Guest Post by Renee Hannon
My dad is an off-the-grid kind of guy and the cost of his lifestyle choice is usually secondary. He was one of the first in Delaware to install a solar hot water heater on his roof in the early 1970s. During the past decades a gorgeous oak tree grew tall and shaded his solar panels. But that’s OK because the oak tree brought birds, squirrels and other wildlife near his deck for countless hours of viewing pleasure. So, in a
sunny spot he put solar panels on the garage roof plus a new free-standing solar panel by the driveway. That free-standing solar panel is big enough to park a car under and, so far, the neighbors haven’t complained. I’m not sure what those solar panels cost but his electric bill is about $5 a month.
Solar panels on garage roof and additional free-standing solar panel.
My dad was also one of the first people to heat and cool his Delaware house with geothermal energy. He drilled three wells about 175 feet deep to tap ‘free’ energy. The upfront costs won’t be paid off for 15 years or more, probably after his funeral. He doesn’t really care about initial investment costs because he’s less dependent on the “grid” or “providers.” And the geothermal energy maintains his house at an even and very comfortable temperature.
Then of course, we have electric cars. According to my dad, any gasoline price over $1 per gallon is outrageous let alone the fact that vehicle emissions are a pollutant. Although a gallon of gasoline energy is cheaper today than a gallon of water and automobile fuel emissions are stabilizing. His first electric car was the Toyota Prius. He loved that car and bragged about how it cost only $20 to drive from Delaware to Florida. Well, that wasn’t good enough. He saw a 2017 Ford Fusion and within a week he traded in his Prius and bought a new Fusion Platinum energi. EPA-estimated rating quoted by Ford is 104 city/91 hwy/97 combined MPGe. MPGe is the EPA equivalent measure of gasoline fuel efficiency for electric mode
operation. The Fusion’s CO2 emissions are virtually zero.
Photo of the Ford Fusion Platinum Electric Car
Two months later, the Ford Fusion was driven to Florida with minimal luggage since the trunk is about the size of a large laundry basket due to batteries stored there. My mother wouldn’t drive the car because of
all the intimidating electronics, vibrations, beeps and buttons. After a few months in Florida, she finally
drove about 6000 feet to the store and back home.
The charging plug-in is illuminated brilliant blue. It’s a great night light while grilling on the porch in Florida during dusk. Dad is so proud of his electric car. He loves planet Earth, conserving energy and reducing emissions. He’s minimally dependent on the grid with his solar and geothermal energy home and new electric car.
Picture of the cool illuminating charge port.
Things were good when my parents left Florida and headed 1250 miles north to their Delaware home for the
summer. Oh, I need to mention he didn’t have to fill the gasoline tank for five months while in Florida and averaged about 100 miles MPGe.
Once back in Delaware, a thunderstorm came passing through. Not a notable storm, just a typical summer storm. The house was struck by lightning on September 7, 2018. Mom and dad heard a loud crack. They were fine and didn’t think too much of it.
The next couple of days were challenging as they discovered all the damage. The typical stuff. They found lots of electrical components blown out that didn’t work. They had to replace the hot water tank, the computer was fried as well as several other electrical items. He had a large deductible on his homeowner’s insurance. I think they were getting close to paying off all the repairs and the insurance deductible. A week after being struck by lightning they thought they were in the clear.
Then dad was driving his beloved Ford Fusion and realized it was not holding a charge and other strange stuff was happening with the electronics. The car had been parked in the detached garage and was plugged into the grid. But wait, wouldn’t you think a modern electric car would be designed with a built-in circuit breaker for electrical storms like this? Guess not! He immediately drove his electric car straight to the Ford dealer and said something was wrong.
That was SIX long weeks ago and no end in sight. Turns out the Fusion had an en-lightning experience and is completely incapacitated. Car insurance doesn’t know how to deal with electric cars that have been struck by lightning. They want pictures. Really? What does an electric car demobilized by lightning look like? Well, the same as an electric car that hasn’t been struck by lightning. Except none of the 2 separate battery compartments work now. It turns out the lightning strike blew out the electrical circuit boards. After weeks of back and forth with the insurance company, things started progressing. Repair work is underway.
