Featured BEV's become "ticking time bombs" after Hurricane Ian in Florida

When I research the increase in "chainsaw accidents" after a natural disaster. they go through the roof. Mostly because the use of them increases use due to the need to clear debris.....Hence the increase in accidents due to less than trained and/or darwinism theory. submerged vehicles down to a bicycle is a bad idea. I can't think of many things salt water doesn't hurt. Even most parts of a boat except the hull....don't like salt water. But it does cause conversation, and gets likes and clicks and follows...

 

Exactly.

All of which mean don't build in a surge area.

Those just speed recovery and reduce damage. The best way is the former - don't build there.

In this case, it does.

In that case, mitigation is possible. I once saw a segment on a fire fighter who had a house in the forest. After a wildfire went through, his was the only house remaining. He had managed the area around the house, especially eliminating underbrush, his siding was steel and his roof was slate.

Building to survive a wild fire is possible. Building to survive a storm surge is not.

 

There are foothills ( up to 1800 feet ASL ) surrounding much of Silicon Valley, and since they are covered with redwoods, oak and scrub brush they are subject to occasional forest fires. After the most recent fire there was an article where a man was complaining that he was not able to get a permit to rebuild his house until he installed (and filled) a huge water tank for the fire fighters that will inevitably be called upon to protect him and his house again. It seems that has become a standard in Santa Cruz County for people living in the forested mountainsides. As I recall it, the justification for the water tank was that the firefighters may need it to protect their lives too.

 

Actually, "Building to survive a storm surge is quite possible." We watched a TV crew (several, actually) that survived the hurricane's storm surge despite being near the beach. They were in a multi story hotel, and did their broadcasts above the first floor. They showed the storm surge as it washed some houses away and swept cars down the road like they were just trash cans.

There were many pictures of elevated A frame houses (on stilts) that had garages at ground level and living space above that appeared to survive the storm and the surge. It can be done, but you have to live with the odd architecture. And that still leaves your car at the mercy of the storm.

 

There will always be a bigger surge. Katrina's storm surge was 28 feet. My house is exceptionally tall, at 28 feet.

 

There are 7.84 million cars registered in Florida. Of those 95.6k are EVs. Of the non-EVs in the state, 0.1% caught fire in the flood regions. Of the EVs, going with 25 fires, it is 0.026%
U.S.: total number of automobiles by state | Statista
https://electrek.co/2022/08/24/current-ev-registrations-in-the-us-how-does-your-state-stack-up/

And you can't take your Toyota cause the wheels might fall off.

California currently has over 5 times the numbers of EVs that Florida has. What happens when an earthquake knocks out power? Those give far less warning than a hurricane. What happens with a wildfire?

Most cars running on electricity still means there will be ones using some type of fuel, likely gasoline. Even some of the EVs could have a range extender of some sort. Refueling infrastructure for BEVs is growing. For areas with known disaster risks, securing those fuel sources will need to be addressed. Not every gasoline station in the country has a generator back up. Plenty of those were down in the days and weeks after Sandy. Portable generators have already been used for charging EVs. An off grid charging station can be done.

Also earthquake and tornado areas.

This house survived Sandy. Yeah, took a lot of damage, but did a lot better than its former neighbors. Repairing it will cost less than rebuilding the others.
Building for a Storm Surge | ICF Homes

Then there is plenty of land out west for the 132 million in the US living along a coast. Oh wait, that's a desert that has used up most of the water it has. Maybe build over the remaining farmland?

 

A couple of the gentlemen posting in the thread mentioned being responsible and financially assuming the real risk of your insurance.

If you build a $500,000 house on the Beach maybe if you insure it you should be expected to post a $500,000 bond then pay a monthly payment to assume all the cost of home replacement-cleanup and personal losses for the inevitable hurricanes and floods that will come.

Same if you build a home in a known wildfire area with a known probability of reoccurring wildfires every year.

How to Build a Fireproof Home - This Old House

It would be your choice to build in these areas, you just have to acknowledge the risk and assume the financial responsibility for the known risks. Completely your business, just don't expect others to assume the costs for the risks you have knowingly taken or risk their lives to help when the inevitable happens.

These are all much different risk levels than a typical home would experience with adequate fire service and hydrant service would ever see.

