Vehicle to Home (Ford Figured it Out)

[bkarrer]

Actually, I would use my BEV as the LAST source of energy to power my home. If the power stays off and the vehicle power gets too low, then I may not be able to reach a source to re-charge the vehicle. Solution, solar panels, battery back-up and then generator. Solar array needs to be large enough to overpower home needs on a standard day. Battery back-up needs to be strong enough to see you through the night and then the generator to fil the "holes".

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[DarinCT]

I'm sure the people of Texas would have liked there Tesla to power part of there home in the emergency this spring! This is a no brainer!!

That's after the fact thinking. If you want power to your home in an emergency, like I said, get a generator or Powerwall. Of all the features a vehicle could have, the one that they tout is bi-directional power???

Most mileage? Most towing capacity? Best FSD/autopilot? Nope. A feature you will likely never use in the entirety of owning the vehicle; and if you had to use it, there are easier, cheaper, and safer alternatives.

The no brainer is keep your vehicle charged in an emergency.

 

[mje]

So, I live in South Africa (240Volt AC). I currently have a Victron Multiplus II (48/5000/70), 10KWH of LiFePO4 (want 40KWH) and some Solar Panels. When Eskom "load sheds" (due to lack of available power), my lights stay on (only the Electric Water heater [geyser] and stove no longer work).
I'd love my Cybertruck to integrate in to my power system both being able to send and receive power to/from my house. I like this feature in the F150 lightning. I hope that the primary home charging cable for the CT is made to work in both directions! I have no desire to buy a Tesla Powerwall - my (self installed) batteries are cheaper.

 

[speach]

In a power outage, a few kws now and then make life so much nicer. That's all I need from a vehicle.
I put a reservation down on a lightning. Refundable 100 bucks it a nice hedge against the CT not meeting my expectations.

Agreed. I nabbed a reservation as well. My wife is getting increasingly noisy about the CT aesthetics. And it's for a valid reason - she says they scream "Look at me" and she'd prefer to be in something more low-key. Hard to get more low-key than an F150 in South Alabama.

fo about CT. If I can not test drive lightening and they can not guarantee a delivery time that is reasonable (and much better than CT), I won't make any real commitment to buy. I will just cancel the order. The registration for me was just a knee-jerk reaction because I missed the boat with CT and ended up at the end of the line so I didn't want to make the same mistake. And also being in the dark with CT, I figured a backup plan even for a few months is not a bad thing. Although I hate buying and selling cars and probably won't do this but F150s of any kinds are like gold, you can sell them and get a CT later. That is always an option. In my case I am fairly sure I won't have a chance of getting any kinda Incentives with CT (700,000 in line) but de

I had the same thoughts. I believe with an early reservation for either, selling it won't be an issue. My concern about the F150 is the cost. My CT is dual motor with FSD and I think my price was $57k (early reservation). I imagine the only F150 I'd consider would be the Lariat or the Platinum. My guess those will be ~$70k and $90k, respectively. And that's a lot more than $57k. Also, your typical dealers love their options, where they just rack up the price so much. It wouldn't surprise me if even a Lariat cost closer to $100k when you consider getting the home charger, etc.

I don't understand the attraction of V2G/V2H/VGI.

Very rarely do markets allow rate surfing (charging for cheap at night and selling back during peak). More markets are nerfing net metering and even penalizing solar/power generation.

If the issue is a cool feature, then I get some people are just like that.

If it's for emergencies, then the car is for leaving not charging the house. A dead car and a warm house is a trap. Also, there's this thing called a generator, it generates. Powerwalls (or any of the many battery solutions) are designed for the slow charge, slow consumption. Second hand battery repurposing is supposedly slated for this market. Why put the wear on your car, why not put it on a product designed for such issues??

If you have a well-optioned version and the 80A charger already (which if I went this route, I'd likely have), I see this as an awesome feature for the once every couple of years phenomenon of a near-direct hit during a hurricane. Generally, power does go out around here during a near direct hit, but only for a few hours or maybe even a day or so. And you are home because everything is closed (including gas stations). This would work. That said, it is clearly far inferior to a wall pack. But for YEARS I'd log in to Tesla to see if I could get their batter solar system and they'd continue to say "unavailable for your area." I gave up checking anymore.

I don't believe anything Ford is saying. Battery, range, towing.. They have a prorotype, years behind Cybertruck, and used Biden to obtain credibility. Not for me

Interesting - I had the opposite reaction. To my family and friends, I may be a Tesla fanboy, but I have little confidence that my CT order that I place over a year ago will be filled before Ford fills the one I placed this weekend.