My mom thinks this is one of the first Ford electric cars struck by lightning to be repaired. The dealer and insurance company need to keep calling Ford’s corporate office in Atlanta to find out what to do. Now the dealer says they need a special circuit board, but there are none available to fix my dad’s Ford Fusion. After six weeks of ongoing efforts, Ford will not have the circuit board until January 15th……for sure, or so they say. Wait, the car went into the Dealer’s shop in early September and repairs will take over five months? Insurance won’t total the car, and nobody knows how much it will cost to repair this modern, energy efficient, low CO2 emissions electric car. Well, how about trading his car in for another one? Nope, the Ford dealer can’t find another electric Fusion in the area. Well, there’s always the old reliable gasoline fueled car as a backup.
Over the past decade, my parents have driven to Florida every November. Because my Dad is trying to do the environmentally right thing by owning an electric car, he won’t be driving to Florida any time soon. And it’s all due to a natural event, a lightning strike, which happens about 8 million times a day on planet Earth.
I haven’t told my dad yet, but according to the newly released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) report, scientists have a “medium confidence level” of more extreme storms in the northeastern U.S. due to human causes despite my dad’s most sincere efforts. I didn’t ask my dad, but I have a “very high confidence level” that while the IPCC report mandates carbon emissions must be cut by 45% during the next 12 years and shifts to electric transport systems are essential; nobody from the IPCC has contacted
him about his electri-fried Fusion.
Did I mention my parents found four dead squirrels in that old oak tree the day after the lightning strike?
I like your dad, he reminds me of my daughter’s father in law, only much better. Brings tears to my eyes. Such true blue walk the talk pioneers are a rare breed indeed/
And that Prius he got rid of was clad with utrathin aluminum that the insurance companies declare as totaled with just a fender bender. Or you can go with non-OEM thin skin aluminum and guess how easy that is to find for repairs. That’s not even getting to the issues of safety in the post-Volvo safety era of smart cars and ultra thin skin aluminum. Ain’t evolution fun to watch.
I am curious about the state of these squirrels? Where they really still IN the oak tree? They didn’t get blasted off the tree from the voltage of the strike? And if they were still in the tree, did your father go looking for them after not seeing them, and climbed up the tree to check on them?
Quantum mechanics indicates that you can’t know the squirrels state and location at the same time,
Prolly’s Extermination Principle
They fell to the ground
She’s lying to herself and doesn’t realize it.
To wit: “. The Fusion’s CO2 emissions are virtually zero.”
As in, shifted emissions to battery materials extraction, production, and charging on a fossil fueled grid.
Also how much extra cost has he incurred that he will never recover buying the EV Ford, when a Toyota Corolla at half the price will run reliably at 35 mpg for 250K miles w/o the hassles?
The delsion continues on the Green Hustle. And the children-turned-adults are not educated sufficiently to figure it out.
Sorry but the writers dad is a self martyr. It must be terrible to be so obsessed that you deprive yourself of modern luxuries.
I, on the other hand, will be making my annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage to Las Vegas in about a month. This year I will be at the Mirage, eating, drinking, gambling and enjoying myself. I will again rent a car one day, usually a full sized SUV, and drive to Summerlin where I will visit the Red Rock Casino while my wife shops in near by. I have only about 20 years left on this Planet and I really don’t care what happens after that. I have earned the right to do what I want, when I want without regard to anything else at all. My only contribution to being green those days is by flying non stop so I won’t be the cause of having to use more fuel to lift my butt into the air more than once each way.
You may now return to your regular scheduled postings.
My electric bill is a MINIMUM of $25 a month—it’s called a service fee. How Deleware missed having this is beyond me.
I gave up reading the “article”. I guess if Watts Up with That wants to play the “equal time to all” game, it’s Anthony’s website. I’ll get my science elsewhere and skip the pontificating.
Sheri,
The main point of the post is to show how electric cars can be unreliable and how unprepared manufacturers and insurance companies are to repair electric cars. It was a build on the recent IPCC report trying to frighten us all away from gasoline powered vehicles due to CO2 emissions and to use only electric cars by 2040. Also, not addressed by the IPCC, is pollution associated with the manufacture of and eventual disposal of lithium batteries.
The solar and geothermal energy systems used by my dad set the stage for his desire to live a green lifestyle which made the electric car disaster even more hysterical. I do not for a second believe humans can influence one degree C of climate variability by controlling CO2, no matter how hard we try.
