A leak in a gasoline pipeline near Birmingham, AL but feeding entire east coast has led to some fuel shortages and high prices, making Tesla owners look smart. (Of course, maybe our day will come when the electrical grid is down for a while!) It crossed my mind that maybe I should become a driver for Uber, at least for the rest of the week!
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
dhrivnak
Active Member
But if the grid is down they are unable to run the pumps to pull the gasoline out of the tanks. My in-laws found this out during Katrina. No gas stations within 75 miles were working 4 weeks after the storm.
Yes, that can happen. We've had some recent experience with this when tornadoes have destroyed main electrical feeder lines to the city (happened in Huntsville, Tuscaloosa & Birmingham)... some clever folks figured out that they could power the gas pumps with a generator (with station disconnected from the grid, of course). So it is possible to do it; but you would have to have a pretty stout generator to be able to charge a Tesla.
Fortunately, extended grid outages are pretty rare. Here's hoping that the utilities make the investments necessary to make the grid more robust...
Similar threads
- Article
