Off grid solar panel system

[MolaMola]

I thought all electric cars had that bidirectional flow,no? A friend in Puerto Rico used their Nissan Leafs to keep their internet, etc. up during a hurricane blackout a few years ago.

Bummer about the tax breaks....

Yeah, I'm curious about that. Apparently, our car ('05 Tesla) has the capability but it is not activated somehow.

 

[richiev]

Bidirectional charging and its variants are one of those "it'll be available in 3 months; said every 3 months for the past 3 years" techs. I was super stoked for it, but just never seems to be materializing. Power companies don't seem to care about anything but electric from wires that they can charge you for. Regulators just care about whatever the power company says. Car companies don't care because it's not a standout feature, and if it was they'd want to only enable it in next years model so they can get people to upgrade.

Quite a frustrating situation for such an obviously great idea.

The gamut:

• Bidirectional charging: one plug into your EV that charges it or can act in the opposite way sending power back. Requires a car with the bidirectional circuitry, a bidirectional compatible charger, and the electrical setup. Very little capabilities between proof-of-concept units in the US
• Vehicle to Grid (V2G): the thing everyone really wants, your battery works like a Powerwall, and can run your house or send power back to the grid to allow you to offset usage. Assumption is a bidirectional charger.
• Vehicle to Home (V2H): like V2G, but with it setup to never feed to the external power grid. Implies a generator style setup with an Auto Transfer Switch (ATS) that as soon as your power goes out, it disconnects your house from the wider grid and lets things run locally.
• Vehicle to Load (V2L): this is much more common, and generally means the car has a way to plug an AC cord(s) into it and can act as a giant backup battery. This is what I use the EV for when I travel. I get everything setup so if the power goes out, all that's required is move an extension cord from a garage outlet to my EV and I have a couple days of power.

Big gotchas with these setups:

1. most solar installs will not work these, meaning when your power goes out, unless you have a battery on the house you're unlikely to be able to continue to produce power. This I found crazy when I first learned it, but it's true. You can have a bazillion panels, the power goes out, and your panels do nothing for you. V2H or V2G have the potential to allow it to continue to work by tricking the solar panels to keep working, but depends on the wiring and if you have an ac coupled system or not.
2. most EVs have huge batteries, but their power output tends to have low max wattages. What you really don't want to have happen is trip the max wattage level since then it'll likely stop powering anything until you manually reset it. This burned me. I had a setup of EV -> 2 EcoFlows and the EcoFlows when they kicked on to max charge they overshot the EV limit.
3. if your EV isn't home or not plugged in, none of this helps. Obvious, but easy to forget when idealistically thinking about these. I realized from doing the V2L setups repeatedly that it's unlikely I'm going to really have my vehicle at home all setup when the power goes out, and will still have to scramble.
4. most EVs have a minimum charge at which point they stop allowing this to happen. My EV6 it's I think 15%, which I also didn't know until getting burned by that.
5. I don't claim to be an expert, but was super excited about this, researched a ton, bought vehicles that I thought would eventually be compatible, and then after all the delays have kinda given up on it.

If however some day this all does come together, it seems like an amazing option as a backup. My EVs batteries are equivalent to 6+ powerwalls; that's huge.

 

[PjFish]

My brother runs his house during power outages with his Ford Lightning. Has 9.6kw 240v outlet under the hood which plugs into his houses transfer switch or has regular outlets for extension cords. Good for several days if his trucks fully charged.

 

[Darkxerox]

The upcoming Neue Klasse i3 and iX3 will have it as well.

 

[SupraSaltyReefer]

Made a platform for the panels on Friday so I could mount and secure the panels down. Hopefully they don’t get stolen or vandalized since it’s in the front yard. My 160g and 40g in the garage has been running since Friday exclusively on solar!
Suck it PG&E!!!!