ePlaya

Greetings Fellow Burners, I will be returning to BM this year and attempting to drive my electric car to the event. I plan to bring a solar trickle charger for the week but was wondering if any camps with larger power systems will allow for me to plug in when I arrive and before leaving if it's needed? Am happy to make a donation and volunteer my time if needed. Thanks!

Anything short of a Supercharger will leave you wanting in the charging department. The amperage a solar trickle charger will produce is microscopic compared to the 240 volts and 50+ amps a dedicated hard-wired charger would have. Plugging into a camps' fossil fuel driven generator 110 volt outlet will produce a charging time of hours to get to the charge level you need, and is counter productive in energy savings.

I saw several stranded EV's in the Exodus lanes in the past-especially the year of the big rains.

Perhaps you EV owners could convince Elon to install a 16 bay Supercharger with dedicated generator power to support your need for electrons. [That wouldn't work because the fees assessed automatically by the Supercharger network would probably violate the commodification clause of the Org.]

ETA: I'm a former Tesla owner and the drive 2.5 hours-charge one hour during extended road trips turned me off. My Model Y Performance was a money hog, going through expensive tires in less than 12,000 miles, and my state has a surcharge on EV license plates to compensate for lost gasoline taxes. I ditched it and bought a 50-MPG+ hybrid to eliminate range anxiety, gas stations are everywhere for now.

It is too early to know.

Now would be a good time to measure accurately the Volts, max Amps, and Watt hours you need because any discussion about the gift of charging will START with that.

Last year some camps with a lot of solar and battery resources were Camp Bao Chicka Wow Wow, and the Solarpunks/Mayan Warrior Camp.

You could also look through last year's camp listings and What, Where, When for charging. They are stored under innovation open data.

Reach out to Renewables For Artists/BWB. They are the hub for solar electricity on playa. Go through the last few Youtube sustainability roadmap yearly updates. There is a RAT regular Zoom, and there is a lot on the sustainability part of burningman.org.

(some of burningman.org broke after the redesign, the Wayback Machine may help.)

The Camp Bao Chicka Wow Wow system is open source, and fits in part of a trailer, so you could build your own, then use it at home as a ground mounted patio cover.

Thanks for the guidance on this. Much appreciated