 

[Cybergirl]

V2H is a nice feature, but Ford is overselling and misleading the public on this. The true cost of achieving seamless V2H has been conveniently left out of the conversation. Personally, I need a back up system which is fully automatic, services specific circuits, works when I'm away from home, and doesn't require that my EV be parked in the garage to keep my freezer cold.

 

[firsttruck]

That's after the fact thinking. If you want power to your home in an emergency, like I said, get a generator or Powerwall. Of all the features a vehicle could have, the one that they tout is bi-directional power???

Most mileage? Most towing capacity? Best FSD/autopilot? Nope. A feature you will likely never use in the entirety of owning the vehicle; and if you had to use it, there are easier, cheaper, and safer alternatives.

Exactly. Ford touts home backup power, frunk, and paint colors because they can not compete with Cybertruck on truck features - price, range, payload, towing, vault, adjustable height air suspension, air compressor.

 

[firsttruck]

So, I live in South Africa (240Volt AC). I currently have a Victron Multiplus II (48/5000/70), 10KWH of LiFePO4 (want 40KWH) and some Solar Panels. When Eskom "load sheds" (due to lack of available power), my lights stay on (only the Electric Water heater [geyser] and stove no longer work).
I'd love my Cybertruck to integrate in to my power system both being able to send and receive power to/from my house. I like this feature in the F150 lightning. I hope that the primary home charging cable for the CT is made to work in both directions! I have no desire to buy a Tesla Powerwall - my (self installed) batteries are cheaper.

With the base $40K Cybertruck you get a standard 220/240V outlet you can use for almost anything you can do with a gasoline generator.

The Ford Lightning $40K base model & XLT $52K models do not include 220/240V outlet .

 

[Crissa]

... And I have no idea what you mean by "allow the system to track the sun without motors". There is no movement...

Microinverters allow the panels to each operate at peak efficiency, instead of being locked to the potential of the lowest. No motion required.

This is very important to places that get some panels shaded by trees or are on different facets of a roof. And it can compensate for reductions in efficiency as panels age, too.

In that way, by each microinverter being at optimum, the system tracks the sun. Otherwise the solar installation would be stuck to the potential of the lowest cell.

This is an 80 A charger (and yes, it is really a DC charger - not EVSE - capable of 19.6 kW)

How do you know this? I haven't seen any details other than the wattage/amperage.

It would be easiest to use a DC connection, but a charging system would be really expensive and unnecessary to make it work. Like thousands of dollars expensive.

The no brainer is keep your vehicle charged in an emergency.

The vast majority of people live near enough that they could drive to another charger with less than half the battery. And has been pointed out, the battery in an EV is massive. Even my dinky old half-battery Zero could run a space heater for hour six hours! A Model 3 could keep a space heater on full for almost 48 hours.

No generator has that kind of run time. Mine goes for about three hours at load, maybe six at half.

... and doesn't require that my EV be parked in the garage to keep my freezer cold.

The battery needed to run your freezer is so much smaller than your EV. A single Powerwall at worst efficiency could run a freezer about four days. A Model 3 could run it twenty-five days. And the Model 3 could run and get ice. Or more power.

-Crissa

 

[ajdelange]

So we AGREE that the iq-7s don't really track the sun?

If we did we'd have to agree that the Starlink Pizza doesn't track the satellites in azimuth because it doesn't move in azimuth. To my way of thinking anything that is designed to maintain production as the sun moves through the sky is tracking it whether it moves physically or not. This may be a result of my background. You don't have to call that tracking or not. I just hope you now understand how a group of fixed arrays can collect as much energy as a single array which physically follows the sun. Given the expense of an az/el tracker and controller I even wonder how the multiple fixed array approach might compare to the az/el scheme. I'll note that Tesla's app note for off grid Powerwall installation recommends exactly this approach.

Other than that I don't know why you felt the need to re-educate me on micro inverters.

Just thought to bring you up to speed on how they determine grid presence, how curtailment works, how they are clocked etc.

 

[ajdelange]

Not with that tiny cable they showed! you may get SOME power out of it, but you're not going to be running the (electric) dryer, etc.

Sure you will. The charger is evidently capable of delivering 9.6 kW. That's 40 A at 240 V. There are probably commercial dryers that take that much but I don't think you will find anything in a residence that big. That's plenty to run a 5 ton air conditioner (with soft start) as well.

