@kevinthorley
Father and husband living in Vermont. Focused on climate solutions; electrification, electric vehicles, transit, and clean energy in all its forms. Town energy committee member, work in the EV battery space, love spending time outdoors and playing guitar
I have personally had good experiences locally when I needed an extra car, and really appreciated that they didn’t require it to be charged before I brought it back.
On the flip side, my cousin got a Niro EV last week (did not request an EV) and no explanation at all. Not good.
2019 Model 3, 2022 R1T, and a 2025 Ioniq 5, and the answer is yes in all three.
That said, a lot of the posts I see on this topic come from people who rented an EV, and I know first hand that rental car companies are putting people in EVs with zero information about how to handle this
The IRA cuts were devastating, but it's not accurate to say the IRA was repealed. Battery storage was spared, and remains a key ingredient in the clean energy transition:
Want to reduce electricity bills 20% by 2030?
Release the data! We have over 37GW of batteries, water heaters, etc that can participate in demand flexibilty. But without data access they can't bid into the PJM/MISO capacity auction to bring down costs.
“Sometimes, when you’re in the middle of history, it’s hard to tell, because you’re in the middle of it. And it’s not just us [at DOE] that have been making history — although we have — it’s also all of you, and I embrace all of you as history makers.”
Jennifer Granholm
US Secretary of Energy
Sales may have slipped in Europe but globally electric car sales are up a quarter, led by China but also in N America
www.reuters.com/business/aut...
Perfect weather for a climb up and ski descent down the west side of Mt Mansfield yesterday
ABC, NBC & CBS dedicated about 16 minutes of airtime last night to the California wildfires without once mentioning climate change.
Since the news failed do it's job, here's a short summary of the role of climate change and wildfire risk:
www.noaa.gov/noaa-wildfir...
Occasional reminder that there’s no, “it’s too late, its over” for anthropogenic climate change. Every molecule of CO2 that doesn’t go into the atmosphere makes a difference. Preventing 0.1 degree of warming makes a difference. Every bit of climate resilience we build together makes a difference.
You’re getting the hang of it!
Finally got my Emporia Vue energy monitoring system installed last week. I went with three units to cover the Powerwall gateway, main panel, and an isolated load panel and it looks like I'm going to need a fourth to cover the rest of the circuits in the main panel.
Yearly reminder…
I’d expect more humid though, which helps with heat pumps. Keep in mind that there are cold climate models that are necessary if you want to heat in a true winter climate, and that the technology has advanced significantly in the last 5-10 years. We’re running 2019 Mitsubishi HyperHeat units, fwiw
I'm in Vermont and it's pretty darn cool here. -7F when I woke up this morning
We have a Rheem HPHW. For outages we have battery backup but in winter it wouldn’t last us more than a day so the real backup plan is the wood stove, same backup plan we had had with our natural gas furnace. That said, the longest outage in the last four years has been 6 minutes
Sorry to hear that. We’re on our sixth winter with them and quite happy with the results
They’ve performed quite well for us:
www.acdirect.com/media/specs/...
Air source, Mitsubishi HyperHeat (MSZ/MUZ) mini splits specifically
Efficiency, and therefore range. In the winter I basically always pre-heat, especially on the cold days. Good question about determining the breakeven point; not sure, probably less so for really short drives
According to the data sheet from the manufacturer, it's 2.24 at 5F. Mitsubishi HyperHeat units, MSZ/MUZ specifically
I'm just getting back into doing some home automation / IoT after a few years off and I'm pretty excited by Home Assistant and ESPHome. Sure beats hand coding all of these projects like I've had to do in the past
One thing I appreciate about our Model 3 is that it will warm the battery without being plugged in. This does consume charge, obviously, but from what I've seen it's a net win. Our Rivian only warms the battery if you pre-heat it while it's plugged in. Not sure how other EVs handle pre-warming
Agreed, there is much work to be done to ensure equitable access to at-home charging. That said, with the majority of EV owners being able to charge at home (at least based on reports I’ve seen), pre-conditioning does make a pretty big difference
Heat pumps are great for increasing range in winter, but nothing beats preconditioning the car before a drive to get the battery up to a good operating temperature. I’ve found the difference to be substantial in my winter driving here in Vermont.
I should also note that I put in several hours of driving adding northern Vermont yesterday to ski with my wife and daughter and then go pick my son up from ski training at a different mountain; winter driving conditions, high of 16F, and a few thousand feet of elevation gain. EVs also work in cold!
A few months back at a town energy committee meeting I was called a liar by a member of the public for correcting his statement that “heat pumps are inefficient below 40 and don’t work at all below 30”. This morning I woke up to an outside temp of 4F and an inside temp of 70F. Heat pumps work.
Vermont has announced the first 11 competitively-bid, NEVI-funded charging sites! These account for most of the 15 high priority sites identified in the state’s NEVI plan, in addition to the one station that was built via a process exemption earlier this year.
vermontbiz.com/news/2024/de...
I was thinking the same thing this weekend in Vermont as I drove up to the mountain. Tons of EVs, from in-state and out-of-state, having no problem handling the winter driving conditions.
@batteriesincluded.bsky.social ^^^