My Nissan Leaf Forum

EV manufacturers are not going to support use of vehicle to grid for home grids. There's no way to control cycling and it would make warranties difficult to manage. How do you tell whether battery degradation was caused by driving or battery cycling in support of your house? how do you administer an 100,000 mi/8 year warranty if the car spends most of it's time charging and discharging on your home grid. It's much simpler to have a dedicated battery on the home grid. The only company that has tried it is Nissan and they have never gotten beyond a pilot project in Japan.

Marktm wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 10:19 am

A couple of observations. Well, maybe more like possibilities in the next decade:



DC fast charging (level 2+) may survive, but for those that must take longer highway trips and the charge networks are well established. Very expensive to install and maintain as they require 480 VAC installations. However, the DC protocols (level 1) are likely to be most valuable for DC coupled nano-grids (PV based) so that certain homes and most small business solar systems can use their vehicles as the battery energy storage for energy arbitrage. Also, they can then essentially go "off-grid" when needed for emergency/resiliency. SolarEdge (StoreEdge) and Pika Energy equipment support this scenario, but want to sell their own (expensive) energy storage. Again, "smart charging" will impose some limitations, but likely not serious.

480 VAC may not be required. If you couple battery storage with 220 VAC, you can charge the batteries over a longer period and then dump 400 VDC from the batteries to charge the car. You can't do it continuously but charge stations often sit idle for long periods. Whether it's economical to do it this way depends on the cost of storage vs installing 480 VAC. Tesla actually does something similar with stations that have PV arrays that charge batteries during the day.

Yes, Freewire supposedly will have a commercial unit as you describe. Typical QC's that I've used in Houston are all within a commercial center that already has 480 VAC 3 phase available.

https://freewiretech.com/products/dc-boost-charger/

Marktm wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 3:28 pm

Yes, Freewire supposedly will have a commercial unit as you describe. Typical QC's that I've used in Houston are all within a commercial center that already has 480 VAC 3 phase available.

https://freewiretech.com/products/dc-boost-charger/

That is interesting news. Thanks for sharing.

After 43K miles other than the battery replacement have you had other systems fail in your Leaf? How is your new battery holding up if you do not mind.

johnlocke wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 1:14 pm

EV manufacturers are not going to support use of vehicle to grid for home grids. There's no way to control cycling and it would make warranties difficult to manage. How do you tell whether battery degradation was caused by driving or battery cycling in support of your house? how do you administer an 100,000 mi/8 year warranty if the car spends most of it's time charging and discharging on your home grid. It's much simpler to have a dedicated battery on the home grid. The only company that has tried it is Nissan and they have never gotten beyond a pilot project in Japan.

Pilot program? In 2017, it was stated at https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=504949#p504949 there were 7000 customers w/the Nissan/Nichicon V2H system in Japan.

I'd found a PDF earlier from years before that with numbers in the thousands. Found it at viewtopic.php?p=507888#p507888.

I posted about Mitsubishi's Dendo Drive House at viewtopic.php?p=571131#p571131 that I saw on display at Tokyo Motor Show 2019. It involved the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV which has CHAdeMO. And, yes, Nissan owns a controlling stake of Mitsubishi Motors.

On the note of degradation, years back, I saw on one of the Leaf FB groups someone in Japan who had lost 4 bars within their capacity warranty and they mentioned they were using the aforementioned V2H system.

As for the bolded part, there was a side conversation with a Nissan corporate marketing guy I posted about at viewtopic.php?p=508329#p508329 in 2017.

cwerdna wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 6:56 pm

johnlocke wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 1:14 pm

EV manufacturers are not going to support use of vehicle to grid for home grids. There's no way to control cycling and it would make warranties difficult to manage. How do you tell whether battery degradation was caused by driving or battery cycling in support of your house? how do you administer an 100,000 mi/8 year warranty if the car spends most of it's time charging and discharging on your home grid. It's much simpler to have a dedicated battery on the home grid. The only company that has tried it is Nissan and they have never gotten beyond a pilot project in Japan.

Pilot program? In 2017, it was stated at https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=504949#p504949 there were 7000 customers w/the Nissan/Nichicon V2H system in Japan.

I'd found a PDF earlier from years before that with numbers in the thousands. Found it at viewtopic.php?p=507888#p507888.

I posted about Mitsubishi's Dendo Drive House at viewtopic.php?p=571131#p571131 that I saw on display at Tokyo Motor Show 2019. It involved the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV which has CHAdeMO. And, yes, Nissan owns a controlling stake of Mitsubishi Motors.

On the note of degradation, years back, I saw on one of the Leaf FB groups someone in Japan who had lost 4 bars within their capacity warranty and they mentioned they were using the aforementioned V2H system.

As for the bolded part, there was a side conversation with a Nissan corporate marketing guy I posted about at viewtopic.php?p=508329#p508329 in 2017.

cwerdna thanks for correcting some of the Leaf misinformation on the web and for sharing the report from the marketing event you attended.

I am interested in getting 120 volt AC from our Leaf but not sure I will ever try. I bought the below for about $75 off ebay but have no plans to connect it to the DC charging port until I understand how it could even work because at this point the write up in the ad just does not make electrical sense to me. At this moment I see it as a smoke maker but time may change that if I can get some solid info from a better source than the seller. I have not taken the DC port plug in apart yet nor found a schematic of the DC port on the Leaf.

https://picclick.com/DOSTAR-EV-Chargin ... 539.html

GaleHawkins wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 8:08 pm

I am interested in getting 120 volt AC from our Leaf but not sure I will ever try. I bought the below for about $75 off ebay but have no plans to connect it to the DC charging port until I understand how it could even work because at this point the write up in the ad just does not make electrical sense to me. At this moment I see it as a smoke maker but time may change that if I can get some solid info from a better source than the seller. I have not taken the DC port plug in apart yet nor found a schematic of the DC port on the Leaf.

https://picclick.com/DOSTAR-EV-Chargin ... 539.html

From a quick look, I don't know what that is but from looking at https://www.ebay.com/itm/362729404539, that's totally useless for a US Leaf. No US Leaf has a port like that.

