The morning after Hurricane Ian knocked out energy at Westley and Sarah Ferguson’s dwelling in Haines City, Florida, a suburb southwest of Orlando, Westley ran two extension cords into their home from the retailers on the couple’s Ford F-150 Lightning. He plugged the fridge into one and an influence strip into the second, which was quickly powering lamps, followers and a tv.
The Fergusons’ setup was extra rudimentary than the Lightning’s design permits — Ford’s top-of-the-line in-home charger will routinely begin powering a complete home if the truck is plugged in throughout a blackout — nevertheless it was ok for them to cook dinner beef stew on an electric stovetop and, afterwards, to host one other neighbourhood couple for an impromptu film evening. Cell and web service had been additionally down, so that they used a Blu-ray participant to watch Casper and a turntable to spin huge band jazz information. “There was nowhere we needed to go,” says Westley, a 33-year-old net designer. “So we just stayed home.”
The Fergusons, who’ve been in Florida since 2013 and lived via Hurricane Irma, weren’t pondering of natural disasters after they ordered their Lightning in May of final yr. Westley had lengthy needed an EV and Sarah, who works in health-care administration, needed a truck to haul issues for her aspect enterprise internet hosting picnics. Before Ian, they’d primarily used the truck’s 12 energy retailers — unfold between the mattress, the cabin, and the frunk — for boondocking in a single day on the Space Coast.
“You want to use it when you go camping or you’re having a tailgate. Those are the fun party tricks,” says Westley. “You don’t really want it to be a lifeline to cook dinner or power lights. But it was definitely nice to have.”
Broken utility poles on a road following Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Florida, US, on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022. Two million electrical energy clients in Florida remained with out energy Friday morning, in accordance to the monitoring website poweroutage.us. Image: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg
While Ford has made two-way charging and the means to energy a house “if need be” a routine promoting level in TV advertisements for the Lightning, proof suggests that almost all EV patrons are like the Fergusons: Disaster preparedness hardly components of their pondering. In a survey of greater than 1 500 US EV homeowners commissioned by Bloomberg Green, none of the 1% of respondents who stuffed in their very own causes for buying an electric automobile talked about it. The majority cited value financial savings and environmental advantages.
“Nothing in our market research indicates emergency preparedness is a notable why-buy in the EV market,” says Mark Schirmer, a spokesperson for the analysis store Cox Automotive, which routinely surveys patrons on their buy choices. “Consumers mostly prioritise price, monthly payment, range and styling. Emergency preparedness is perhaps a nice-to-have.”
But whereas it might not drive gross sales, EVs’ backup-power potential is a perk that may delight homeowners and cement their loyalty. After Westley posted pictures of his storm expertise on social media, Ford CEO Jim Farley shared them on his LinkedIn feed, saying that the firm noticed an uptick of homeowners utilizing the vehicles on this approach after the storm.
Two-way charging, also referred to as bidirectional charging, is available in completely different varieties. Ford is one of some automakers in the US market providing fashions with vehicle-to-home (V2H) functionality, the place the circulation of electrical energy via an at-home charger could be reversed, permitting the automobile to energy a complete home. These setups open the chance of vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, methods, the place utility firms use idle EVs to assist handle load. (V2G trials are already underway in Europe and the US.) But even a couple of on-board energy retailers for plugging in home equipment — often called vehicle-to-load (V2L) charging — can come in useful in a pinch, resembling when a Texas urologist used his Rivian truck to carry out a vasectomy throughout an influence outage.
On the evening earlier than Ian made landfall, Christine Cannella plugged her Rivian R1T pickup into the charger at her gated neighborhood in Fort Myers, Florida, to prime off its battery. When Ian arrived, it knocked out energy at Cannella’s home for 5 days — the truck turned her backup. Rivian doesn’t but provide V2H charging, however Cannella used the R1T’s on-board retailers to make espresso and to cook dinner scorching canine on an electric grill for herself and her son. When the home received too muggy, she and her cockapoo pet slept in the backseat with the air conditioner operating on “pet comfort” mode. “I’m not a camper. I’m not an outdoors person,” she says. “But it became a tremendous utility for me and my family during those 48 hours.”
