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[Electric Cowboy]

If you could use your bike to power your house, like the leaf in this video, would you guys find that useful?

[Crissa]

Sure, but it wouldn't power it for long ^-^;

-Crissa

[ultrarnr]

Honestly, not at all. I don't get the vehicle to grid thing. You end up with a dead battery in your car or bike and then still have no power to your house.

[Crissa]

Well, with a quick charging vehicle you just nick out to recharge it.  You should have it set to stop feeding back into the house at some minimum range.

The thing is, most power outages are less than two hours.  But say you need to keep the internet on, or AC or heat or take a hot shower for work.  If that two hours is at the wrong time...

And longer power outages happen, especially if the damage is close to your house.  I've been out a week before when it was only my street.  That power can be used to turn your fridge on for a few hours a day or power the heater to your tropical fish or... well, lots of things only need a little power once in awhile or only when they're open (like the fridge).  Having a quiet backup power source is awesome.

I don't use my car most of the day.  I wouldn't mind being paid by the utility to use some of that battery pack that's just sitting there.

-Crissa

[wavelet]

V2G requires some pretty complex infrastructure on the side of utility companies, and only really worth it when a significant % of vehicles are BEVs  (Project Better Place intended to do this way back, so I got to see their presentations on it and the feedback from our national utility.)

Powering only the local household is far simpler, but still requires a transfer switch; not sure how complex it is to get authorization for it in most of the US (not possible at all here).
You'd also basically need to manually go over the entire house, turning off the consumers you don't want on, and some of the things you do want on, such as fridges, might be problematic due to high initial current draw. Alternatively, you'd need to separate out circuits for important devices, like companies do for stuff that needs to be fed by UPS or generator.

[ultrarnr]

I live in NC so I know about multiday power outages especially those due to hurricanes. You don't know the extent of the power outages so you have no idea if an EV charger near you has power or not. Power company estimates on how long the outage may last are not always correct and in some cases it takes a few days just for them to assess the damage in order to make an accurate assessment. Sometimes storms can also take out the cell network so that leaves you with no information on the extent of the outage. There may be certain scenarios where vehicle to grid may work but I don't see it as an complete alternative to a gas generator.

[Crissa]

By 'significant' would be the same inverter that a solar install has and the same online meter box they already installed.

And an EV charger that knows how to do it, but that's part of the expense of having an ev with a special charger.

So not all that much, really.  About $1000 of gear and a couple hours of an electrician's time.  Once this stuff is standardized.

-Crissa

PS the fire weather outages last year took out cell service.   But since the storms were known ahead of time things like my friend's powerwalls went into 'stormwatch' mode and stayed at a higher rate of charge.  His only feed into his house, and lots of people with solar to grid setups found they weren't set up to talk to the powerall and recharge it while the grid was off.  More an oversight of two systems trying not to backflow onto the grid while the grid was off than anything else.

Breaking things out by circuit is easy:  Building code dictates that major appliances are to have their own circuit.  And you can just have a limited panel powered (that's what most of my neighbors do).  Manual transfer switches cost about a hundred bucks for enough to run two circuits.

[Fran K]

Sure it would be useful particularly if one already has an ice back up system.  For most outages it would be silent and for long ones when the propane, natural gas, or diesel back up would make noise it could most likely be silent again.

I read the F150 pure electric in the planning stage has advertised power for corded tools on a job site.  Likely similar for the Cyber truck.

If the motorcycle or passenger vehicle had  a cigarette lighter socket that could accomidate something like an inverter capable of 10 amp 120 volt  that would be enough for a refrigerator.

[DonTom]

If you could use your bike to power your house, like the leaf in this video, would you guys find that useful?

Perhaps a high power HV input inverter will be handy in an E-RV so there is no need for an ICE  generator. No need for it to be portable, just built into the E-RV.

But first, somebody has to design a decent E-RV with a 500 mile range with a way to fast charge while on the road.

Elon,  . . .

-Don-  Auburn, CA

[wavelet]

By 'significant' would be the same inverter that a solar install has and the same online meter box they already installed.

And an EV charger that knows how to do it, but that's part of the expense of having an ev with a special charger.

So not all that much, really.  About $1000 of gear and a couple hours of an electrician's time.  Once this stuff is standardized.

-Crissa

PS the fire weather outages last year took out cell service.   But since the storms were known ahead of time things like my friend's powerwalls went into 'stormwatch' mode and stayed at a higher rate of charge.  His only feed into his house, and lots of people with solar to grid setups found they weren't set up to talk to the powerall and recharge it while the grid was off.  More an oversight of two systems trying not to backflow onto the grid while the grid was off than anything else.

Breaking things out by circuit is easy:  Building code dictates that major appliances are to have their own circuit.  And you can just have a limited panel powered (that's what most of my neighbors do).  Manual transfer switches cost about a hundred bucks for enough to run two circuits.

So sounds like the permitting part isn't an issue. Wish it was that way here )-:  The only possible residential solar installs are permanent grid-tied, so no transfer switch.
The "complex" part I was thinking of for V2G was more that the utility  would need to know how much storage it had available and where in the network, in addition to the metering aspects -- it would need to have direct control over how much each vehicle's batteries would be charged or discharged supplying the network (presumably after given min/max values by the EV owner, the permission for this being given in exchange for lower rates).

[Electric Cowboy]

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I'll give you some more info to help clarify as well.

1) E-RV, I have wanted to build one for a long time. If I knew someone that wanted and could afford the parts, I would build it.

2) Usage duration on the 13.4kwh packs (the current ones) We could run our shop for just over 2 days. For a rather inefficient home, running the AC with the windows open and such, you might reduce that to one full day.

3) Usage on the 21.5kwh packs we could run our shop for about 3 and 1/2 days. For the filthy home described above, you would be looking at around 2 days at this point.

4) v2g yes, the grid needs more work to really be able to do that. This is why we are focused on V2LG (Vehicle to Local Grid). It will allow grid-tie solar backup and such to keep working as well. In the video I showed for example, I throw the big knife switch, that is our local grid/off-grid switch, it controls our shop, 2 rental properties, a barn and the RV shed. All of these gain power from the car in that vid. The ranch is set up really efficiently so its very low power draw while still living just like normal though.

This would be super useful for hotels, rural B&Bs, apartment complexs, businesses, shops like ours, construction sites, fema emergencies, factories, parking lots etc.

--------------

I think I answered most of the questions / points

[Crissa]

Permits vary by municipality.  I don't need a permit to do most (all, varies) of the work where my house is.

Most you're just changing the circuits into a sub-panel.  That's pretty quick work for any electrician and the permit should be pretty straightforward if any.  Power off, pull the cables out of one box, into the sub-panel, then wire the supply back into the main panel, bam, done.  Inspection can be done any time later, as it's not even any hidden runs. Usually.

-Crissa

[togo]

Good for people setting up on cheap property someplace, homesteading or tinyhouses or something.

[togo]

I'm thinking of setting up an RV with solar near Tehachapi/Mojave with the 14SR pack.

[Electric Cowboy]

Tony...

I might just know a guy like that. From what I hear I know the guy that got the first 21.5 bike too. I bet that would work great...