Using the Leaf for power in a Blackout: MY "Leaf to Home"

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RustyShackleford said:
Just so you know ... I was hoping that Leaf Spy would tell me how much current I was sucking from the 12v system; yet I'm only seeing less than an amp. Helpful respondent at the Leaf Spy support thread pointed out that it's because I connected the inverter's '-' input to a chassis bolt (as you're supposed to do), not the the battery's negative terminal.

You would have detected the current if the car was turned ON such that the VCM was energized. i'm not sure if this occurs in Accessory Mode or if only in READY mode. Although i would think only in READY mode since the main contactors must be engaged in order to operate the DCDC converter which recharges the aux battery.

If you connect directly to the negative terminal, then the current sensor is by-passed and can not measure the external load.

The FSM Caution note about not connecting to the negative terminal directly is because an external load attached for an extended time could drain the 12V (and excessive drain could damage the aux battery).
 
evtifosi, could you add a few pictures detailing connection to battery positive and your fuse?
Curious which bolt you tied to on the battery.
Btw, negative into "engine block" might be 8x1.2mm if my memory is correct
 
Just an update on mine:

We bought a used 2018 SV in June 2020 - I took the connector assembly out of the 2015 when we sold it and it bolted right into the 2018.

Took about 5 minutes.

If anyone wants more pics or details let me know (I didn't see the question from Dec 2109 until just now...)
 
I was considering adding an inverter to my 2019 Leaf S in case of rolling blackouts this summer. Has anyone tried this with the Goal Zero Home integration kit? It appears to be a transfer switch with a 3 prong plug made for their Goal Zero "solar generators". So, my idea was to get the 1500w/3000w surge Leaf inverter kit from EV Extend and plug it into the Goal Zero Home integration kit via the included 10 foot cable. This in theory would give me a good backup for the refrigerator, 7 cu. ft chest freezer, some lights, garage door, and our tankless water heater (gas). Not a lot of stuff, but just the essentials which I have measured with a Kill a Watt, and I could ration certain loads when needed to stay closer to 1000 watts or below. The big one would be the refrigerator which surges to 1500+ watts at start up but then comes way down. Do you think this would work? Other option I guess is to run extension cords from the inverter but the transfer switch looks much cleaner and my sub panel is in that garage already.

https://www.goalzero.com/shop/yeti-accessories/yeti-home-integration-kit/

Here is a video that shows all the wires:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brgqudO-T58
 
sptleaf said:
I was considering adding an inverter to my 2019 Leaf S in case of rolling blackouts this summer. Has anyone tried this with the Goal Zero Home integration kit? It appears to be a transfer switch with a 3 prong plug made for their Goal Zero "solar generators". So, my idea was to get the 1500w/3000w surge Leaf inverter kit from EV Extend and plug it into the Goal Zero Home integration kit via the included 10 foot cable. This in theory would give me a good backup for the refrigerator, 7 cu. ft chest freezer, some lights, garage door, and our tankless water heater (gas). Not a lot of stuff, but just the essentials which I have measured with a Kill a Watt, and I could ration certain loads when needed to stay closer to 1000 watts or below. The big one would be the refrigerator which surges to 1500+ watts at start up but then comes way down. Do you think this would work? Other option I guess is to run extension cords from the inverter but the transfer switch looks much cleaner and my sub panel is in that garage already.

https://www.goalzero.com/shop/yeti-accessories/yeti-home-integration-kit/

The kit looks neat, seems to only need a standard 120v power source (generator or anything that makes 120v in the correct polarity) and then the kit uses a double-pole throw device to switch between utility and whatever source you feed in. Not sure though if it will play nice with any GFCI outlets you have because if they detect any ground/neutral cross-connection it will trip them. Unless it transfers the ground also, but it doesn't appear to have enough wires to do that with 4 circuits (if you go by the picture anyway). If you can contact them, ask if the ground is transferred as well. Most others I've seen only transfer hot and neutral, leaving ground either floating or bonded with neutral at the switch (sometimes you have to do that manually otherwise). Definitely something you want a knowledgeable electrician to setup unless you already know about that stuff, then otherwise looks fine to me. :mrgreen:
 
We made a home built wannabeteslapowerwall out of a 2000 watt charger/inverter. Built in 100 amp 12 volt charger, sine wave inverter and transfer switch. We had it from an RV we used to own and took it out before we sold it. We picked up 2 X 105 amp hour group 31 AGM batteries, a 250 watt catastrophic fuse and a bunch of 2 gauge cable. We hard wired some secondary circuits to some critical loads like fridge, entertainment centre and one other receptacle. Works well. Good for about a day and a half.

One can run a trickle charge line from the Tesla power point via an inverter and 7 amp charger which will keep it running for about a week. I have heard of people tapping into the Tesla 12 volt battery but I think Tesla frowns on that so I'll avoid that.

Here are a couple pics. We made it look nice in the garage but behind the pretty cover its pretty raw.

