Back Up Power

I live in the US and I bought my Leaf back in 2021 when there was talk of the ability to use one to power a home when the electrical grid is down. V2H. 2 and a half years and still waiting. Fermata Energy has been approved by Nissan to be used, but have only been marketed and sold for commercial use, not home owners. Last month they sent me an email with a survey to fill out. They may be finally considering offering their product to homeowners.
One component that is crucial for homeowners is an automatic transfer switch that disconnects the home from the grid to protect utility workers from electrial shock during an outage. Fermata Energy as far as I know does not offer one. So I do not believe they will offer anything for the homeowners market any time soon.

Another company is Enphase. My local installer informed me their product will be offered late 2024. Their equipment includes an ATS.

For those of us who are looking for this option. Maybe we will see some progress soon.

A few companies have been working on V2x systems in the US over the years, expected them to be out by now, but they soon realized that it's taking longer than expected. We'll wait and see.

Another expecting to come out with one in 2025 is energy management company Emporia:
https://www.emporiaenergy.com/how-the-emporia-v2x-charger-works/

From what I have read, Emporia Energy will not offer a chademo option.

I guess Emporia might be sticking with a CCSx connection for V2x, like Wallbox:
https://wallbox.com/en_us/quasar2-dc-charger

We'll have to wait and see how Delta comes along with their CHAdeMo connection V2x:
https://www.chademo.com/products/v2g/delta-v2h

I've been tracking the market on my website. Please let me know if you hear of anything I've missed!
https://www.evsiphon.com/evses

Our home has Enphase solar and two of the latest batteries for backup.
The batteries cost was substantial and only gives us 20 hours of electricity.
When I saw that Enphase was going to have a bidirectional charger that works with the LEAF, I bought a 2021 SL Plus 62kW. Four to five days backup from the LEAF. After Fed rebate the rolling battery backup unit only cost 20k. And we now have an electric vehicle for local use.
I am waiting for the bidirectional charger to be available for installation.

I also have IQ7s with my solar panels. 3 years ago I was also on a waiting list for 2 Tesla Powerwalls, but when I heard about V2H I got my refund for the Powerwalls and have been waiting.
I have the same Leaf, 2019 model.
Here is the link for the Enphase V2H for your website https://www.emporiaenergy.com/how-the-emporia-v2x-charger-works/
My local installer says they will be available towards the end of the year. Probably next year when they say that.
I like your website.
I did follow DCBEL but they only offer to support a subpanel, not the whole house. They have their own inverters which I don't need and when I last checked they only offered in New York and Califorinia.

russellv said:

I've been tracking the market on my website. Please let me know if you hear of anything I've missed!
https://www.evsiphon.com/evses

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Thanks for the website and tracking the changes! I wish we were further along with any of the companies!

I did talk with a dcbel rep a while back, and they had mentioned that they were doing a pilot in Northern California with PG&E. I was told that it would eventually be extended to Southern California with SCE, but they were looking for people without solar installations. I'm assuming that they want to install their solar solution, and they specifically mentioned that they needed to use their inverter, not the Enphase IQ7 microinverters that are in my system.

Anyone know anything about the dcbel pilot with PG&E? I'm hoping it gets extended to SCE, but I don't know how long that would take, of if they might change their requirements.

We have solar + 1 Powerwall2. Solar installed by local, well-regarded company, using REC alpha black 400 panels and IQ8A Enphase inverters (top tier components). As we still have mostly gas heat, our 1 Powerwall will run the house for 16-20 hours unassisted. Through much of the year with just a bit of help from solar, we could run off-grid most days, although that wasn't the design intent.

With respect to V2H with solar, yes, you will need some kind of "gateway" or ATS/load balancer in order to manage your micro-grid when you go off-grid. This function is performed by the Tesla Backup Gateway2 in our set up.

Given all that, one option for future enhancements is to add a second transfer switch, even a manual one, to tie into a bi-directional charger of any brand. Run the backup house loads off the second transfer switch (moving them from their current location on the Backup Gateway). This would allow you to isolate your solar and battery from both the grid and the car charger - if the Powerwall needs charging and solar is insufficient to both carry the house and charge the Powerwall, throw the second switch, run the house off the car, and re-charge the Powerwall from what solar you have. Once the Powerwall is back up, switch back to your solar and battery, disconnect the car, and if necessary, drive it to where you can get power to recharge, then bring that power back home.

This approach avoids compatibility issues with future components by isolating current system from the bi-directional charger. V2H, not V2G or V2X, but more than V2L. One disadvantage is that you can't charge the car from solar using your bidirectional charger. We would use our current charger for that, the one that came with our car, on a separate circuit.

For now, we don't anticipate needing long-term backup. This is all future options for expansion, should we need something. We went with the best available components in each category (panels, inverters and battery) for our needs. YMMV.

In the diagram below, substitute a bi-directional charger for the backup generator shown.

