Anyone Affected by Helene?

[Guss-E 2021]

First let me say, I truly hope everyone is safe and no one was severely, adversely affected by the storm (injured, serious property damage, etc.)

There is a lot of FUD about BEV and their in ability to cope with natural disasters. I'm just wondering if anyone on the forum is without power and how they are dealing with it in regards to their MME.

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[Scottie’s MachStang]

We lost power for a few days, back up and running now. The car was a convenient place to grab some a/c and recharge our devices. Post storm, I was assisting some friends and my brother-in-law whose homes were inundated- driving through ankle deep mud. No issues or complaints from the car. She looked like an off-road vehicle with mud splashes up the sides. Made it to work yesterday and grabbed a car wash with underbody rinse and wheel cleaning so all good as new. Topped off to 100% In anticipation of another night without power, but was happy to find power and internet was restored. It is still a mess here, very limited access to the barrier islands where there is mud and sand across the roads - hiding obstacles that disable rescue / emergency vehicles - as well as no power, water, or sewer. It’s gonna take a while for the beach towns to recover.

 

[Guss-E 2021]

We lost power for a few days, back up and running now. The car was a convenient place to grab some a/c and recharge our devices. Post storm, I was assisting some friends and my brother-in-law whose homes were inundated- driving through ankle deep mud. No issues or complaints from the car. She looked like an off-road vehicle with mud splashes up the sides. Made it to work yesterday and grabbed a car wash with underbody rinse and wheel cleaning so all good as new. Topped off to 100% In anticipation of another night without power, but was happy to find power and internet was restored. It is still a mess here, very limited access to the barrier islands where there is mud and sand across the roads - hiding obstacles that disable rescue / emergency vehicles - as well as no power, water, or sewer. It’s gonna take a while for the beach towns to recover.

Ugh, what a pain but it doesn't sound like charging the car is an issue. I just saw a headline about trouble getting gasoline due to power outages (people forget gas pumps need power to work as well).

I feel like the more solar and battery storage is deployed, the more options for charging electric vehicles will arise.

Glad you are surving ?

 

[Scottie’s MachStang]

I have the ability to charge st work , if I can get there - requires a trip over the Sunshine Skyway or a one-hour diversion. At times it would have been a three hour trip. I do have the ability to charge at my wife’s barn - as it has a 12kw solar array, so the car could serve as a power bank between barn and home.

 

[CarsIMBwife]

I’m just south of Asheville. No power/water since 7 am Friday. We’re fine. Husband went out in his MME and got more potable water from a local friend with a generator. I should have filled more growlers ? I have a small Jackery that I’m recharging in the MME now along with some travel batteries. For some reason the car shut off even though that switch was turned off. No worries, I just turned it back on. Will check more often. Local friends had no cell service for a while, but we’ve been lucky and have had 5g the whole time.

Wish we had Vehicle-to-home to keep refrigerators going, but we’ll be okay.

Thanks for asking.

 

[Tampamike]

I have the ability to charge st work , if I can get there - requires a trip over the Sunshine Skyway or a one-hour diversion. At times it would have been a three hour trip. I do have the ability to charge at my wife’s barn - as it has a 12kw solar array, so the car could serve as a power bank between barn and home.

Glad you’re ok. Things looked pretty grim there in Gulfport. It’s worse out in the islands though, it looks like it. We were lucky. Rising water stopped just short of the front steps at about 2 am. Roads around us drained in the morning. I’m amazed at where some of the flooding happened. I guess the storm sewers were basically letting the bay in all over.

 

[doogie63]

I thought about getting a portable power supply that can be changed with a portable solar panel. Are they any that can be used to power lamp or lights in house when power is out and be used to slowly charge EV car? When power goes out now I use my car battery jumper box to plug in lamp so we can see in the house. It last a few hours, most of the time it's time for bed or power is back on. Be nice to have one that charges from solar and use it also to charge EV. I know it would be slow but I go a week without driving sometimes.

 

[Sikkun]

From my time living in FL obviously having no power will make charging hard, though normally you could drive an hour some direction and find power.

But there were always gas shortages and issues there (power required, no internet for credit cards, etc) also.

Really it’s best to plan to not be driving anywhere for a bit if possible.

 

[Tampamike]

I thought about getting a portable power supply that can be changed with a portable solar panel. Are they any that can be used to power lamp or lights in house when power is out and be used to slowly charge EV car? When power goes out now I use my car battery jumper box to plug in lamp so we can see in the house. It last a few hours, most of the time it's time for bed or power is back on. Be nice to have one that charges from solar and use it also to charge EV. I know it would be slow but I go a week without driving sometimes.

