putting the home backup battery to use (power out)!
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@dgodon balcony solar might be an affordable option!
I also highly recommend community solar, which doesn't cost anything (and might save money)
@susankayequinn heard about this on the Volts podcast and sounds intriguing. I think there’s a bill being considered in the WA legislature this session to facilitate this
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@kim_harding Not only does battery demand for EVs *not* work against people getting home batteries, they actually facilitate it:
1 - economies of scale for EV batteries has already shown to help home and utility battery buildout
2- EV batteries are outlasting the car bodies; there will be a lot of car batteries repurposed into home batteries when the car bodies are done
3 - there's a lot of (not helpful) EV/car hate out there; there's no reason we can't do EVs *and* public transit -
@susankayequinn not quite correct. Many people shouldn’t need a car if we’re doing it right.
@dgodon when people no longer need cars, then fine, but that's not happening in the next 10 years, which is when we can (and should) be turning over the car fleet from gas to electric.
Every new gas car that's manufactured locks in gas production pipelines for another 10-20 years. Every EV that's bought NEW instead not only takes those off the road (along with their future gas pipeline support) but creates a future with *more affordable* used EVs.
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@susankayequinn not quite correct. Many people shouldn’t need a car if we’re doing it right.
@dgodon @susankayequinn As of yet we aren't doing it right.
I live in a very walkable downtown area. Today I will be taking my car out (an EV) for the first time in a couple weeks to go to the recycling center. The recycling pickup in my complex is practically useless. -
@dgodon when people no longer need cars, then fine, but that's not happening in the next 10 years, which is when we can (and should) be turning over the car fleet from gas to electric.
Every new gas car that's manufactured locks in gas production pipelines for another 10-20 years. Every EV that's bought NEW instead not only takes those off the road (along with their future gas pipeline support) but creates a future with *more affordable* used EVs.
@susankayequinn for sure they’re needed to the extent people need cars. But cities can (and some are) making it much easier to do without (or with fewer). A growing number in Seattle are. And I hear e-bikes are having a bigger impact than EVs. Again, not disputing that switch to EVs is not important.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/11/280-million-e-bikes-are-slashing-oil-demand-far-more-than-electric-vehicles/ -
@dgodon @susankayequinn As of yet we aren't doing it right.
I live in a very walkable downtown area. Today I will be taking my car out (an EV) for the first time in a couple weeks to go to the recycling center. The recycling pickup in my complex is practically useless.@GalbinusCaeli @susankayequinn that still sounds like an improvement over the car centric lifestyle that the US is known for
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oh look, it's going to get worse https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/an-el-nino-is-brewing
"If you want a sense of how close we’re dancing to the brink, check out this new study from some of the heavy hitters in climate research, documenting the approach (or in too many cases the passing) of various tipping points in the earth’s climate system."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of-no-return-hothouse-earth-global-heating-climate-tipping-points -
@kim_harding Not only does battery demand for EVs *not* work against people getting home batteries, they actually facilitate it:
1 - economies of scale for EV batteries has already shown to help home and utility battery buildout
2- EV batteries are outlasting the car bodies; there will be a lot of car batteries repurposed into home batteries when the car bodies are done
3 - there's a lot of (not helpful) EV/car hate out there; there's no reason we can't do EVs *and* public transit -
@susankayequinn for sure they’re needed to the extent people need cars. But cities can (and some are) making it much easier to do without (or with fewer). A growing number in Seattle are. And I hear e-bikes are having a bigger impact than EVs. Again, not disputing that switch to EVs is not important.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/11/280-million-e-bikes-are-slashing-oil-demand-far-more-than-electric-vehicles/@susankayequinn here’s an article about how the increasing number of people in Seattle going carfree: https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2025/09/10/balk-20-of-seattle-households-are-car-free-and-we-have-barely-added-cars-to-our-city-since-2017/
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@susankayequinn @kim_harding
Though there is an issue of resource consumption, and everyone owning an EV with extended range is a problem. (Ensuring everyone has access to the appropriate mobility is important, and we really need to revisit shared "personal" vehicles (personal as opposed to transit,) -
@susankayequinn here’s an article about how the increasing number of people in Seattle going carfree: https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2025/09/10/balk-20-of-seattle-households-are-car-free-and-we-have-barely-added-cars-to-our-city-since-2017/
@dgodon that's great and I think there's a belief out there that the way to have more people going carfree is to do social pressure campaigns on people, give out lots of car hate, especially (for some reason) pointed at EVs (and not gas cars, which is wild), and I disagree with that methodology... making it *possible* to go car free is great and the biggest incentive is COST (cars are crazy expensive, all cars)...