Cannella, 51, had by no means owned an EV earlier than her Rivian, which she’s been driving since late final yr. She purchased it, she says, primarily as a result of she works for the firm. (Cannella joined Rivian in the fall of 2020 as chief labor and employment counsel. Bloomberg Green discovered of her story via a Rivian spokesperson.) But subsequent time a storm comes, she intends to make extra use of the truck. “I plan to plug in my fridge,” she says. “I was so afraid that it would draw down the battery too much. I’ve since learned I should have done that instead of throwing away all my food.”
Until not too long ago, most of the consideration on EVs and natural disasters has centered on potential issues. In a 2018 paper in Energy Policy, researchers took the state of affairs of a storm evacuee leaving Key West, Florida, in a Nissan Leaf and located that there seemingly wouldn’t be sufficient public chargers to keep away from changing into stranded. Subsequent analysis has proven the chance of cascading grid failures in Florida as many EV evacuees attempt to recharge concurrently. Both of those situations contain hurricanes, the place there may be often the luxurious of preparation; sudden occasions resembling wildfires and tsunamis pose even better dangers.
“I would encourage folks to do egress studies,” says Shawn Adderly, a program supervisor at Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco and lead writer of the 2018 paper, “so we know how many charging stations we should have and where to put them based on anticipated traffic jams.”
Policy makers have not too long ago begun to take natural disasters under consideration in EV infrastructure planning. Florida’s Electric Vehicle Roadmap, revealed in 2020, anticipates that the state will want extra quick chargers alongside evacuation routes as EV adoption will increase. Last yr, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection awarded Blink Charging Co. thousands and thousands of {dollars} in grants to place dozens in strategic spots alongside evacuation routes, most of which can embody modular battery storage to allow them to proceed operating throughout grid failures. (Florida already has a legislation on the books requiring some gasoline stations alongside evacuation routes to have an alternate energy supply for his or her pumps.)
While assembly the energy calls for of EVs throughout grid disruptions would require extra planning and infrastructure, the expertise of the Fergusons and others in Florida after Ian demonstrates the potential advantages of electrifying the US fleet. As buses and different public vehicles additionally turn out to be electrified, two-way charging may very well be used to energy shelters and different emergency companies and even to assist assist faltering grids. “It’s not going to be all gloom and doom,” Adderly says.
A rally level check in entrance of a destroyed Seven Eleven gasoline station following Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022. Florida cities trying to rebuild from the devastation of Hurricane Ian will likely be financing their efforts throughout the worst surroundings for municipal borrowing in additional than a decade. Image: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg
Jeremy Judkins lives in North Port, on the Gulf Coast between Sarasota and Fort Myers. A 33-year-old former banker, Judkins now spends his time making movies for TikTok, YouTube and different social media platforms — many of them centered on the Tesla Model X Plaid version he received in May of this yr and the photo voltaic panels and Tesla Powerwall batteries he put in in 2020.
Ian hit North Port onerous, knocking out energy, washing away bridges and flooding streets. The storm, Judkins says, was “like a very small tornado outside of your house for six hours.” Electricity in his neighbourhood stayed out for eight days, however Judkins’s dwelling by no means misplaced energy.
Tesla doesn’t but provide V2H charging or commonplace energy retailers on any of its fashions, a supply of frustration for Judkins and different homeowners. “People are really pushing like, ‘Elon, why don’t you make it so your vehicles can power your house?’” he says. But Judkins was nonetheless ready to use the 100 kilowatt-hour battery in his Model X to soak up surplus energy from his photo voltaic panels — turning his dwelling and automobile into charging hubs for neighbours in want.
“I’m a very bad neighbour,” says Judkins. “I normally do not talk to them. But at this point, I have all this extra power. I feel bad. So I took my paddle board across the street and I was like, ‘Hey, I have power and you can sit in the air conditioning in my car and charge all your stuff.’”
© 2022 Bloomberg