EcoFlow has a whole line of products just for this. I’m not a paid endorser, I just happened to buy their first battery 4 years ago. Now they have many options WITH solar panel charging (they’re separate and cost). I was just checking out their site yesterday because I was thinking I need to upgrade. Fortunately, we never lost power but I could definitely use some more backup watts. I already have the solar panels.

 

[doogie63]

EcoFlow has a whole line of products just for this. I’m not a paid endorser, I just happened to buy their first battery 4 years ago. Now they have many options WITH solar panel charging (they’re separate and cost). I was just checking out their site yesterday because I was thinking I need to upgrade. Fortunately, we never lost power but I could definitely use some more backup watts. I already have the solar panels.

Have you ever tested them to charge your EV? What have you powered with them? What won't it power? Reading some not powerful enough for refrigerators because of power when the turn on at first. I like my small car one for lamps. Power don't go out much here. So not sure if worrying about EV is worth it. Storm coming plenty of time to fully charge.

 

[Tampamike]

Have you ever tested them to charge your EV? What have you powered with them? What won't it power? Reading some not powerful enough for refrigerators because of power when the turn on at first. I like my small car one for lamps. Power don't go out much here. So not sure if worrying about EV is worth it. Storm coming plenty of time to fully charge.

I haven’t even used them. They’re designed to recharge the battery - DC power. The battery has a built in inverter so you can plug things into it. It’s only about 1kw. I did some maths and figured it might be able to power the fridge for only about 7 or 8 hours, max. Lights and phones could be powered for a good bit longer without a recharge. They have bigger options now, of course for more money. You’re not gonna live off the batteries and solar panels for weeks, but it’s better than no power.

 

[SuperD]

Have you ever tested them to charge your EV? What have you powered with them? What won't it power? Reading some not powerful enough for refrigerators because of power when the turn on at first. I like my small car one for lamps. Power don't go out much here. So not sure if worrying about EV is worth it. Storm coming plenty of time to fully charge.

Theoretically, recharging an EV off a portable power station is "doable", but even "slow charging" off a regular outlet (from one of the "portable power stations" - I refuse to call them generators) consumes 1000-1200 watts.

You'd also need to be feeding that much solar INTO the "portable power station" to keep up with the demand. Look into the different devices available from Anker or Ecoflow, and the cost of solar panels, but you're easily talking at least $1500-2000 to get into lower end of the range of a setup that could slow charge your EV. These portable power stations are much better for smaller consumption uses in these scenarios (even to and including freezers and small load window unit ACs).

Much larger inverter/battery/solar panels setups (with 5-digit price tags) can definitely power your EV, many people doing that today.

 

[jgcom]

I'm not affected by Helene. But over the years I've been through a bunch of hurricanes in Louisiana. Among the irritations has been a car that was safely in my dry garage getting tagged on car databases as being present for major flooding event because of my zip code. This affected my ability to sell the car years later. I guess should have offered this advice last week, but I'd recommend that affected people take photos of your dry happy car, time-stamped when fools will later claim it affected by a flood. It's hard to fight private databases, though.

 

[Jerrytball]

EcoFlow has a whole line of products just for this. I’m not a paid endorser, I just happened to buy their first battery 4 years ago. Now they have many options WITH solar panel charging (they’re separate and cost). I was just checking out their site yesterday because I was thinking I need to upgrade. Fortunately, we never lost power but I could definitely use some more backup watts. I already have the solar panels.

Yeah, I got mine at the beginning of hurricane season and right now they got a pretty good special on the second battery. I’m thinking about getting that. The one I got came with a smart panel for free and the solar panels are yet to have that smart panel put in. I really need an electrician to put it in. I don’t feel comfortable doing it myself. It would have to go in the house and I don’t have a lot of room on the wall next to the panel in the house. No garage unfortunately but I really like my EcoFlow. Before moving to Gulfport Mississippi, I live for 30 years in North Carolina. My mom was from Black Mountain area so very familiar. I really am just totally shocked at what happened. And it looks like we’ve got something coming this way again next week damn, I didn’t think we had that many in the month of October.

 

[Sikkun]

I didn’t think we had that many in the month of October.

Last week of September, first week of October is peak season.

September being the most active but August and October are about equal.

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