Nissan wants Leaf to (be able to) power your house

[JeremyW]

Does anyone know the power capacity of the DC-DC converter that charges the 12V battery?

About 130A if you go straight from the positive terminal of the battery and the case of the DC/DC. I would only recommend it for ~600W or so, which is about 50-60 amps DC including losses. Anything higher then that and the current, wire gauge, and overall loss become serious issues. The pack voltage is ~396V which means much smaller currents. Of course, safety becomes a much bigger issue at the pack voltage level.

Depending on house size and how much you wanted to feed back into the grid (or off grid), you could use less than a full cycle off the batteries. I'd shoot for 25% in non-emergency situations. The idea would be to use so few cycles overall that the battery life would still be dominated by the calender life of what seems to be 2-5% a year (excluding AZ). For those that only go 5 miles to work and the store everyday, you could "get your moneys worth" by feeding power out during peak rates and recharging during the night. Make your pack pay for itself even more? Pretty cool.

Here's a copy of what I wrote in the other thread in the EVSE section:

I've been trying to follow what Nissan and Mitsubishi are doing as far as V2H or vehicle to grid goes. From what I've read, they are both using the CHAdeMO port, but had different standards as far as how to convince the car to keep the contactor closed. They are now working together to create a standard for pulling power out of the CHAdeMO port. See here in Japanese or here for a translation.

The 1.0.0 CHAdeMO spec which was released on January 31st may include bidirectional compatibility. All the '11s and I believe the '12s conform to the 0.9 spec which does not "officially" include the ability to pull from the pack.

Also see Mitsubishi's "power box" which is an off grid inverter rated for 1.5kW: here. Relevant youtube video on it.

I've seriously considered getting the iMiEV instead of the Leaf due to the fact that I could be the first to do vehicle to grid with a production vehicle. I'd import a power box and monitor and emulate the CAN messages and hook it up to my DC-isolated grid tie inverter. I'm very serious about vehicle to grid.

Basically, if you want to learn more about this stuff, you've got to know Japanese or snuggle up with translate.google.com

Jeremy :twisted:

 

[DarkStar]

Also see Mitsubishi's "power box" which is an off grid inverter rated for 1.5kW: here. Relevant youtube video on it.

I've seriously considered getting the iMiEV instead of the Leaf due to the fact that I could be the first to do vehicle to grid with a production vehicle. I'd import a power box and monitor and emulate the CAN messages and hook it up to my DC-isolated grid tie inverter. I'm very serious about vehicle to grid.

I don't see any reason why Mitsubishi's box wouldn't work on the Leaf. Why not import the box first, see if it works on the Leaf, then decide if you would prefer a Leaf or iMiEV?