yuma and points west.

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We can have the same problem here, its called a hurricane. The outages can last one to three weeks. Power was out after Andrew for nearly two months in some areas.

Can you say "EU 2000"???

Leaf makes more sense as second car in family, but this is a risk we choose to take.

Recent, somewhat related thread over at TMC:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/6251-Running-a-Tesla-after-Irene-took-the-power" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The technology does exist. The utilities themselves use it to isolate segments of their systems, and commercial and industrial customers use it for co-generation and backup generation.

Whether or not it's cost effective for residential PV installations, and permissable under current codes and tariffs, I don't know.

Boomer23 said:

I'm sure that technology exists that could protect the utility and its workers fixing the lines during outages if solar homes continued being able to use their own power.

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Yodrak is right. Would you pay for a feature that you might use once in seven years? Would the product manufacturers think they could market it?

Thousands of California drivers, who previously believed that range anxiety was something only EV owners suffered, suddenly came to grips with the real thing, as they thought they would get gas on the way home, or perhaps tomorrow, only to be stuck idling in traffic for hours on end. Suddenly, having to charge up each and every night isn't such a bad idea

I still remember a few years back when some of my coworkers could not come to work because the gas stations were all out of gasoline. Had those been EV's, they would have filled up at home.

Our power came back on some time around midnight--but I didn't plug in the Leaf, trying to be a good citizen. SDG&E was asking folks to unplug stuff and be sure A/C's didn't kick in when the power came on, as the whole thing is was (is) a bit fragile, and underpowered, as San Onofre won't be back online for a while. Figure charging the Leaf would be like running a 220v dryer, or maybe an air conditioner, for five hours, so best to wait until we get the general OK.

Fortunately, with two ICE's at the house, I was able to get to work--but only after I stopped for gas! Hadn't had to do that in quite a while. There was a line-up at my local Shell dealer, something I haven't seen there in like forever.

gbarry42 said:

Yodrak is right. Would you pay for a feature that you might use once in seven years? Would the product manufacturers think they could market it?

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Yes, I probably would, considering that this would give me fuel for my car as well as power for my home. It would be price dependent, of course.

We are right at the edge of the chaos. We have power but two blocks south it is out as far as the eye can see. We were in Laguna Beach yesterday and started home about 9pm down the PCH. About a mile south and everything was pitch black. Very surreal driving an electric car in an outage like that! The real problems are the intersections. Some are flashing 4 ways but others are totally dark. It's pretty much a shooting gallery getting across them. Cops and towtrucks were everywhere. The power is still out today from Alicia southward. Traffic is gridlocked at the big intersections so IMHO, it's a good idea to just stay home... and keep the LEAF topped off.

Yodrak said:

Whether or not it's cost effective for residential PV installations, and permissable under current codes and tariffs, I don't know.

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It's definitely permissible [edit - at least some places], but to do it you need a system with battery backup, and it is more expensive for that reason (the cost of the batteries - though the 'smarter' inverter circuitry may also be somewhat costlier). If you have a need to operate independently of the grid more than once in a blue moon, it could well be worth it - in more remote areas with power lines subject to disruption from wind/ice etc. and regularly for days at a time it would be extremely handy and more likely to be the norm - not only do you get to use your solar while it's being produced, but you have electricity at night even if the grid is down. To put it another way, if you live in an area where you pretty much need a generator, then if you go to PV, a battery backup system and a grid-detachable setup would be desirable, and feasible.

As it happens, we lost about 4-5kWH due to the outage, we had power by 2am and I started the car charging a while later, and we were set to go this morning. Without battery backup, being able to use our solar off of the grid yesterday afternoon would not actually have made any difference - the fridge would have had power for a few hours longer, but it wouldn't have helped with the car since by the time the car got home, the PV generation was negligible - there wasn't any there there. It could have become a missed opportunity if the power was still out all day today, but in that case we wouldn't be going anywhere anyway. Even then we'd have had to trickle charge because our system doesn't crank out enough for L2, and really only enough for L1 during the middle of a sunny day.

The duration of the outage got me thinking a small generator is actually a pretty good idea - not for the car, but for the fridge, some lights, maybe internet (if the cable plant is up) - will a 2000w Honda or equivalent keep a refrigerator running? I did hear what sounded like one or two generators in our suburban neighborhood. Then again...realistically, this isn't likely to happen again for quite a while, and $1500 not spent on a generator will replace a LOT of spoiled food.

Several years ago when we were out of power for a few days, our 2 ice vehicles plus my brother's van that he left at our house while he was on a trip were ALL under a quarter-tank. Oops! The stations that WERE open (just outside the blackout areas) had lines of hundreds of cars, and were running out of gasoline quickly, so filling up basically wasn't an option. If I had the Leaf, it would have been fully charged before the power went out, and it would have had about the same range as the three ice vehicles combined.

"Range Anxiety" for me is now associated with the ICE vehicles. I never know how full the tank is until I start up the vehicle. Seems every time I'm in a hurry, it turns out I'm running on fumes and I need to stop at the station to make me an additional 10 mins late. Alternatively, I know that every morning (assuming our Blink still behaves appropriately) I have a full "tank".

Funny thing is that my wife (the Leaf is actually HER car, much to my dismay) realized this separately on her own and commented on it the other day. She was originally very worried about getting the Leaf due to "range anxiety", and now that she's been driving it consistently for almost 5 months with only one incident of nervousness, she complains that "it seems like every time we drive your gas car we need to stop at the gas station!"