HOW TO CHARGE AT HOME

Let the sun shine in!

If you read my previous post, you know I have a new Ford Lightning. So what's next? CHARGING that Lightning is a lot faster if you have a Level 2 charging station at home. We do, because we have been charging a Tesla for more than four years.

The solar panels on our roof feed the power grid, in our case, National Grid. In return, National Grid gives us whatever power our house requires. They charge us $18.39 each month for that arrangement. Nine months of the year our panels produce more power than we need, and that power is credited to our account. At present we have about three years worth of that excess power that we could use for *free* from that surplus if for some reason our solar panels stopped working.

Solar panels (and their installation) are expensive, but the payback in money saved could be in about five years. (We are in our fourth year of a solar-powered house and car, our monthly cost for being connected to the grid is $18.39). After that, I guess you could say that your home's and car's electricity is free (except for the $18.39 per month). And during those years, you have not paid for gasoline to power your car.

And you have also not emitted carbon from your exhaust pipe nor put money in the pockets of the rich oil producers.

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THE UPS AND DOWNS OF DRIVING

Always drive downhill! The truck is a pleasure to drive. It's very comfortable, and driver visibility is excellent. The camera views show on the dashboard screen, and they are helpful when backing up or turning. (We are used to this from our experience driving the Tesla). The interior climate can roast you if you choose to be roasted, but as experienced EV drivers know, the more you run the heat or the A.C., the more your mileage is diminished. Sometimes, to reach your destination without running out of charge (as we did on our way home after purchasing the truck) you might have to sacrifice warmth for mileage. We live on the edge of the Adirondack Park, some 13 miles from either of two small towns. The altitude of those towns is about 500' above sea level; our home is around 1000', so we drive "downhill" to town and uphill coming home. Yesterday, the Lightning averaged 2.9 miles/kwh driving "downhill" to town, but about 2.1 miles/kwh on the uphill tri...

CHARGING THE LIGHTNING

In the current frigid weather, the slow charger (plugged into a 110 outlet in the garage) did not add range to the Lightning at any sort of practical rate. On Friday night the phone app promised the Lightning would be fully charged by Monday afternoon (in 3 days), but even that seemed iffy to us. We plugged it into the Level 2 Solar Edge charger late Saturday afternoon. and by 9PM the phone app said that charging had reached the 91% it had been set for. However, when we awoke on Sunday morning it had added a total of 64.4 kWh: 100% charge level and 210 mile range. (In our experience, that range will be diminished considerably if we drive in this morning's zero degrees). The phone app that supposedly controls charging and charge limit apparently did not stay at 91% where it was last evening, or, more likely, it restarted based on some schedule (perhaps a factory setting??) that we have not yet figured out how to change. There is obviously quite a learning curve with this amazing v...

FRUNK THAT STUFF!

Hmm... I think we can hide the bodies in here... Our kids are grown, so we made the move from a large house to a small one, and the ICE GMC pickup made many trips between the two houses and many trips to local goodwill agencies, book sellers, and to the landfill. It also hauled building supplies as we renovated our new quarters. Next, we set about building raised garden beds. We found a local sawyer who had been cutting cedar 2x8s, and so the GMC brought a couple of loads of those home - followed by many, many trips to a some local horse stables for tons of a mixture of manure and sawdust. When we first looked at the Lightning, we were put off by its shorter bed, but the more we looked at it, the more we became convinced that it will still meet our needs, and we LOVE the amount of out-of-the-weather space in the Lightning interior and in the frunk. The first photo shows the view of the frunk when you lift the hood. And below the frunk is MORE storage! (EV b...

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