LEAF-to-Home Availability

[reeler]

Nissan has demoed this technology for a couple years now. There are units available at least on a test basis. Having back-up power for a home while your car is plugged in is a game changer where the power grid is flaky.

When will we see commercial availability of Nissan's LEAF To Home product?

 

[UBUYGAS]

What is the Nissan LEAF to Home product?, I've never heard of it.

 

[Randy]

Rather than spend all the money for the LEAF to home base station, with the associated required protection equipment (your home will need to separate from the grid during an outage so just the house is fed by the car), why not just buy a large 12v DC to 120v AC inverter and connect that to your LEAF's 12v battery so you can power some emergency stuff around the house when there is an extended outage?

It would be a lot cheaper...

 

[KillaWhat]

Check out this older thread

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=13097" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[reeler]

What is the Nissan LEAF to Home product?, I've never heard of it.

Leaf-To-Home is a product that Nissan has developed to both charge your car or use the battery to power the house. It is sold in Japan already for quite some time.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1079955_nissan-leaf-to-home-power-station-will-it-make-it-to-u-s

I think you would have yet another reason to buy a EV if this technology were widely deployed. A UPS for the entire home would be great.

 

[LeftieBiker]

Anyone know what the output is in wattage for the LTH?

 

[reeler]

Anyone know what the output is in wattage for the LTH?

It hooks to the Level 3 port and does 6 KWh in or out.

 

[LeftieBiker]

The equivalent of a 6000 watt generator is nothing to sneeze at. The price, however, is kind of daunting.

 

[johnrhansen]

What would really make it useful is to integrate it with a gas generator so that the generator doesn't need to run all the time, but when it does, it does so at full power. Otherwise you might not last through one of the longer power outages.

 

[reeler]

What would really make it useful is to integrate it with a gas generator so that the generator doesn't need to run all the time, but when it does, it does so at full power. Otherwise you might not last through one of the longer power outages.

That would be cool too. I care about short outages more than long ones, but integration with the generator would be very cool.

 

[LeftieBiker]

What would really make it useful is to integrate it with a gas generator so that the generator doesn't need to run all the time, but when it does, it does so at full power. Otherwise you might not last through one of the longer power outages.

Most generators are much less efficient at full power. The 'sweet spot' is usually at about half throttle. So a better setup might be to have the LTH come on when the gen's load exceeds 50% of capacity. Or vice versa.

 

[Graffi]

We have a fairly large PV system but we can not use any of it in a power outage. Some time back (one or two years - I can not remember) we had an outage of several days. I questioned why we could not use the system, at lease during the day, and was told we needed a battery back-up system to do that. The recommendation was to just get a gas generator because of how infrequent the outages would be and the generator would be much cheaper.

Now that we have a battery back-up system (the Leaf) does anyone know what we would need to let the PV system put AC on the line and use the AC for home use plus Leaf charging during the day, then use Leaf energy when the PV is not producing? I hate to see all those PV electrons unused when the grid power is out.

 

[davewill]

... Now that we have a battery back-up system (the Leaf) does anyone know what we would need to let the PV system put AC on the line and use the AC for home use plus Leaf charging during the day, then use Leaf energy when the PV is not producing? I hate to see all those PV electrons unused when the grid power is out.

You would need a custom built charger/inverter setup that would dynamically charge or draw from the car's battery depending on consumption, solar production, and battery charge state. It could probably be designed to plug into the CHAdeMO port. It would be very cool, and might even become reasonably affordable some day, but for now, the generator idea is much more economical.