Vehicle to Home (Ford Figured it Out)

[Crissa]

With my Zero, I can go to the store and back on the power of that one 100W light bulb shining for the same amount of time as my errand (I have no idea how, but the grocery store always seems to suck up an hour...)

-Crissa

Sponsored

 

[HaulingAss]

Okay, but your house uses the average house's daily power use for a shower, so hence, no, Ford is not lying that their truck can supply most houses for three days.

Averages, how do they work?

-Crissa

I disagree that, in practice, buyers of the Ford Lighting will not find it works how Ford claims for two reasons that have already been revealed:

1) The truck is unlikely to be charged 100% when a power outage happens.
2) Buyers of $90K trucks have homes that consume more electricity than the truck will be able to supply for three days without having a disconnect for higher consumption circuits and making sure non-essential loads are not creating excessive vampire drain.

The bottom line is that an EV is not a good backup power source for an entire house of the type typically owned by the buyers of such an expensive truck. Yes, it could be useful, no, it's not going to replace grid power for three days in a winter storm. People are unhappy when their expectations are not met.

 

[Crissa]

I disagree that, in practice, buyers of the Ford Lighting will not find it works how Ford claims for two reasons that have already been revealed:

1) The truck is unlikely to be charged 100% when a power outage happens.
2) Buyers of $90K trucks have homes that consume more electricity than the truck will be able to supply for three days without having a disconnect for higher consumption circuits and making sure non-essential loads are not creating excessive vampire drain.

I'm tired of pussyfooting around this. Again:

1) The Ford Charge Station Pro would know when to fully pre-charge the truck. Tesla already does this.
2) Rich customers are wasteful, and therefore should be accustomed to even more wastefulness? BS.

Ford said typical, and average. They are not lying.

Heck, you yourself pointed out how wasteful you are that you need 2-6x the backup power of a typical house.

That's six other houses that could be bright and warm but aren't, because of your purchase.

-Crissa

 

[HaulingAss]

I'm tired of pussyfooting around this. Again:

1) The Ford Charge Station Pro would know when to fully pre-charge the truck. Tesla already does this.
2) Rich customers are wasteful, and therefore should be accustomed to even more wastefulness? BS.

Ford said typical, and average. They are not lying.

Heck, you yourself pointed out how wasteful you are that you need 2-6x the backup power of a typical house.

That's six other houses that could be bright and warm but aren't, because of your purchase.

-Crissa

You have a misunderstanding of what wasteful is. My on-demand water heater actually uses considerably less energy than the typical electric water heater uses. Because it has lower standby losses and uses the same amount of electricity to heat the water in the first place. If you understood this you would not call my water heater wasteful, it was chosen specifically as the lowest energy consumption for the application it is in. If I were wasteful I would not have installed a $900 heat recovery drainpipe in the shower with a 12 year payback period.

Time to get off your high horse. There is nothing wasteful about it. All you have done is demonstrate a poor understanding of the difference between power and energy. A typical electric water heater needs to run six times as many hours in a day to produce the same amount of hot water. I also use showerheads made by High Sierra that have a measured flow rate at 60 psi of only 1.5 gpm. A typical low-flow showerhead (as mandated by federal law) uses 2.5 gpm which is 66% more water. On Amazon you can buy a luxury showerhead that flows 10.5 gpm simply by removing the resticter disk. Now that is wasteful!

 

[HaulingAss]

I'm tired of pussyfooting around this. Again:

1) The Ford Charge Station Pro would know when to fully pre-charge the truck. Tesla already does this.

No, Tesla does not already do this, not with an EV battery. It would be wasteful to charge an EV to 100% every time there was a storm in the forecast and that would be most of the winter around here. And charging to 100% only when there is a hurricane or really extreme weather does not catch many power outages. Are you aware than not all power outages are weather related?

This means even if Ford adopted the wasteful practice of having their EV's charge to 100% simply because a storm was in the forecast, that still wouldn't ensure it was fully charged when power was lost

2) Rich customers are wasteful, and therefore should be accustomed to even more wastefulness? BS.

This sounds like that extreme left-wing hate that "woke" people have for Elon Musk and anyone who manages to monetize their talents. I don't respect people that hate wealthy people although I am one of the first people to say that wealthy people should pay more than they do in taxes and the least economically advantaged should get more handouts than they do.

It's also true that larger houses have higher energy consumptions than smaller houses and most people, if they could easily afford it, would rather live in a 2 million dollar home than a $179,000 home. Does that mean poor people are more concerned about wasting energy than wealthy people? I don't think so. You are attributing noble qualities to poor people that most of them don't have.

Ford said typical, and average. They are not lying.

But no one said they were lying. That's not to say their customers will not be misled by Ford's rosy use case projections.

Heck, you yourself pointed out how wasteful you are that you need 2-6x the backup power of a typical house.

That's six other houses that could be bright and warm but aren't, because of your purchase.

I think you need to think about what you just said. Because it's a personal attack based on nothing. Maybe you should attack me for having a hot tub, at least it would be based on actual unnecessary energy consumed. Unless you think I should shower in 41 degree water?

Sheesh!

 

[Crissa]

tl;dr: Lots of text to admit you're wrong.

-Crissa

 

[ajdelange]

Tesla vehicles charge to whatever level you ask them to. Powerwalls are different however. When weather conditions of sufficient severity (and I don't know what defines that) are forecast in your area the mother ship will send commands to your powerwalls to charge up in anticipation of this. i don;t know the details.

 

[Red61224]

The more I think about it the more intrigued I am with these electric instant heaters. A 36 kW unit would draw 150 A which is more than I have ever used in a 4500 ft^2 house even in the dead of winter while charging the X. I like long hot showers so that load could be on for half an hour. Clearly one of these could not be installed in a house with 100 A or probably even 200A service. So I am curious as to what size service you have.

From the POV of required service capacity, wiring and backup challenges these do not seem like a very practical approach to hot water especially given the availability of the propane/LNG alternatives. But there certainly are lots of them offered so I guess they are popular.

My power provider co-op hates them, they suck up way too much power from the grid and even charge you extra when they find out you are running a tank less electric unit. Oh and the de-scaling maintenance, people forget about that.

 

[ajdelange]

My power provider co-op hates them, they suck up way too much power from the grid and even charge you extra when they find out you are running a tank less electric unit.

On average they use less energy but just as the homeowner needs to beef up everything for the high, if brief, demand imposed by these so does the utility.

Oh and the de-scaling maintenance, people forget about that.

Are you saying these work by passing electricity through the water as opposed to having heating elements? Yes, that scheme is a descaling nightmare.

All in all I have to say that an electric tankless heater seems like a bad implementation of what's basically a good idea. I'm all for the gas ones. They have to be descaled too but that's a relatively simple procedure.

 

[Crissa]

Heating elements in on-demand water heaters - all of them - are subject to more scaling because of the temperatures involved.

You also notice its effect more, since it reduces the peak temperature of the water instead of the heater just taking longer to heat its tank.

-Crissa

Sponsored