Great post, great information - thank you.
I have the same Leaf model and a 6.7kW solar PV system and have been looking into ways to charge my Leaf directly with the solar PV, and/or use the Leaf battery to run basic lights and refrigerator in an emergency. I have a SENSE monitor and my base load with lights, TVs, computers, refrigerator is only about 600 watts and about half of that is 'always on'. My 62kWh Leaf battery should last several days, and like you suggested, drive it over to an operating charger for a fresh load. I don't see an easy way without a Tesla Powerwall, too expensive.
Sorry, The rest of the post is mostly about solar.
Before I got my Leaf, HP water heater, and HP AC/Heating system, induction cooktop, I actually produced more electricity from my solar PV system than I used, and at the end of the year I got a check from the local utility XCEL for my over production. I am looking to expand my solar system to cover the extra electric use.
Now XCEL claims with my net metering annual contract and TOU Smart Meter, I get full credit of 28 cents/kWh for my solar PV production at peak summer times (and other times) and then can pull it back off the grid at 12 cents/kWh at night to charge the Leaf. Use the grid as my battery. But of course the kWh at night are not carbon free. :-( I will continue to monitor my electric use with my SENSE monitoring system and will see if this is true.
A good friend has a similar setup to your Leaf with his Ioniq 5, a manual switch, but no Powerwall, for a few lights and the refrigerator during emergencies. Worked great during a recent power outage until his wife forgot and turned on the garbage disposal and the surge when the motor kicked in, exceeded the load, tripped the system, just had to reset it.
Question 1 - What is the overall size of your solar system?
Question 2 - I don't seem to find a recommendation in My Nissan Leaf posts - or other sites - on a DC-AC inverter to run an extension cord off the Leaf battery during emergencies?
Thanks again!

DiscipleD said:

I also have IQ7s with my solar panels. 3 years ago I was also on a waiting list for 2 Tesla Powerwalls, but when I heard about V2H I got my refund for the Powerwalls and have been waiting.
I have the same Leaf, 2019 model.
Here is the link for the Enphase V2H for your website https://www.emporiaenergy.com/how-the-emporia-v2x-charger-works/
My local installer says they will be available towards the end of the year. Probably next year when they say that.
I like your website.
I did follow DCBEL but they only offer to support a subpanel, not the whole house. They have their own inverters which I don't need and when I last checked they only offered in New York and Califorinia.

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And the same 2019 Leaf here. It looks like Emporia V2X only works with the CCS1 or Tesla Style NACS connector? https://www.emporiaenergy.com/how-the-emporia-v2x-charger-works/

I like the idea of a manual transfer switch as that would allow me to keep my existing setup. But I guess we still need to wait for a bidirectional charger for the Leaf to be actually available in the US!

Our solar is nominally 8.44 kW, but since we have no south-facing roof, 18 of 21 panels face west, and the other 3 face east. So in practice, we can see up to about 7.0 kW of output, real world (based on Enphase reporting). I'm not unhappy about that, it's a good number given our circumstances. Max energy is in the mid-40's in kWh's.

We get 1:1 net metering from Xcel right now (expecting that to end at some point, not sustainable from their perspective), so we typically charge the car and run the AC overnight off the grid. We have been part of their Windsource program for many years, so in theory, all of our grid power comes from wind (i.e. effectively carbon offsets).

The 3 east-facing panels are there to pick up the house after sunrise and begin charging the battery until the main arrays come on line around 10 am. That's been working exactly as predicted. All in all, we generate about 1.3x our pre-solar consumption averaged over the year. Our baseline burn rate is roughly 0.5 kW. Around 16 kWh per day.

We did go with partial home backup - we arranged to have our house re-wired to exclude the car charger circuit and the AC from backup power, so that if we do have an outage overnight when either of those is running, we don't overload the battery. It's a simple thing to move circuits around now that the system has been built out, so future changes should be much more straight forward. Similarly, with our setup, it's a simple thing to add either another Powerwall or more panels, so we can adapt generation, storage and loads to future needs.

I like having the option of choosing to hook up with or without backup power, depending on which panel we choose to connect to. For example, if we were to add, say, a hot tub, we would have a ready panel to connect to that wouldn't impact our backup plans, as long as we don't exceed the max panel capacity (200 amps all around). The diagram I shared above is for a whole house setup, ours has 2 panels, one for backup power as shown, and another for non-backup power, grid only.

I actually like the idea of combining a stationary battery with potentially a V2H solution with our car. As noted above, it makes for a quite versatile system. But there is added expense involved, of course. I foresee V2G being substantially more difficult to pull off, given the need to integrate various car manufacturers and models with various public utilities and local electrical codes. V2H is much simpler.

Stationary batteries today are overpriced on a per kWh basis when compared to an electric car (by roughly 2x), but we signed up for the Xcel "Renewable Battery Connect" program, a virtual power plant pilot, that got us an additional rebate that lowered the price to where it's competitive. Otherwise, we would have waited for prices to drop.

As to your second question, I've not looked into V2L from the Leaf, but others have here. We have no need for it. To be clear, V2H would only come into play if grid power becomes notably less reliable in our area.

Hope this helps.

Our solar is nominally 8.44 kW, but since we have no south-facing roof, 18 of 21 panels face west, and the other 3 face east. So in practice, we can see up to about 7.0 kW of output, real world (based on Enphase reporting). I'm not unhappy about that, it's a good number given our circumstances.

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My view is that east and west facing solar is a great idea. PVWATTS allows easy and fast analysis of potentials systems, and I have looked at a lot of alternatives to the south facing array. East west orientations produce about the same on cloudy days, and start earlier and end later on sunny days. Cloudy days, and early/late hours are the times where more solar is needed! There is a overall generation is less, but adding 10% more panels will cover that.

Interesting. We went with our components because we have a relatively compact roof and big trees all around. Benefits of adding additional panels is limited.

We’ve leveraged all the best roof area now for the current technology generation.