I'm guessing the V2H will only work when plugged into a gateway type box like this.

You will definitely need a gateway in order to have a code compliant installation. I would expect the gateway to be bundled with the charger as it is with the Powerwalls.

Yes, but at least it is possible with the Lightning. Just install a cut off switch & voilà!

There's a bit more to it than that. The "cutoff switch" isn't just a cutoff switch. It has to detect grid presence and do several other things too. Also this is an 80A charger and so will require a 100 A circuit. You are going to have to pay an electrician for that.

 

[ajdelange]

You can do V2H with Cybertruck too. The Cybertruck has 220/240V outlet that you can use like any gas generator.

There is a big difference between using a generator or CT or the 240 V outlets on a Ford to feed a panel and V2H. The Ford and Wall Box V2H chargers are true chargers. They have rectifiers in then which tie into your house 120/120 system, convert the AC to DC and send the DC to the vehicle battery using the DC pins on the CCS connector. A rectifier with active rather than passive (diode) switches and also serve as an inverter so these chargers are capable of drawing DC from the vehicle battery, converting to DC and putting on the house bus (or on the grid if the system is a V2G system as the Wall Box Quasar claims to be). The major difference is in how you isolate the backup system from the grid. The V2H system must monitor grid parameters and, if they be out of spec, declare the grid down and disconnect the house from the grid. This is done by a "gateway" which is a contactor and some electronics. When the grid is down the gateway disconnects it and signals the inverter to supply current to the house. When the battery runs down or if the house draws to much the inverter protects itself by shutting down. When the AC outlets on a generator or a vehicle equipped with them are used they must be routed to a transfer switch which limits where the power can go to a subset of circuits you have chosen as the most important.

 

[Crissa]

... The Ford and Wall Box V2H chargers are true chargers. They have rectifiers in then which tie into your house 120/120 system, convert the AC to DC and send the DC to the vehicle battery...

Where did you learn this? I haven't seen any description that supports this depiction.

-Crissa

 

[ajdelange]

I suspect they would just put the inverter between the main feedline and the house. Then the inverter can work as an auto disconnect and swap the power instantly while blocking power to the feed line. Then just wire up a 240v outlet in the garage for the Truck.

The inverter converts battery DC to AC but it is also a rectifier if gated differently. Thus the rectifier/inverter (bridge) is located in the charger (wall unit). One end goes to the house bus (through a conventionall panel breaker) and the other to the cable which leads to the DC pins on the CCS conector and ultimately to the truck's battery. When the utility is up mains AC is converted to DC and the battery is charged if it needs it. If the charger senses that the utility is down it isolates the premises from the grid via a contactor, gates the bridge in invert mode, and powers the premises until such time as the utility returns or the battery is depleted.

 

[Quicksilver]

Years ago I ran an Alternative Energy business. This was when most home power systems were cobbled together and the cost of inverters and solar panels was high.
At that time I lived in an area where my power came from a Rural Electric Cooperative and I worked with them on how systems would be connected to the grid if the customer wanted a grid tie system.
The first thing I learned was that any Alternative Energy system had to have an "islanding" feature that automatically disconnected the system from the grid if it went down. No islanding feature, no grid connection, no discussion or exceptions.
My Co op did not require extra liability insurance for a grid tie but the big gorilla, Alabama Power, (part of the Southern Company) did.
My power now comes from Alabama Power and while they talk a good talk about embracing Alternative Energy systems they throw up a lot of roadblocks when you want to grid tie.
They do not do net metering despite a lot of lobbying by AE companies. They own the Public Service Commission and several key politicians. They pay so little for home generated electricity that most people don't even consider that when buying a system. They also require an insurance policy supposedly to protect the customer but is just another hoop to jump through.
We have a farm in a rural area and in the last year we have only lost power a few times, the longest outage was a few days and we used generators to keep our fridges and freezers from getting too warm.
We raise our own cows and hogs so we have several freezers and fridges to store meat and dairy. You do not have to run freezers 24/7 to keep them from defrosting. If you do not open them you can run them a few hours a day to keep the contents frozen. You can also use dry ice to protect frozen goods.
We have several generators because our freezers and fridges are located in different buildings around the farm.
From reading the last seven pages I make the following observations:

(1) Ford is touting the Vehicle to Home power setup as a selling point to sweeten the deal. Nothing more, nothing less. Most people who buy the truck will never need the VtoH feature.
I'm sure Fords legion of lawyers have weighed the liability issues of using the truck to power a home and have decided that it is worth the risk. Ford gets sued every day over all manner of issues. The fine print that will come with this will be long and hard to decipher. The onus of having the system installed to safely support this feature will be on the customer, not on Ford.

