cold weather

There’s no shortage of advice on how to size a home solar and battery system, but most of it assumes a suburban home with city services and outages measured in hours, not days. Rural homes play by different rules, especially during major winter storms. When ice and snow take down lines and your utility prioritizes restoring power to urban neighborhoods, having a home battery isn’t about convenience — it’s about damage control.

Fleet managers don’t get paid to argue on Facebook. They get paid to look at the numbers, and make decisions in the best financial interests of their companies. According to studies that follow real-world fleets in the most extreme, cold-weather conditions in America, EVs don’t just survive — they thrive, beating out diesel on the balance sheet.

Studies have shown that EV range can drop by as much as 40% when temperatures drop below 20°F and the heater is running. Tesla and others might dispute the exact amount of lost range, but there’s broad agreement that cold weather has a meaningful impact. That challenge led the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to award $480,000 to Professor Brett Lucht to study how to improve battery performance in low temperatures.

Expand
Expanding
Close