You can't pull power from the car via J1772. For CHAdeMO, it's going to be almost 400 volts DC. There's nothing in that handle or power strip that's going to convert that down to 120 volts AC.

Bottom of https://www.chademo.com/technology/technology-overview/ has a diagram. I think if you want more details, you'd want to look for CHAdeMO specs and/or the Leaf service manual.

During the two PG&E PSPSes (https://www.pge.com/psps/, 2nd outage at viewtopic.php?p=571661#p571661) I've had to endure so far, I've been using https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AYH6E6S (Samlex Solar PST-1000-12 PST Series Pure Sine Wave Inverter) that I alluded to at viewtopic.php?p=569476#p569476. Since it comes with no cables nor clamps and has weird terminals, getting the flat lugs it comes with crimped to proper cables with clamps took me awhile. I had to resort to a Batteries Plus store to do that for me.

Sorry. I've not been following this thread due to power outage, Japan trip prep, Japan trip and now catching back up. I have 0 interest in "level 3 at home" esp. since I don't own this house. I don't even have a L2 EVSE at home (http://www.myrav4ev.com/forum/viewtopic ... 8264#p8264 says why) and haven't needed it despite an pure BEV being my primary car since end of July 2013. I hardly even L1 charge at home.

There have been numerous threads here (e.g. viewtopic.php?t=13097) and on chevybolt.org (e.g. https://www.chevybolt.org/threads/using ... kup.14986/) on using an EV as a power source by hooking a 12 volt DC to 120 volt AC inverter to the 12 volt bus and putting the car in READY mode to keep the 12 volt from going flat. This is a way, albeit inefficient.

I went with a pure sine wave (much more expensive) inverter instead of one that uses a modified (not pure) sine wave due to https://priuschat.com/threads/dc-ac-inv ... st-1670832. I knew I'd have to run a long cord(s) from the inverter to where I needed power due to the layout of my house.

Also, it's important to note to not hook up to the negative terminal of the battery due to the current sensor (https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=384563#p384563). This has come up many times. There's a similar caveat w/the Bolt.

If you wish to discuss temporary inverter setups to get 120 volt AC out of a Leaf via 12 volt bus, we should probably continue that in another thread.

cwerdna;

Concerning the CA fires - our hearts go out to all of you that are affected. The Harvey floods here in the TX gulf coast were simply horrific, however I personally cannot grasp what fear and instant destruction such massive fires create - likely no one can unless you are there.

So, what can we do to help? I'm trying to get my (quite large) company to support the rapid deployment of essentially nanogrid type technologies that are EV energy based. We know that a number of EV owners have found rather kludged ways (but necessity being the mother of invention!) that use the 12 VDC systems to power some priority needs (refrigeration, fans, etc).

One such initiative is with this company:

https://www.envisionsolar.com/products/ec-arc/

They have the capability to mobilize a relatively large number of these units starting essentially immediately. They are also stating that they are interested in design/hardware changes that make them much more functional to support charging stranded EVs in areas affected by power outages. The benefits of portability, energy anywhere there is sun, energy storage, capability to DC rapid charge EVs (stringing along a 480 VAC bus), and even potential V2G via both the AC and DC "ports" (not the 12 V system!) could make this literally a life saver. Some of these features will take some time, but being smart about easily adding features later can help.

This Company is a local provider that can help solve a contemporaneous problem, but certainly is applicable to almost any disaster prone area.

Feel free to PM me if you want additional information/support/updates. BTW, we have no contractual alignment of any type with this company.

johnlocke wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 09, 2019 1:14 pm

EV manufacturers are not going to support use of vehicle to grid for home grids. There's no way to control cycling and it would make warranties difficult to manage. How do you tell whether battery degradation was caused by driving or battery cycling in support of your house? how do you administer an 100,000 mi/8 year warranty if the car spends most of it's time charging and discharging on your home grid. It's much simpler to have a dedicated battery on the home grid. The only company that has tried it is Nissan and they have never gotten beyond a pilot project in Japan.

Are you kidding? This is easy to do all this and a Tesla has the hardware to track these things if a grid tie is added. They could calculate total power to the grid independently for warranty and even use wifi for billing services and use to utilities. I drove one of the first Tesla prototypes and it have full gird tie built in and operational. Nissan was not the was not the only company and it was done far before the LEAF and theirs was external to the car as they do not have the in car capabilities. Nissan's forte is not this type of tech.

EVDRIVER wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 10, 2019 10:55 am

Tesla has the hardware to track these things if a grid tie is added. They could calculate total power to the grid independently for warranty and even use wifi for billing services and use to utilities. I drove one of the first Tesla prototypes and it have full gird tie built in and operational. Nissan was not the was not the only company and it was done far before the LEAF and theirs was external to the car as they do not have the in car capabilities. Nissan's forte is not this type of tech.

Honda also has a prototype with a bidirectional AC based charger. An external charge controller/aggregator with grid disconnect is necessary, but exists. Sooner the better that it becomes commercial - I'll handle the warranty considerations when it does.