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by shagie 1246 days ago
> I would like to use my car battery as a temporary home battery in the inevitable case of a grid outage. This opens the option to bring energy home from another location. Reduce or eliminates the need for a battery in a grid-tied house.

Question is "how long?" and "how much?"

Lets take a 100 kWh battery which matches a Tesla Model S battery option and is a nice number for doing conversions from.

https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/average-household-electricit...

> The recent figures, as of 2021, show that the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer is 10,632 kilowatthours (kWh). If you divide that by 12 months, the average monthly electricity consumption is 886 kWh per month. What about in a single day? That would be 10,715 KWh divided by 365, or 29 kWh. Then the average daily electricity consumption is 29 kWh.

So, hypothetically, 100 kWh would give you 3 and almost 4 days. This can be improved by unplugging things that consume more power. The other part with this is a "once that 100 kWh is drained, you're stuck stuck."

You're going to still need something between the mains power and the circuit breaker box. I'm also going to note I don't know what rate it can discharge.

You might also want to look at a system that is a dedicated whole house battery backup ( https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/energy/best-home-batte... )

The zdnet article links to a Lowes worksheet - https://www.lowes.com/pdf/portable_generator_wattage_chart.p...

And from that, look at the "this is what we want" and the question of "generator or battery" becomes interesting.

Then consider also, you can get a 10,000 watt generator (that does a cutover in event of a power outage in 7 seconds) for about $3000 which can provide 10 kW at 40 amps.

1 comments

Anyone expecting regular 4+ day outages is already going to have a generator. What people want is for the car which is already plugged into their house to kick in when the power goes out for an hour or two.
At an hour or two, that's ballpark 3kWh of power you'd need. There are battery backup solutions in this range that are $3k to $6k (that are frankly quite interesting.

Those have the instant on design so that if the power is lost to the house you have a few seconds and its back up and running.

But why would I waste an extra $5k and floor space in my garage if _I already have an EV that should be able to do this_.
You may not be at home during the power outage. This could impact things such as aquarium support, home security, or cold food storage.

You may need additional equipment or an upgrade to existing equipment to do the power outage cut over. To do this (and not just support an outlet from the vehicle), it is necessary to remove the house from the grid for the duration - suddenly changing phases can damage equipment (e.g. when the power comes back on). Additionally, if you were still connected to the grid, it would mean that your batteries are trying to support the portion of the entire grid (which it will fail badly at).

This also depends on the equipment that you currently have. Not everyone has a battery backup Tesla power wall. If you are plugging the car into 120v or 240v outlets, that doesn't have the circuitry to support isolation of the house from the grid after a power outage and the wiring for the 120v or 240v outlet isn't heavy enough to support the current draw for the rest of the house even if it was isolated.

You may also decide that trying to do it from the car, while possible, is a bad idea. https://electrek.co/2021/02/23/tesla-voids-your-warranty-pow... and https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/tesla-ne...

> This New Vehicle Limited Warranty does not cover any vehicle damage or malfunction directly or indirectly caused by, due to or resulting from normal wear or deterioration, abuse, misuse, negligence, accident, improper maintenance, operation, storage or transport, including, but not limited to, any of the following:

> ...

> Using the vehicle as a stationary power source