Driving on Sunshine 2020 Highlights the EV/PV Connection

Starting September 26th through October 4th, Cool Davis combined National Solar Tour and National Drive Electric Week events into our own local extravaganza — Driving on Sunshine! The combination and connection to these events allowed us to feature our local activities on national platforms in a new way: live on Zoom and through home tour videos. Our Davis event was hands down the most comprehensive local entry for the National Solar Tour, which featured webinars and home tour videos from across the country. Cool Davis workshops were a nice addition to National Drive Electric Week activities, which featured a robust collection of presentations on almost any electric vehicle topic you might imagine.

Cool Davis, along with its much-appreciated partners, hosted 2 webinars Household Battery Backup and Breathe Free with EVs and produced 14 home tour videos, featuring EV/PV (Electric Vehicle/Photovoltaic) and Battery Backup System stories from homeowners. EVs featured in the videos included: Chevy Bolt, Chevy Volt, Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, Honda Clarity Hybrid, Nissan Leaf, RAD Power Bike, Tesla Model 3, and Tesla S.

Zoom capture of presenters and panelists for Battery Backup Systems webinar held as part of the 2020 Driving on Sunshine Week series of events.

Annual event getting stronger every year

National Drive Electric Week is an annual event for Cool Davis that we conduct year after year with our local Davis Electric Vehicle Association (DEVA) and Sac EV. For the last several years (2017-2019), we have shut down regular traffic near the Davis Farmers Market and filled the streets with an EV owner Show & Tell and electric vehicle retail dealer Ride & Drive event. This year, due to COVID, our staff and intrepid DEVA volunteers instead crafted an online event encompassing an EV 101 presentation, webinar, and panel presentation, followed by individual meetings on specific EV types. While not all the technology worked quite as expected, DEVA and Cool Davis provided a lot of valuable information in a short time frame. We are hoping to build on this for future online EV education.

Overall registration for the webinars was 116 people, 66 registrants for the Battery Backup Systems webinar and 50 for the Breathe Free with EVs (electric vehicles) webinar. The beauty of the Zoom experience is that even if you can’t attend you can go back and watch later. Already our webinars have an additional 67 views since we posted them.

Cool Davis Executive Director Chris Granger was grateful for all the support from partners, sponsors, volunteers and Cool Davis staff for all the hours dedicated to make this event happen. “With tools like iPhones and Zoom, this online work can appear easy, but much of the logistics for these events required the same or even more total planning time to provide effective educational content in these new online formats. We are especially grateful to Mr. Alex Silva of Davis Media Access! We couldn’t have pulled this off with out him! Volunteering his extremely generous videographic expertise and editing was above and beyond.”

Home Tour Videos

Many community members shared their solar stories and many emphasized the connection between the solar panel system on their roof and the electric vehicle in their driveway or garage. Watch all the homeowner video tours on this playlist on our new YouTube channel LiveCoolDavis! Don’t forget to Like, Subscribe, and Comment!

Webinars

If you missed our webinars the first time around, you can access the Household Battery Backup and Breathe Free with EVs webinar recordings on our YouTube channel LiveCoolDavis! Please check it out.