There is a new power source on the Paddock: Electric cars
At Kwiburn 2024 DECAdance we had not one, but two camps entirely powered by their electric vehicles (EVs).
The concept is simple. You charge an EV from your home powerpoint and with certain EVs you can use your vehicle as a powerpoint to run a fridge, lights a sound system, the whole lot. We love this for a couple of reasons. First off, it was a genuine proactive initiative where two camps independently decided to do this all on their own. And it ties in with the idea of moving to a more sustainable, enjoyable Paddock with zero local emissions and without noisy diesel generators.
And who are those two camps? Yum Town and Electric Avenue. If you want to learn more, just hit them up on Facebook. We’d love to see more camps trying this out because the alignment with our principles is really strong and honestly, it’s just funky.
A notable mention also goes to ‘Dez’ who managed to power his personal camping space with a couple of solar panels affording him a perma fridge, lighting and sounds!
Here’s a write up on how Yum Town ran their camp from their EV, from camp member PJ Jayathissa:
‘Basically, the car has a “vehicle to load” (VTL). It’s just an adapter that plugs into the charging socket, and on the other end is a multi box with two normal 3-pin sockets. Like what you have at home.
I then ran one extension cord to our Theme Camp kitchen, and another extension cord to YumTown. We used the electricity without thinking and only used 40% of the batteries.
Before the event, I charged the car at the Marton rapid charger to 80% charge. Then we had an Airbnb in Marton where I trickle charged it to 100%. I arrived on the Paddock with a 94% charged car. It was sooooo easy and seamless.
I was comfortable draining the car to 30% charge as that is what I need to easily get to Taihape. If I went below 15% then I would have to drive to Marton (which is the wrong direction as I live in Auckland).
At the end of the burn, I had 55% so I could drive all the way to Waiouru. There I boosted the car to 94% on their mammoth 200kW chargers. Which then got me nearly the whole way home. We did one other quick 10 min stop.
Current generation cars output about 3kW. But there are 2024 models that are expecting 10kW which is getting pretty sizable. That’s about 4 houses’ average use.’
How cool is that? We’d love to see more camps doing this!
Image Credit: Tim Warren
