PG&E turning off power to protect against fire has created a new disaster

Re:PG&E turning off power to protect against fire has create... by delfinom on Wednesday October 30, 2019 @07:17AM (#21396429)

>In all fairness, multi-day power outages are a really rare event in a lot of places. And many households that own an EV also own an ICE vehicle. Also if power is out, you're not going to be able to fuel up either in the affected area.

Hah. I thought about this. In NY, we lost power for a month after hurricane sandy because the public utility completely imploded due the years of corruption finally reaching criticality when the hurricane came through. It was so bad they privatized the power grid. Anyone with a EV would have been absolutely fucked in the meantime. We even had gasoline rationing because :surprise: many gas stations had no power to run the pumps. (Gas stations now mandated by law to have generators).

Present, one is better off having an ICE vehicle instead of an EV if one lives anywhere with bad weather events and not living in a city where you can just walk everywhere.

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Re:PG&E turning off power to protect against fire has create... by ghaff on Wednesday October 30, 2019 @08:11AM (#21396780)

Fair enough. And a lot of people in New England were without power for weeks after an ice storm about 10 years ago. Fortunately I was only out for a few days.

As you suggest even gas can be a problem but it would likely be less of a problem than an EV.

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Re:PG&E turning off power to protect against fire has create... by newnewpdro on Wednesday October 30, 2019 @08:11AM (#21396781)

If gas stations were without power and being rationed, sounds like ICE vehicle owners were pretty fucked too.

It's a hell of a lot easier to produce electricity locally from alternative sources than it is to produce gasoline.

And if you do have gasoline, you can use it to produce electricity.

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Re:PG&E turning off power to protect against fire has create... by delfinom on Wednesday October 30, 2019 @08:40PM (#21404608)

>If gas stations were without power and being rationed, sounds like ICE vehicle owners were pretty fucked too.

Yes, but the problem has been very easily corrected for little cost (law mandating generators which don't take much to run pumps, not to mention they can run off the gasoline in the station).

The problem is, gasoline stations only exist by and large because of existing ICE demand. If the switch to EVs happened, gasoline stations would disappear fast given they operate on tight margins. The next major storm after that critical mass switchover and things will be ulgy.

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