Power House from Vehicle

50

Description

Offer the ability to power your house from the vehicle.

Competitive/Pricing/Notes

Imagine using photovoltaic during daytime: charging your Tesla, supplying the household with electricity. In the evening your PV system doesn’t generate power anymore. But instead of buying electric power, it would be perfect to use some kW from your recently charged car.

Mitsubishi and other companies are supporting a system like this (keywords: smart grid, bidirectional charging). This system is even more interesting regarding a car with a huge battery.

Moderator: This is well beyond a software update, as a major redesign of the charging/battery electronics is required. That doesn’t mean Tesla couldn’t implement such a feature on future vehicles!

A new wall-charger connection would also need to be designed to flow the power in both directions and protect both the house electrical system as well as the vehicles.

Status

Unknown.

(voting combined from a close duplicate that has been removed)

lightly edited by moderator
Category: CY3XS Applies to:
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     Created 7-Dec-2014
chris
2,115

7 Comments

I think this is a great idea! The Tesla Powerwall is for sure a very good product. But why would I want a separate package with around 10 kwh when I actually got a 85 kwh package already in my car.

One possible direction for electrical cars could be that the car become your electrical storage/hub. Sometimes you are out driving, sometimes you use it to power your house or cottage.

I realize there are complications that needs to be solved. But use the knowledge from the Tesla Powerwall and let the car work in the same way. Could really bring Tesla even further in front of other car vendors.

This might also relate to the possibility to let other Telsa cars charge from your car if and when needed.
link
    Created 4-Jan-2016
Pilg
386
Yes, 5 K is way too much to justify. Just get a generator! Any idea about cost with photovoltaic already installed?
link
    Created 12-May-2015
lsusnow
711
I wonder what the effect on the life of the battery pack would be if it were to be used for this purpose? Then again, my prospective is probably skewed since I already have an automatic backup generator.
link
    Created 31-Mar-2015
xrayangiodoc
165
Emergency power from the car, as well as a utility power inverter, makes a lot of sense. If the cycle life of the batteries improves significantly in the future, then we can talk about daily power storage.
link
    Created 4-Mar-2015
ElectricBlue
0
Tesla already sells a battery pack based on the packs used in their cars as a standalone house battery for the purpose of whole-house backup power, through their sister company Solar City. So certainly it is technically feasible.

Musk has said that it is best used as a backup power source, not as a source of power every day. He said something like people would have to be crazy to charge and discharge the battery everyday to save on electricity since the value lost in early degradation of the expensive battery would be much greater than the cost of the electricity saved. Plus, you'd have to oversize your PV system, which is quite expensive.

So, the above suggestion as backup power for the house during power failures is a good idea and feasible, but probably not for daily use.
link
    Created 10-Jan-2015
JVU
313
There are lots of problems and details to be worked out but this could be a major element in the effort to move away from fossil fuels by enabling the storage of intermittent PV and wind energy for later use on cloudy or calm days.
link
    Created 6-Jan-2015
BillArnett
52
If you want to go off grid using PV just invest in the batteries that are designed for this.  It would add lots of cost to the car and for those folks who haven't invested in PV power (I have and love it) I'm confident that they don't want to pay for that function.

 

Furthermore, you'd still have to install a breaker box and switch to make sure you're not sending power back into the electrical lines.  I have a stand alone generator (gas powered) that I can do what you are asking and it's a lot cheaper than having my car, which I'd want to have power to drive in the morning, be my off grid power supply.
link
    Created 6-Jan-2015
LOV2KRZ
764