Author: My Self Sufficient Life

Made it Home

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 Our Story on NPR

If you want to hear the story NPR did on our trip click here to listen – Story on NPR

 

What a day! Left this morning from The Blue Water B&B where Rick, the owner, let us charge up over night (110 volt). Great B&B, highly recommend this place if you are ever in Lewes, DE. Then it was on to the Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, DE.

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Patrick, Rick, and Lola

Don’t need to say much here, other than thanks to Holly and Dogfish Brewery for allowing us to us charge up while we went on the tour.

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After doing the tour and tasting, we headed up to Dover and decided to charge up at the Hertrich Nissan dealership.

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Patrick with Phil, our new best friend

They gave us a ride to Dover and we finished up our day touring the Biggs Museum. Patrick was able to see some of the art work created by Sanford School students.

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When we were done, we called Hertrich and they came and picked us up. We jumped into our fully charged car and headed home via Route 13. We had a great time touring Delaware, we learned a lot, and it is good to be home.

Trouble

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About 15 min into our tour Patrick noticed that the car was not charging. We finished up our tour of the Archives and Patrick walked back to check on it while I did the tour of Legislative Hall. 



The charger was not working so Patrick found this local Nissan dealership, Hertrich Nissan, that would let him charge up. He drove there and then rejoined me in the tour. 

Made it to Dover 

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Made it to Dover with plenty of power left. Pulled into the UD Paradee center. Got ICED, which means that an internal combustion engine (ICE) was in our charging spot. 

Patrick got that taken care of and we plugged in and headed to The First State Heritage Park to start our tour. 

Good News, Bad News

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Well I have some good news and some bad news. First the good news. WDDE 91.1 FM out of Dover, DE will be at our house to interview us as we leave on our trip. They will follow us to our first charging station and then to Rehoboth Beach.  We are very excited they are interested in the trip. The story will be a follow up to one they did a year ago when the state first announced they were going to install charging stations. Story from February 2014

Now for the bad news. Leg three of our trip was suppose to be up to Lewes, DE and the Cape May – Lewes Ferry, where they installed two 15Kw chargers. I just received a call that the charging stations are not working. This might change our plans a little. We might not be able to make it to the southern most point of Delaware. I was counting on being able to leave Rehoboth Beach and run down to the Delaware, Maryland boarder and back to the Ferry terminal with an empty tank, charging that day as we visited Cape May. I am going to contact the Blue Water House and see if they will let us charge there for the day and have them give us a ride to the Ferry and pick us up that evening.

Life With an Electric Car

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We have a 2012 Nissan LEAF and have been driving it for a little over two years. It is one of the best cars that I have ever owned. It’s quick, comfortable and fun to drive. Currently it is my primary commuter car and we have only made local trips in it. I charge the car overnight in our garage. I installed a 240 volt level 2 charger right after we got the car. The level 2 charger will charge the car in about a third of the time as the 120 volt level 1 charger that came with the car. (A 120 volt charger can take up to 12 hours to charge, but with a 240 volt charger the most it will take is around 5 hours.) I would definitely recommend installing a level 2 charger. It cost around $1,200 to install, but the first year we got a 25% federal tax credit.

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Schneider Electric Level 2 charger

Did I mention that the LEAF is our favorite car to drive in our house and that my daughter and I fight over who gets it? So it’s important to have a fully charged car at all times. During a typical week, I don’t have to use our gas-powered car at all, which is nice. So I guess I could say that the LEAF is a feel-good car as well.

My drive to and from work is about 20 miles round trip. Currently my place of work doesn’t have a charging station, so as soon as I get home I plug in and by morning the car is fully charged. I estimate that by driving my LEAF I save money. My average monthly expenditure on gas used to be $120, and the increase in my electric bill was about $30, so I have a net savings of about $90/month.

One of our favorite places to go is Longwood Gardens which is well within our car’s range, but they have a level 2 charger so the car gets a pretty good charge while we walk around the grounds and through the conservatory. But what’s really nice is that the charger is located very close to the entrance.

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Charging at Longwood Gardens

I especially like to take the LEAF to Longwood Gardens during their busy season, such as Christmas, and while all the gas-powered cars are directed to remote parking we can zip right to the front door and plug in. That leaves us more time to enjoy Longwood.

So far we have only run out of juice once, necessitating a call to our daughter to come and pick us up. Fortunately we were close to my wife’s work place where we parked the car for the night. From that experience, we learned several things: driving 65 mph on the interstate really uses up the battery, driving in cold weather really uses up the battery, and it’s important to keep a heavy-duty extension cord in the trunk just in case you do use up the battery.

With all of this knowledge and experience, now we want to take a long-range trip with our LEAF. I am a teacher and my wife is a school nurse and we have the last two weeks off in March for our spring break. We were looking for something to do and we both had a few ideas, but most of them cost a lot of money, and since we are paying college tuition and trying to increase our retirement savings none of the ideas seemed feasible. Then I came up with an idea, one that wouldn’t cost a lot of money and would get us out of town for just a little while. We decided to take the LEAF and drive on the electric highway from the northern most point of Delaware to the southern most point, charging up along the way, meeting people, and increasing awareness of electric vehicle usage. Join us as we blog about our trip, and check back for updates that we make along the way.