I am an amateur radio operator. Back in the mid-60s we had a thunderstorm at night. About 2 AM, I was awakened by a flash and loud bang — one of my antennas had been struck by lightning. My mother got up screaming that the house was on fire – the basement was filled with smoke (my father had passed away a few years before that happened). Fortunately, I had coaxial connectors wired to our cold-water pipe, with 1″ braid. The entire power of the lightning strike had gone safely to ground through the water pipe, but it vaporized the dielectric on the coaxial cable — that’s where the smoke came from. There must have been a frequency component to the lightning surge, because about every 4 feet, the coax was vaporized – even where it went underground. My amateur-radio equipment and our TV, etc. — they were fine — they were all “hollow state” (as opposed to solid state — think vacuum tubes). BTW, the current from the lightning melted the coaxial connector on the water pipe — it turned a gold color (it may have been plated brass – I don’t know).So maybe we need to use vacuum tubes for electric cars and charge-control equipment for the solar panels 😁
Years ago when protection from EMP was just starting to be discussed, designed and specified they talked about how all U.S. aircraft would be disabled, but U.S.S.R. aircraft would survive. At that time the U.S. had converted to solid state where the U.S.S.R. was still using vacuum tube designs. Engineers soon quite laughing at how backward the Soviets were.
I worked in an AM radio station in the 1960s (WGSA). We had 3 towers each 190 ft tall. During a thunderstorm, it was my job to sit in the transmitter room and turn the transmitter back on every time lightning struck and knocked us off the air. IIRC, that happened about every time an electrical storm passed through. That taught me at a young age that lightning *does* strike twice in the same place. . . . . . made me wonder about other commonly accepted things.
My dad is also a ham (I was, but I let my license lapse long ago). Back when we lived on the farm (he moved into town after we kids all left), he had a 2 mile long-wire antenna on 25 foot wood poles, nearly all the way to the far end of our pasture. He used the old-style glass insulators screwed into the top of each pole to hold the antenna wire.
It always had some voltage on it, so he kept it grounded unless he was using it, and even then he had a spark block on it just in case. The ground at the house was a 25 foot long 2″ diameter solid metal pole he rammed all the way into the dirt (rammed in by hand with a fence-post driver he’d welded more weight onto) in the back yard, in parallel with a 5 foot square metal plate buried 10 feet deep (we had a trench cutter we’d used to cut trenches below the frost line for our water lines… he used that to make the hole for the plate).
When it snowed, you could grab the antenna coax with the insulated pliers and pull it away from the ground connection, and it’d spark up to 6″. It’d also spark when it rained, but only a little bit. When the wind blew, it’d spark, too.
We had winters where the lights went out, and he hooked a fluorescent light to the antenna to provide light.
It got hit by lightning quite often, but each pole out in the pasture had a spark gap on it, with a hefty 2-gauge braided wire leading to a large flat metal plate buried 10 feet deep… so by the time the lightning strikes reached the house, most of it had been grounded off. It’d still hiss during a strike, though, even though it was grounded.
The house roof was also peppered with lightning rods… Dad didn’t mess around when it came to lightning. Our cedar shake roof would have lit up pretty easily without those lightning rods.
Yeah, lightning strikes can do a lot of damage unless you’re set up to drain them to ground. Today’s sensitive electronics, in combination with insufficient grounding… that’s the perfect recipe for letting the Magic Smoke out.
Going green with solar only makes sense when there is no grid to connect to. I have a second house/home in the UP of Michigan that is over a mile past where the power line ends, about 6000 feet. The power company quoted $60,000, or $10/ft to run the power line to my house. It had to be underground since it crossed a state forest. I put in a 2.75 kW solar system to upgrade from straight propane which was running over $1000/yr to run the generator. I have battery back-up and I just replaced the whole battery bank for the first time in 10 years for $2500. My propane bill for the generator, which is now a back-up, not primary power, dropped to less than $200/yr. Before the solar we would go “cold iron” whenever we left for more that a couple of days, now the power is on 24/7, though I do turn the generator off. The inverter is smart enough to turn the whole system On/Off in response to the batteries’ state of charge. Oh, after 10 years the solar installation still hasn’t paid for itself in saved propane costs but it’s getting close.
“Did I mention my parents found four dead squirrels in that old oak tree the day after the lightning strike?”
It is an ill wind that does no good.
IDK 4 fewer tree rats sounds like the silver lining in that story.
Lady writes a delightful, lighthearted piece about lightening striking her dad’s obsession and you guys respond with a verbal food-fight. Get some perspective!
Hear!Hear! Evoked some interesting informative comments too.
Shame about the squirrels.