Yesterday was an interesting but sad day. The night before we had a bad lightning storm and a tree on our road was hit, less than 200' from our house. The top portion of the tree was thrown across the road taking the power lines, cable lines, and phone lines with it. I can't really describe to you how loud, bright and sudden everything happened. When the storm abated a bit I jumped in the car to see if I could find the problem, it didn't take long.
Not a great picture from inside my wifes car. It was still raining.
I zoomed in with my phone for this pic. The wires were hanging pretty low, I didn't dare get any closer. I noticed that at least one wire had been pulled off of the pole at the end of our driveway, but was still connected to the pole up the street, just before the downed lines. That must have been quite the sound! The wire was stretched so tight!
Yesterday morning I headed to work, the power was back and everything seemed ok. When I walked into my barn where my Volt was plugged in and charging I can see red lights on the charger. Hoping I can just reset it I unplug it and plug it back in, same thing happens. I figure the charger must have been zapped, bummer! I jump in the car to leave and it comes on as normal. My parents live up the street and had mentioned they had some electrical damage, so I head up there to talk to them. I went inside for a few minutes, turning the car off. When I came back out the car was making noises like it was on (there are pumps and fans to cool things). Not something I usually here when it's off. I get in and start it up only to be presented with a number of warning lights and messages on my dash.... I had also lost 5 miles in range while I was inside for a very short time. Since it was running, and I was gonna be late for work already, I left. I hit my OnStar button and asked them to run a diagnostic while I was driving. She comes back on the line once the tests are done and is really quiet...not a good sign... and says I have 7 error codes showing up. One is an ignition circuit error that needs to be addressed right away. Others have to do with the transmission and other things. She then conferences me into my dealer who sets up an appointment right away.... uh-oh....
Later at the dealership I sit with one of their experts on the Volt. He mentions something about being in charge of sales or something for Volts in the New England area. He hooks up his laptop and runs some test. More errors popup. So they take it back to the service bay to do a "reboot" like we would a computer. Still, no change. So, I now have a rental, and they are looking into the problem. The way he talked it sounded like this sort of thing had not happened before. I called my insurance company and they are covering the cost under my comprehensive policy, but even they are in new territory they said. There's no real precedent set for electrical damage to an electric car due to a close proximity lightning strike. It seems everyone is figuring this out as they go. The rep at the dealership was already talking to me about how they will probably learn something from this to help stop it from happening to others. I usually like being on the bleeding edge, but not so much right now!
These were taken yesterday afternoon after the crew was done with the tree cleanup. Bigger tree than I thought...
Once I was home I started testing other things. So far I have found our DSL modem is toast. My garage door opener will open, but not close. Our bass box for our home theater is done. My 24-port managed gigabit network switch has some ports that aren't working anymore. The network card on my desktop isn't working, and my laptop power supply no longer works. I've also verified the Volt charger no longer works. I was quite depressed last night. I stopped looking for things that were broken, cause I kept finding them. There's more to test, then I need to get started on the home owners insurance claim. To think, I use to like lightning storms....
