A house divided

[Editor's note: I started this article before Thanksgiving, but felt compelled to change the direction after experiences that occurred during the recent holiday period.]

My family had a complete reunion during Thanksgiving, where EVERYONE traveled from across the continental US and assembled near Atlanta, GA in a rental house to celebrate love, warmth, and companionship. We had an actual wedding onsite for an aunt, a job relocation for a cousin, an introduction of a spouse and child for a cousin, and an introduction of a girlfriend of a third cousin. We ate good food, drank merrily, and played games galore. And, we talked about #electricvehicle, a lot.

My mom asked me about the mechanics of operating an electric vehicle, ranging from how you plug it in to the wall to where you should park it when you go out to eat. My (new) uncle-in-law shared that his company recently acquired two BYD busses for incorporation to the existing fleet, and already had one 'shut down' two days before the holiday due to a water leak into the battery compartment that [may have] occurred during container shipping. My cousin bent my ear on everything Tesla, but reminded me that curious minds wanting to adopt #EV are still faced with prohibitively-high acquisition challenges.

None of us were driving electric vehicles. Some of us were in rental cars. The rental house we used as the base for the reunion was in an affluent, established neighborhood with 2000+ sqft homes and plenty of greenspace and off-street parking. I personally noted a BMW i3, a Tesla Model S, a Tesla Model X, a Tesla Model 3, and two Nissan Leafs in the adjacent streets; all of them were parked on the street with no visible #EVSE in the driveways. This observation caused me to pause and realize that 'some' owners still see EVs as 'just a means of transportation.'

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When I originally started this article, I began with my historical experiences in the US Navy whereby every warfighting platform that I have personally experienced--whether submarines, surface ships, or aircraft--have the same fundamental electrical design. They have two separate electrical busses, 'A' and 'B' or 'Port' and 'Starboard.' They are designed to shed non-essential loads during times of electrical degradation or emergency supply. They are designed for redundancy and often have more than one source of electrical supply for essential loads, accounting for damage or casualty. They are the epitome of resilient, but provide life support for the owner / operator / CUSTOMER.

I rebuilt a house in 2008, taking it to the studs and foundation, and expanding it out, back, and up. I doubled the size of that house, and incorporated energy recovery ventilators for both zones with heat pumps, solar PV, solar hot water, tankless hot water, cork floors, external generator wiring, and recycled blue jean insulation. I could not afford radiant-heat floors or split-AC systems. I asked the lead electrician for an essential loads subpanel and was met with a blank stare. In short, it was a foreign concept and deemed unnecessary. In the subsequent five years of losing power due to storms, I rolled the generator to the backdoor, dropped an extension cord through the nearest window, and networked another ten extension cords to provide lighting, refrigeration, and heating/cooling to a now-divided house. I even drew a diagram to keep on-hand for future events.

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#NissanEnergy appears to provide THE solution that I have so yearned for over the past years of energy obsession. To be able to buy a mobile generator, aka EV, and partially power my residence through solar PV generation and electrical consumption (without the grid supply), AND still be able to drive it away for lifestyle demands is the next-best-thing to good energy awareness at the consumer level. A pivotal next step would be to design our residences to be more resilient in the face of adversity, albeit with automatic--or manual--load shedding as the occupant thinks they need based on lifestyle. To be able to have full visibility to one's total cost of ownership in their daily life would be a measure of forecasting unseen beyond energy extremists.

Only then would we humans be able to take stock of our electrical impact on the world, seek resiliency within the neighborhood / suburb / city / etc. grid design, and ultimately focus on making the Earth a better place. #V2G and #smartgrid will open the realm of the possible in ways not previously imagined.

Until then, you can find me on Cars.com searching for used Nissan Leafs with Level 2 V2G connectors, seeking my next mobile battery storage unit.