There is no need of large powerplants. Thats the legacy grid, only to make Warren Buffet rich. New grid (that needs to be built) will have solar panels, BESS + EVs for storage, either off-grid or a small community grid. The new grid is distributed and indestructible.
Following Hurricane Sandy, many were left without power and ultimately even gas was strictly rationed. So it's not out of the ordinary to imagine an event like that happening.
This is a good point, Florida EV drivers have already found that EVs are more resilient in a natural disaster because the grid infrastructure supporting the fast chargers comes back online much faster than service is restored to gas stations.
EVs that have Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) capability are also useful in a natural disaster: You can use the EV as a big battery on wheels to power some electrical appliances - e.g. keep a fridge going or a light on, until the grid is back.
This is a good point for sure. I can run my house for most of a week off my Lightning. I wish my Model 3 had the same ability, maybe some day this will be a standard option on all EVs. It's such an obvious use case for a huge battery on wheels.
In Phoenix we all live in the shadow of the Palo Verde nuclear generation plant. And once on the radio I heard some pundits discussing contingencies if PV should glitch out and have a life-threatening disaster. And they matter-of-factly said, "you're gonna be walking." And that would be the truth; in a full-scale evacuation of a city like Phoenix, the freeways are not built to accommodate traffic like that, and yours truly has no car anyway, so I would be packing light and walking in the opposite direction, and/or ignoring the orders, to meet whatever fate awaits.
But I bet there would be a lot of bicycle and vehicle theft going on, in such an event.
AFAICT americans are left on their own in the face of any kind of disaster. But, to be fair, in Europe we don't (yet) have the kinds of disasters that they have, so I can't say if europeans are left on their own or not.
Oh yea, that's what I meant, sorry for not being clear.
And we do have all kinds of disasters, but the state not only effectively intervenes, but also supports the aftermath and reconstruction. In America there are some crazy examples of towns just being left straight out abandoned afterwards, because tehre's no such thing as government reconstruction support.
I know I have a problem with "suspension of disbelief" but I find it always weird in those dystopian movies where they all drive monster trucks on an apparently endless supply of scavenged fuel and spare parts. But I'm positive exactly this Hollywood spirit is what fuels (pun intended) most of those hyper-optimistic answers.
I love disaster movies and they ocassionally lean into the idea of traffic being kind of bad in the event of a disaster. Deep Impact had a protagonist escaping biblical level tsunamis on a dirt bike.
> If a large power plant is destroyed how are you going to charge your electric car to escape?
Solar panels and home battery storage. This is also going to seriously screw over electrical grid and especially powerplant operators... residential will, at least in suburban and rural areas, not need a grid any more except during prolonged phases of low solar yield.
What's good in Gasoline cars? If a refinery is destroyed how are you going to fuel your gasoline car to escape? It's not like you can charge it from a standard wall outlet or rooftop solar like a regular EV.
* Ask the people in Crimea how they are dealing with this exact scenario.
* Petroleum refineries are large, fixed, and highly flammable by nature.
A reasonable scenario might be a cyberattack taking down large portions of the grid for a prolonged time. It's not impossible to achieve something like that, Stuxnet proved the concept of corrupting PLCs driving powerplants ages ago.
Alternatively, even outside a cyberwar scenario, bad weather has been shown to take down power grids for entire regions for days, sometimes weeks.
> repairs potentially taking up to six months. The strike adds to Kyiv’s escalating campaign against Russia’s oil industry and a growing fuel crunch across the country.
But search again tomorrow and there will be new examples. Refineries and other oil infrastructure are large, located in well-known fixed locations and are highly flammable. This campaign demonstrates what a weak spot they are for a petrostate.
> bad weather has been shown to take down power grids for entire regions for days, sometimes weeks
Where I live, we have typhoons which depending on the direction they arrive in can result in all the gas stations being out of gas for 2+ days. Meanwhile the grid keeps on ticking.
If they've taken down large portions of the grid for a prolonged period of time you're also not going to have much gasoline left.
> bad weather has been shown to take down power grids for entire regions for days, sometimes weeks
Once again, as someone who actually lived through those scenarios multiple times, when the gas pumps go down you're usually shit outta luck on getting gas.