(2) Not everyone who buys a Lighting will be willing or financially able to pay to install the required safety system. My guess is you will not be able to finance that cost when buying the truck.

(3) For people living in apartments the system is useless. For people living in rental houses or condos they may not be able to remove the system once it has been installed when they move. There is also the issue of Home Owners Associations. Will they give someone flack about installing these systems? Some people live to mind other people's business.

(4) Codes, power companies and installers. On a good day dealing with local electrical codes can be a nightmare (which is why I live in the boondocks). This is something a DIY guy does not want to try unless they are licensed and bonded. Dealing with power companies can be an exercise in frustration depending on where you live. Finding an installer willing to do the work and accept the liability might be a challenge too.

(5) Insurance. I have already inquired about insuring my solar power system once it is installed. It is older technology but meets all codes. It will be installed by professionals. USAA said there would be no extra cost to insure the system itself but there may be a slight increase to cover the liability aspect if I go grid tie which I may or may not do due to being a slave to Alabama Power. Anyone thinking of installing the system should make the same inquiry about the liability issues with their insurance company. Some companies specialize in weaseling when it comes to paying claims. They have more lawyers than you do.

Just my thoughts for what they are worth.

 

[ajdelange]

Thoughtful post.

The first thing I learned was that any Alternative Energy system had to have an "islanding" feature that automatically disconnected the system from the grid if it went down.

Nit but it is an "anti islanding" feature. An "island" would be formed is a cutout blew and separated my neighborhood from the grid. We tend to think of our excess solar going to the "utility". In fact it goes to your immediate neighbors - those in your "Island". If this happens here the microinverters will sense a change in voltage and phase, realize the grid is missing and shut down. Were they not to do so my island would still be energized (by my microinverters) and there would be 7.5 kV on the distribution lines.

They do not do net metering despite a lot of lobbying by AE companies. They own the Public Service Commission and several key politicians. They pay so little for home generated electricity that most people don't even consider that when buying a system.

A little confused here. If they don't meter reverse flow how do they determine how much to pay (paltry sum though it may be) for home generated electricity?


Some further comments on some of your individual observations:

(1)Technology has come a long way and while I would not say the islanding problem has been completely solved (nor will it be, IMO, until it is based on a pilot on the grid) the situation is pretty stable using the current standards which inverters (etc.) must meet. If Ford (or WallBox or Enphase or Powerwall Tesla) meets those standards as demonstrated by their equipment being "listed" then I would guess that that are, for the most part covered with respect to liability but the lawyers are out there day and night looking for ways... As for the homeowner: If it is listed and it is installed in accordance with code to the point that it passes inspection, he is, again for the most part, covered. This really shouldn't be any different from, say, a refrigerator, washing machine or heat pump WRT to the user's responsibility.

(2)The "required safety system" will be built into the equipment or bundled with it. A Powerwall is functionally the same as a V2H system. The safety system is the "gateway" - a contactor that isolates the premises from the grid when it detects that the grid is out of spec (voltage too low, frequency out of band). The gateway is a separate box and can serve several Powerwalls. I would certainly think Ford would be more than happy to finance the charger. Why wouldn't they?

I don't think the charger will be that expensive. The Wallbox Quasar is expected to sell for about $4000 (but its capacity is substantially smaller than what Ford is talking about). There will be, with the Ford charger, the additional costs of getting a 100 A circuit for it added and, in many cases, more costs still to augment service to accommodate that circuit.

Much overlooked in this discussion is that while Ford's V2H isn't very appealing, its 19.2 kW DC charging is.

(3)It is always possible to remove a system and any good installation should not only allow for that but, and this is more challenging, be done so that the system can be removed and replaced with the latest and greatest when it comes out.

(4)Even today's EVSE isn't DIY. If there is an electrical problem in your house and unpermitted, uninspected work is found your insurance company may turn up its nose at your claim. Not worth it! Besides which, if you hire a licensed electrician/installer to install, it is he who pulls the permits and deals with the inspectors and gets PTO from the utility. That alone is worth it to me (plus I will NOT pull anything bigger than AWG 6).

(5)Things vary greatly depending on location but I know I haven't seen any impact on insurance since installing a grid tied solar system here in northern Virginia other than that it adds value to the house and if you want that added value covered your insurance company will doubtless want a larger premium. Same as if you add onything else onto your house.

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