How long do you think the power will be out and how long or low do you think you will go on truck power before you disconnect and head to a charging station if there is one with power at this point?

 

No idea how long power will be out. After Wilma we didn’t have power for 3 weeks.

I can run for at least 4 days like this. My friend neighbor here has a whole house generator and right now we are topping off one of the Teslas at his house. There a FPL DC Fast charger in town about 30 miles away if I need it.

We have bigger issues. Primary road to get to home from cabin is flooded. There is an alternate route that appears to be open.

My neighbor sent me pictures of our house which lost pool cage. There doesn’t appear to be any other damage. The power is out at that house also.

The best news is nobody got hurt. Better yet political leanings are not preventing people from helping each other.

 

Looks like you made out fairly ok damage wise. Perhaps you might consider getting a solar array installed at one or both places if for nothing else, to recharge your vehicles when the grid is down. I have a 6kW system on my home but it's grid tied meaning when the grid shuts down, so does the array. No storage batteries to save the juice being produced so it shuts off to prevent back feeding the grid while linemen are working on it.

I plan to add more panels in a stand alone system with at home storage when prices come down a bit, as it is now, it pays for its monthly lease/maintenance agreement and about $50/mth off our power bill. I'm going to cover every square inch of my roof, this is all the state allows for residential systems that are grid tied.

 

1/2 the Cabin community still doesn’t have power. There are lots of downed overhead power lines that falling trees took out

We packed up all the food and put the freezer and refrigerator stuff in the portable powered coolers in the zlightning truck bed.

Still showing no power at the house and PlugShare didn’t show any available DC charging stations within 75 miles from our house. The FPL charging station in town 30 miles south of us showed available. FPL set up a mobile dc fast charging site and they plugged us in and gave us a top off to 90% FOR FREE.

All gas stations on our route that we passed were out of gas with plastic bags covering the pump handles.

15 minutes from home I got a text from my alarm system that power was restored.

We got home and threw out all food from the refrigerators and loaded the food we transported from our cabin in the powered coolers in the refrigerators.

The neighborhood is a mess. My pool area is a mess. It’s dark now so I’ll deal with it tomorrow. We are just glad to be home and have power

my next door neighbor is a big generator installer and supplier. He said at the height of the storm the 5,600 generator accounts he maintains only 4 had power. In addition to residential generator accounts he douses hospitals, water treatment plants, assisted living facilities and many more commercial accounts.

Here we are charging at the FPL mobile charge site.

 

Looks like weather forcasts cool things down hard in a couple of days now !

 

I uploaded a YouTube video I took of my charging on the road returning from evacuating for Hurricane Milton,

Florida Power and Light set up these mobile charging sites for special needs. This one was set up to add additional charging stations for people returning home after evacuating across Florida for Hurricane Milton

 

The few gas stations that have gas have long lines. Locally I drove by one that had a line about 1/2 mile long. It reminds me when Wilma hit Ft Lauderdale when we lived there.

There are still 36% of accounts without power in our county. We are fortunate that power was restored yesterday and we can plug in at home and keep the Lightning at 90% charge and not have to forage for gas. This time having an EV is an advantage.

My neighbor is a Generac dealer with 5600 accounts. He said he couldn’t find any diesel at 1am on the way home from work. Today he went to the dump with a load of fallen tree branches. It took 2 hours to get into the dump because of the lines.

We are very thankful that no one we know got hurt but feel for those who lost loved one in the hurricane.

 

Got a surprise the other day. It seems that a few years ago all insurers in Florida eliminated coverage for pool enclosure cages. So after paying Homeowners insurance for 51 years without one claim there is no coverage for us. As I told my wife, It could always be worse, and noone was hurt.

My wife and I took all the metal down and piled it in the backyard. It was a chore for the 2 of us, in our late 70's and both of us with bad backs . My Son in Law arranged for a recycler teo pick up the metal and they picked it up today .

The pool was full of leaves and I finally got it all cleaned out and now trying toe get chemicals rebalanced. .

It's impossible to get anyone to give a quote for a pool cage replacement due to the storm impact.

Gas is still in limited supply here and having an EV that is able to be fully charged at home is a big advantage.

Love the new look and view. If i weren't for the Florida mosquitoes we would leave it this way.

i'M NOT COMPLAINING IT COULD ALWAYS BE WORSE!!

 

Gorgeous!

Pool looks beautiful w/o enclosure. Cheaper to use mosquito control than install a new screen. Or sit near a large fan. Mosquitos like to avoid the wind. Park your truck in an area with many mosquitos. The bugs will all be on the side of the truck without the wind!

Ask me how I know. A hurricane many years ago at my previous home in S FL damaged my screen enclosure.

An EV advantage. No more gas lines. As long as you have some power! Wonder how the superchargers in your area are at this point? Or if the FPL mobile chargers are still available.

I have 1 Ford diesel and 1 Tesla at this point. I love EV power so much thinking about an electric truck. I do not tow, so it is an option.

Love pre-emission diesel power too, but not available anymore!

 

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately my wife is allergic to mosquitoes. If she gets one or two bites, I never hear the end of it for days. So screen enclosure is mandatory.

You sound like you are a perfect candidate for an electric truck. Don’t test drive one or you’ll end up driving away with it. They are awesome.

The FPL guys had a Rivian and a Silverado 4WT work truck at the site where I charged. They said they also have several F150 lightning some of them are even platinums. They use the Silverado to tow their 8000 pound trailer office to the sites. They get over 450 miles of range when not towing and over 200 miles of range when towing, but they both said their backs hurt after one hour in the Silverado. The Rivian and the lightnings don’t bother their backs on long rides.