When the grid goes down for days, the gas you have in your gas car + any random fuel tanks you have in your garage is what you have. Don't expect anything else unless you plan to take it at gunpoint.
Yes, buy crude on the black market and build your own refinery. Or you can run your own DIY fracking rig in your backyard. There must be some yt videos.
Are you thinking that there are no wars and power plants do not get destroyed? If you live in a non-nuclear country the chances are non-zero and it is not smart to depend on large, centralized, easy to destroy power plants. It actually dumb to build those large plants instead of decentralized smaller plants.
For example, a president of a certain country threatened to make a "power plant day" in another certain country.
Why are power plants considered centralised but the extraction, transport and refining of oil isn't?
With the renewable power revolution, do you think solar panels and batteries are going to be more or less centralised than oil extraction, transport and refining?
Are you familiar with how easy it is to repair the electrical grid after damage, compared to what happens to oil wells whose operations are stopped?
> Are you thinking that there are no wars and power plants do not get destroyed?
OK, but is the argument that oil refineries don't get the same treatment in war? They're also "large, centralized, easy to destroy". In fact highly flammable. It has been happening, not theoretically but actually.
You can store it but not very long, thats btw one reason why its not useful for private people to participate in wholesale/corp market: Even if you would get a small fraction discount for ordering large amount, you cant store that large amount long enough in your basement before it gets unusable (esp. Diesel).
Huh, I knew petrol was bad, but I thought diesel was fine to store at home? Not that I ever have, the brief period when I had use of a car I was living in a 38 m^2 (or so) flat.
> And your gasoline pump works perfectly fine without power?
Most decent emergency / contingency plans will have the fire department, police or whatever local group show up at one or two designated gas stations to provide power, or require these stations to have on-site emergency power.
As someone who has actually lived through multiple major catastrophes where fuel couldn't get delivered for days and electricity was out for days, when the pumps stop working there is no gas. Don't assume the gasoline the police and fire department have will be there for you. It's there for the first responders. They don't have infinite supply. Their supply is extra expensive to handle compared to when things were working. You've now got many thousands of families all trying to get to the two or three operating fuel stations...trust me they're not open to the public! When you're out of gas, you're out of gas.
Meanwhile, those with solar panels not reliant on grid-tie, they can continue to charge their vehicles.
If it was that easy, Ukraine would have already brought Russia to its knees.
Because the Russian government is still telling themselves they can win and don't even bother trying to negotiate with Ukraine but instead the USA, this must not be the case.
> Most decent emergency / contingency plans will have the fire department, police or whatever local group show up at one or two designated gas stations to provide power, or require these stations to have on-site emergency power.
while traveling i got caught up in this. no restaurants, no credit cards working, no grocery stores, no cell connection, no navigation with phone, no gas station. the goddam list goes on. fortunately this was less than 16 hours.
As a local, it was actually rather fun. And my kid was amazed. For a traveler it must have sucked, though (and also for some people with special needs, and in places where it's actually common, etc.).
The only place I've been where that might happen is rural mountainous Mexico where the "gas station" is a huachicolero funneling fuel into your car from a plastic water bottle next to a construction paper sign with "GAS" scribbled on it.
Everywhere else, gas stations aren't open if there's no power because nothing works, not even the cash register.
But I'm starting to see the uni freshman libertarian vibes here having been there once myself.
How many shops will be open without power? No till, no light, no refrigerator... not sure how much will help you having cash, beyond a couple of very basic needs - I can't even tell which, nor can you, it's gonna be an adventure either way.
Bread needs power to get made, and with no electricity the gas pumps that no longer work are not filling up any delivery trucks either.
Fortunately PV and wind and local batteries are getting deployed everywhere fast and electric trucks are starting to become a thing. Some places might even have enough for basic logistics in a war that cuts out their oil supply like wars tend to because they're obvious weak points.
> If you used cash as a reasonable person you would not even notice that cards aren't working.
lol. i see. gas stations were closed since pumps were out. similar story with other facilities. luckily, gas station snack shops accepted cash, so buying some water/snacks was possible.
cash is of no use if facilities are not open. now that everything has been spelled out, i'm sure you are able to comprehend ;)
