putting the home backup battery to use (power out)!

@susankayequinn @kim_harding
, esp #3

@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 @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.

@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,)

"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

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)

"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

@susankayequinn Hello fellow Ioniq 6 owner!

"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

"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*

@jadp @weezmgk @czds

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)

@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.

@susankayequinn @kim_harding

I spent several years working with Global Footprint Network, and the takeaway from those years is the we are imposing excessive demands on resources - to accommodate current consumption patterns of the relatively wealthy.

So a question we should be asking is - if everyone did "X", is it sustainable? Looking at the full range of impacts to ecosystems & to human quality of life.

And I've changed my consumption patterns a lot .

@jadp oh, I want to get wind turbines! What model to you have and how do you find them? Are they noisy?

@weezmgk @czds

@susankayequinn @weezmgk @czds we can’t recommend these yet. Too new. Generic, through Amazon (couldn’t find anything like them elsewhere). They were advertised as 500W but labeled as 100W. The label also said 4 blades, but they have the expected three. We’ll post more this summer, when we have more data. They are about as noisy as a newer dishwasher.

@susankayequinn @weezmgk @czds the distributor gave a nice discount because of the discrepancy, as an incentive not to return them.

@susankayequinn @weezmgk @czds we would love these

https://www.flowerturbines.com/

But a two year wait, and we wanted to install before the tax credits went away

@susankayequinn @kim_harding
And when it comes to energy resilience and security of supply, everyone having their own back up system is very likely the most costly and least resource efficient strategy.

From an equity perspective, there are many who cannot afford it, so the expectation that this is a universal solution is misplaced.

That said, I fully understand and respect the fact that for many people, your solution is appropriate, and may be the only viable option.

@PaulWermer @kim_harding

I very much understand that there are no universal solutions — I say that a lot and I mean it. However, there are also no *permanent* solutions until we get to something that looks sustainable and we do NOT know what that is right now (we cannot), and so moving toward more sustainable solutions (even if they're temporary) is super important.

First, get the gas cars off the road and transform the transport sector—that means EVs and public transit (and bikes/ebikes!)...