[Brydo]

V2L, there are a number of cars on the market with this facility. Obviously it allows the car to use the battery to provide electricity to another object such as a kettle, tv etc. However, what would need to be done to allow it to constantly supply electricity to your house?

The only person who got all his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.
Anything i post over three lines long please assume it is an article lol.

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[kezo]

V2L is able to provide around 3.5kW of a 13A plug, which isn’t enough to power a whole house. To do this in any meaningful wa you would need “Vehicle to Home” capable car and a bi-directional charger, which are not widely available yet.

Now thats out of the way lets look at what you can achieve, which is not alot but, say you wanted to power a few lights, fridge, TV and a microwave say.

1- An automatic changeover switch, instananeously disconnect from the car once the power comes back on.

The issue with this is (a) the potential of 13A supply the whole house, requiring you to use judgement on what appliances can stay on (b) A 13A plug hanging outside. (c) the plug not plugged in at the time the changeover happened.

2- The other way would require a small consumer unit wired to an circuit of backup lights and a a double socket. In the event of a power cut you plug manually into the car to power this circuit –

or an extension lead to power a couple of lamps and appliances. (most appropiate)

 

 

 

[Brydo]

The only person who got all his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.
Anything i post over three lines long please assume it is an article lol.

[kezo]

“Could” is the optimal word!

Doing it this way would be technically difficult because V”L is essentially what you could call a protected supply, which would likely interfere with AC RCD’s.

To do this safely you would need a double pole AC transfer switch connected to a backup power supply (V2L) a circuit breaker on the AC side and a suitable RCD for circuit protection.

The prefered way would be to install an isolated battery charger. A separate battery charger directly charges the “off grid” battery system, which importantly would be completely isolated from the AC supply and circuit, therefore would be no earthing or other  complications or risks on the AC side. The problem is most inverter used today have integrated chargers, so the need to go out and buy a seperate battery charger wouldn’t be cheap.

The downside of this way is, it will only work with self managed storage batteries, if the storage battery is managed requiring a CANbus to communicate, something tells me it wont work off top of my head.

The other things to take into account are:

The inverter is set up correctly not to draw more than the output of the EV

V2L main goal is to power AC apliances in short bursts every now and again whils’t your out and therefore not designed for continual draw of power for hours on end. To avoild stressing and/or overating the cars inverter, it is better to be safe, limiting the cars maximum V2L rating to around 80%.

I would wait a little longer till V2H becomes available. Bi derectional chargers are starting to appear on the market such as Wallbox Quasar 2 but, its still a niche market today.

[Brydo]

Thanks for that kezo although it could be another language lol.

It does, on the face of it, look like it should be straightforward as the electricity coming from the car is AC and it’s AC we use.

The only person who got all his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.
Anything i post over three lines long please assume it is an article lol.

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