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> Ford's new F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck and Volkswagen's ID.4 are examples arriving with this feature This isn't actually the case. What both manufa

> Ford's new F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck and Volkswagen's ID.4 are examples arriving with this feature This isn't actually the case. What both manufacturers have announced is extra hardware to install at home that connects to the car battery directly over DC and has a grid-tied inverter. There's nothing special in the cars themselves, the same solution can work in any car with the same charging connector. The F150 allows providing power directly from the car but not to the grid, only to use directly while camping or something like that. Actual bidirectional chargers in cars would be a much bigger deal as it would allow feeding energy back into the grid in many more situations. Without that this will be a niche solution that won't have grid scale impacts.

LightG 5y ago
Sounds like you know the area. I've been dreaming about the day we can have solar on the roof, charging and storing that energy in the car, and releasing that energy to the home via V2H when needed. I looked into this about 6 months ago and options seemed very scant due to technical limitations or manufacturer hesitation. Are you aware of anything new or actually working in this arena? Question open to all, obviously. Thanks.
- pedrocr 5y ago
  I only follow this out of curiosity and because I do have an EV and solar and am wondering when/if a battery will make sense. I have yet to see any solution to power the house from the car unfortunately. These announcements by Ford and VW are the most recent ones I've seen. One option that is out there and covers a part of the use case is a generic EV home charger that can be configured to modulate it's load based on the availability of solar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EtegQfZQRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EtegQfZQRw The same company also has some smart electric water heaters that also allow optimizing how much of the solar gets used. How each solution helps depends massively on what your situation is (e.g., on or off grid) and the specifics in your geography (e.g., year long vs 15 minute net metering). Here we have 15-minute only net metering so I have a script that runs every 15 seconds, figures out if I'm giving away power to or drawing from the power company and turns on and off loads based on that (water heater and radiant flooring). If you have a battery somewhere in the system it becomes an easier tradeoff as you just need to react to the state of charge which changes much more slowly. All this is still pretty much in flux. With LFP batteries becoming very cheap and ideal for home solutions I expect Enphase or some other company to offer a price competitive full solution soon.
  - LightG 5y ago
    Interesting, thanks. That's still a step forward from where I thought we were. We'll get there.
audunw 5y ago
The F150 and cars like Ioniq 5 and EV6 do have built-in inverters (as I understand it's just designing the OBC inverter used to charge the battery from AC so it can run both ways). It's only capable of around 1.8kW. But that's enough to facilitate what's mentioned in the article. What's lacking then is some communication protocols to enable this. Might need some additional hardware too since there's extra challenges when feeding the grid I assume (has to match the frequency and phase I guess)?
- pedrocr 5y ago
  I covered those inverters. You can get power directly from the car to run appliances but to connect it to the grid they just bypass that entirely and have you install an offboard inverter in the house. Ford points out that, as part of the company’s forthcoming Intelligent Backup Power system, the feature is enough to power a home for up to three days in a power outage. Taking full advantage of that will require an 80-amp Ford Charge Station Pro, a home energy management system, and an inverter, which Ford plans to bundle together. But to output that power for EVs, appliances, or camping, you only need Pro Power Onboard. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1134516_ev-to-ev-charging-f-150-lightning-and-ioniq-5-both-do-it-and-here-s-how https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1134516_ev-to-ev-chargi... It would be nice if they allowed their onboard inverters to do vehicle to grid. Even if their power is not enough to power a whole house it's more than enough for grid services and for emergency use at home. But so far no one has done that.

LightG 5y ago

Sounds like you know the area. I've been dreaming about the day we can have solar on the roof, charging and storing that energy in the car, and releasing that energy to the home via V2H when needed. I looked into this about 6 months ago and options seemed very scant due to technical limitations or manufacturer hesitation. Are you aware of anything new or actually working in this arena? Question open to all, obviously. Thanks.

pedrocr 5y ago
I only follow this out of curiosity and because I do have an EV and solar and am wondering when/if a battery will make sense. I have yet to see any solution to power the house from the car unfortunately. These announcements by Ford and VW are the most recent ones I've seen. One option that is out there and covers a part of the use case is a generic EV home charger that can be configured to modulate it's load based on the availability of solar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EtegQfZQRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EtegQfZQRw The same company also has some smart electric water heaters that also allow optimizing how much of the solar gets used. How each solution helps depends massively on what your situation is (e.g., on or off grid) and the specifics in your geography (e.g., year long vs 15 minute net metering). Here we have 15-minute only net metering so I have a script that runs every 15 seconds, figures out if I'm giving away power to or drawing from the power company and turns on and off loads based on that (water heater and radiant flooring). If you have a battery somewhere in the system it becomes an easier tradeoff as you just need to react to the state of charge which changes much more slowly. All this is still pretty much in flux. With LFP batteries becoming very cheap and ideal for home solutions I expect Enphase or some other company to offer a price competitive full solution soon.
- LightG 5y ago
  Interesting, thanks. That's still a step forward from where I thought we were. We'll get there.

audunw 5y ago

The F150 and cars like Ioniq 5 and EV6 do have built-in inverters (as I understand it's just designing the OBC inverter used to charge the battery from AC so it can run both ways). It's only capable of around 1.8kW. But that's enough to facilitate what's mentioned in the article. What's lacking then is some communication protocols to enable this. Might need some additional hardware too since there's extra challenges when feeding the grid I assume (has to match the frequency and phase I guess)?

pedrocr 5y ago
I covered those inverters. You can get power directly from the car to run appliances but to connect it to the grid they just bypass that entirely and have you install an offboard inverter in the house. Ford points out that, as part of the company’s forthcoming Intelligent Backup Power system, the feature is enough to power a home for up to three days in a power outage. Taking full advantage of that will require an 80-amp Ford Charge Station Pro, a home energy management system, and an inverter, which Ford plans to bundle together. But to output that power for EVs, appliances, or camping, you only need Pro Power Onboard. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1134516_ev-to-ev-charging-f-150-lightning-and-ioniq-5-both-do-it-and-here-s-how https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1134516_ev-to-ev-chargi... It would be nice if they allowed their onboard inverters to do vehicle to grid. Even if their power is not enough to power a whole house it's more than enough for grid services and for emergency use at home. But so far no one has done that.