I feel for the people who have gone through these disasters and pray for them but at some point if you don't take some personal responsibility for your decisions the cycle will never end

 

When an earthquake knocks out power? Are you talking about BEVs? They can't get a charge till the power is restored in most cases, even if they have solar power (due to a quirk in the law that prohibits grid tied solar while the grid is down). Based on my experience during 65 years of living within a few miles of a fault line, the power almost never goes out due to a quake, and when it does go down it's restored quickly, within hours.

Wildfires may or may not cause power outages. PG&E was successfully sued for damages when a power line was hit by lightning and the breakers automatically reset themselves. The principle is that the breaker will hold (wok ok) if the problem was transient. Since that law suit PG&E is now using extra sensitive breakers and only manually resetting them. We've averaged 2 outages of 3 to 6 hours each month this last summer... without wildfires.

As for those caught in a wildfire? Those that don't leave often risk death. See Paradise California Fire (Camp Fire, 2018). That's a whole town that went down in flames because it had lots of trees growing everywhere. The deaths were largely because they only had limited egress via roads that were not suitable for handing evacuation levels of traffic. 85 people dead. 95% of the structures burned to the ground. Escape routes that where shaded by the canopies of the roadside trees became burning infernos as the fire traveled through the trees.

I suspect that there were not a lot of people evacuating Paradise in BEVs. At the time (2018) , there were limited chargers in the area. My experience is that results in fewer BEV owners nearby. A year after the fire (2019), google street maps shows Tesla installed 14 chargers in Chico, about 12 miles away from Paradise.

Someone mentioned using generators to charge BEVs. Any idea what kind of generators that takes? When I saw the Leaf kickoff a few years ago, they brought in an 18 wheeler with 3 large generators (they filled the trailer of the truck) just to supply the 3 phase power needed to keep the 6 Leafs charged up so they could give demo rides. The Nissan folks eventually resorted to giving presentations between each demo ride to let the cars cool and recharge.

 

That's not a quirk in the laws that's to avoid killing linemen.

 

Is this a reply to someone’s statement?

edit: Please disregard, mystery solved

 

L

If there's a will, there's a way.
20' poles on top of a 15' hill
Take that - Hawaiian storm surges

.

 

Yes. It shows that way plainly to me. Do you perhaps have dbstoo ignored?

The ignore feature in this forum can be pretty confusing, as it both hides direct posts from whoever you're ignoring, and also hides all sign of quotations of them in other people's replies. Which can make things pretty hard to follow.

 

National Electric Code only prohibits backfeeding to the grid when it is down, to protect the lineworkers, and is the same for solar systems as for other home backup generators.

Traditional backup generators are supposed to be on a transfer switch to isolate the house, so that is is mechanically impossible to backfeed the grid.

The original grid-tie solar systems obeyed this requirement by having an internal architecture that can't even function when the grid is down. Some newer systems now have a separate output, isolated from the grid, that can function when the grid is down. Newer still are systems that electrically discontent from the downed grid and can run in isolation, including with local battery storage. Tesla Powerwall, Enphase, and others now have such systems that comply with NEC requirements.

 

The ICF link had a photo of a house that made it through Katrina while all its neighbors were flattened. Not as well as the picture I posted, but if people did get stuck at home, their survival chances are better.

 

It may be in the NEC, I don't know, but it's certainly part of UL1741, as anti-islanding protection.

 

Building up hill is the way to do it. Once you're 10m or so above sea level, your risk of flooding falls to tsunamis and rain.

 

Ah yes, thank you for reminding me

 

That IS the quoted reason. The reality is that automated whole house transfer switches have been available since before the turn of the century. You don't need to kill the generating capability when a big honking contactor isolates the house from the grid when the grid goes down. I installed one in 2003. It has never backfed the grid.

 

• not every PV installation included a transfer switch
• if the law doesn't allow for transfer switches, that is stupid

 

A grid-tied system doesn't need to have its own standalone sine-wave oscillator, since it has to produce a wave in perfect synch with the one on the grid.

If some systems designed to be grid-tied can't be used standalone, it might just be because, for simplicity, their designs do leave out any standalone oscillator, being designed to rely always on the grid for that.