You Cannot Carry Electricity in a Bucket.

• Author: Orient, Jane M.
• Position: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

"Floridians who evacuated before Hurricane Ian probably own an [internal combustion engine automobile] and had enough warning to fill up their tanks. If the [electric vehicle] zealots get their way, next

time will be different, and there will be a next time...."

IF YOU RAN OUT OF GAS, you used to have to hike to the nearest gas station, buy enough petrol to get the car to the station, and cany it in a can back to the car. Now, with the miracle of cell phones, you can telephone your roadside service provider, and someone will bring you some gasoline--unless, of course, you have an electric vehicle.

From my dad, a building contractor, I learned Bill Orient's "Laws of Contracting." Rule No. 3: You cannot carry electricity in a bucket. If your EV stalls because its battery is depleted--say the weather is cold, so the range is much less than you thought--you will have to wait for a rescue vehicle to bring a diesel generator with enough fuel. It will take some time, so let's hope your wife is not in labor, or your son's appendix does not burst--or perhaps the Zero Emissions authorities still allow an internal combustion engine (ICE) in ambulances and other emergency vehicles.

The EV is not exactly fuel efficient. Your ICE might get almost 30 miles to the gallon. A charging station hooked up to a 350 kw diesel generator uses 12 gallons of diesel per hour. If it takes three hours to charge your EV so you can go 200 miles, you are getting 5.6 mpg. Do not fret, though. Pres. Joe Biden has promised 500,000 charging stations that presumably are connected to the grid, not a diesel generator.

Suppose you are fleeing a hurricane, along with thousands of others, in a huge traffic jam. Maybe you will be lucky and come upon a roadside charger that does not have a long line of waiting cars. You understand that there is no electricity stored in the charger. Just as you cannot carry electricity in your gas can, you cannot store it, either. Electricity must be used as it is generated, or else wasted. If high winds and torrential rains have taken down power lines, the charging station is useless.

Well, what about the grid? During a hurricane or blizzard, wind turbines and solar farms will be generating zero electricity. To save any surplus generated energy for a rainy day, it must be converted to another form of energy; for example, potential energy in pumping...