I don't disagree with the objective, just the tactic/approach.
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@dgodon @susankayequinn As of yet we aren't doing it right.
I live in a very walkable downtown area. Today I will be taking my car out (an EV) for the first time in a couple weeks to go to the recycling center. The recycling pickup in my complex is practically useless.@GalbinusCaeli @dgodon @susankayequinn
Well recycling is another thing we're not doing right, so...
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@susankayequinn @kim_harding
Though there is an issue of resource consumption, and everyone owning an EV with extended range is a problem. (Ensuring everyone has access to the appropriate mobility is important, and we really need to revisit shared "personal" vehicles (personal as opposed to transit,)@PaulWermer @kim_harding
What seems to get missed A LOT is that my EV with extended range parked in my garage is a distributed power source that can be tapped by the grid to stabilize it and reduce the surge gas burning needed to meet peak demand.This is already happening LOTS of places. Solar too, but the EVs-in-garages are already being tapped as extended storage.
The hate is just misplaced. Spend it on the fossil fuel corps.
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"If you want a sense of how close we’re dancing to the brink, check out this new study from some of the heavy hitters in climate research, documenting the approach (or in too many cases the passing) of various tipping points in the earth’s climate system."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of-no-return-hothouse-earth-global-heating-climate-tipping-points"The impact of this new warming surge will be especially profound because this El Niño will probably provide the final proof that global warming is actually accelerating sickeningly from its previously merely alarming pace."
https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/another-el-nino-already-what-can
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putting the home backup battery to use (power out)! got my EV plugged into the furnace so we have heat for a good while, probably days
(this exact scenario--winter outage, low solar--is why hubby reconfigured the furnace to run off my Ioniq6 V2L)
@susankayequinn Hello fellow Ioniq 6 owner!
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"The impact of this new warming surge will be especially profound because this El Niño will probably provide the final proof that global warming is actually accelerating sickeningly from its previously merely alarming pace."
https://jimehansen.substack.com/p/another-el-nino-already-what-can
"One way of summing up this moment is to say that the endangerment finding, and the politics of climate, are puny in the face of physics. We’re going to see that physics in action again in the next 24 months, and it will drive many changes. "
*Sue tries to write faster*
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@susankayequinn Hello fellow Ioniq 6 owner!
Ioniq6 car is best car! LOL
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"If you want a sense of how close we’re dancing to the brink, check out this new study from some of the heavy hitters in climate research, documenting the approach (or in too many cases the passing) of various tipping points in the earth’s climate system."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of-no-return-hothouse-earth-global-heating-climate-tipping-points@susankayequinn yikes!
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"One way of summing up this moment is to say that the endangerment finding, and the politics of climate, are puny in the face of physics. We’re going to see that physics in action again in the next 24 months, and it will drive many changes. "
*Sue tries to write faster*
at some point, we will decide to stop pushing the "kill everything" button
people will come to understand we can stop the slow violence of capitalism
and that life will be a lot better, even as the climate disasters that are the legacy of capitalism continue on (in fact, surviving those disasters will be more likely in a world where capitalism and necropoliticians aren't killing everyone)
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Last year's 4 day outage was in May, which was lucky — power needs were low, sun was plentiful. (Spring/Fall are when we're sending lots of solar power back to the grid).
During the outage we literally had more power than we could use, so I put out an extension cord and taught the neighborhood a little bit about community/mutual aid. The reaction was WILD — people thought it was incredible that I would do this. SIGH.
@susankayequinn @weezmgk @czds less than a month after we moved into our new home, we had a four day ice storm in 2021 February, and a four day power outage as the ice pulled down power lines faster than the local PUD could repair them. That’s when we made modular, expandable #BESS a priority, with the EV part of the strategy. Took time: buy a little, save, buy more. Now we also have a small solar photovoltaic (8x410W panels) and vertical axis wind turbines generators (5x500W)