50856821533_9df15a797e_c.jpg


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50859941363_25dcde0123_c.jpg
 
For that load you may want to use 3 or 4 of those batteries, to avoid damaging them with 90% or more drains. I'm using three for my version, which will run the fridge, freezer, and maybe the sump pump. The marine inverter is only rated for 1200 watts continuous, but has a 400% surge capacity for 20 or so seconds.
 
That is a great setup. One thing you might want to consider is to add fuses between the batteries. If there is a cell failure (fail shorted) in a battery, the other battery(ies) in parallel dump energy into the failed battery. If you put a fuse between each positive (or negative) terminal and the associated bus, then the failed battery is removed from the circuit and the remaining batteries continue on charge or supplying load. Otherwise, the shorted battery may fail catastrophically.
 
GerryAZ said:
That is a great setup. One thing you might want to consider is to add fuses between the batteries. If there is a cell failure (fail shorted) in a battery, the other battery(ies) in parallel dump energy into the failed battery. If you put a fuse between each positive (or negative) terminal and the associated bus, then the failed battery is removed from the circuit and the remaining batteries continue on charge or supplying load. Otherwise, the shorted battery may fail catastrophically.

That’s a good idea Gerry. I have a smaller 100 amp catastrophic fuse that would probably work as the load is just not that much.

Thanks for the idea.
 
LeftieBiker said:
For that load you may want to use 3 or 4 of those batteries, to avoid damaging them with 90% or more drains. I'm using three for my version, which will run the fridge, freezer, and maybe the sump pump. The marine inverter is only rated for 1200 watts continuous, but has a 400% surge capacity for 20 or so seconds.

Yah I’ll give that some thought Leftie. The longest outage we have had in the last 5 years has been around 18 hours. At that point I was planning on bringing the Motorhome with its built in generator over. But in a pinch I could always use the trickle charge from the Tesla PowerPoint which should be good for about a week according to my tests. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. The Motorhome is a better option really.
 
One of my first setups was similar to that with only four 100a 12v marine batteries. I had the setup at the front of our garage so in a pinch I could idle the VW diesel outside and jump that to the marine batteries. We had one outage that was about 3 days that I did that for and even idling the wagon it was charging the 4 marine batteries about 50 amps (125 amp alternator), so it works but not ideal.
 
This weekends storms prompted me to unbox the inverter I purchased in August this year and hook it up to the 2011 LEAF using the destructions here.

We were without power for 16 hours, so this saved the day in keeping our freezer operating loaded with our apocalyptic covid food supply.

Worked flawlessly with a 1500 Watt inverter. I was amazed at how the LEAF just kept running and using almost no charge. It could have run for days. Very impressed.
 
I wish that someone would understand that we don't most need bi-directional units. A big pure sine wave inverter that plugs into the QC port is all I want. 240 and 120 volts, 30-60 amps. Some kind of wireless alert to tell me of any problems. I'll take care of charging the car.
 
LeftieBiker said:
I wish that someone would understand that we don't most need bi-directional units. A big pure sine wave inverter that plugs into the QC port is all I want. 240 and 120 volts, 30-60 amps. Some kind of wireless alert to tell me of any problems. I'll take care of charging the car.
I definitely want 240v. My main issue with my current rig (1kW/120v inverter connected per this thread) is that I can't run my well pump.

That, and the fact that my refrigerator's auto-defrost cycle seems to kill the thing (the inverter beeps angrily and goes dead); I'm not sure what else it could be, when this happens the inverter won't even run the fridge alone, and yes, I've tested it during compressor cycling and it handles that fine.
 
Most inverters are rated for surge loads of no more than 30 seconds, and usually less than that. The defrost cycle must take much of an hour. An inverter rated for your surge load as its continuous load, plus a big 'buffer battery' between it and the DC source, should solve that. Or find a way to disable Auto Defrost...
 
I definitely want 240v. My main issue with my current rig (1kW/120v inverter connected per this thread) is that I can't run my well pump.

We have used a step-up 120V/240V transformer for many years to run a deep well pump, works fine, the inverter simply needs to be large enough to provide the power (ours is a 2.5 kW inverter). Transformers are fairly cheap, the one we use is rated for 1.5 kW and works fine.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Most inverters are rated for surge loads of no more than 30 seconds, and usually less than that. The defrost cycle must take much of an hour. An inverter rated for your surge load as its continuous load, plus a big 'buffer battery' between it and the DC source, should solve that. Or find a way to disable Auto Defrost...
Thing is, I really don't think auto-defrost is supposed to take that many watts - up to 600watts is what I've read. But I dunno what else it could be. I've thought maybe it's a surge problem on the DC input to the inverter, and that maybe it'd be worth putting a honking big capacitor there - but I wonder if that's safe for the car.

Believe me, I've thought about disabling the auto-defrost. Got the schematic and the service manual. It looks like you can disable it while in test mode, but as soon as you shut the door it exits test mode. Interrupting one of the wires in the back looks risky (maybe confuse the control circuitry), but interrupting the wire at the actual defrost heater seems safe - but it'd require opening up the compartment in the back of the freezer (where the evaporator lives) and that looks like a PITA. But if I could, I'd install a normally-closed relay (or a SPDT one wired that way), so I'm not bringing any line-voltage wires out in the open, and then bring the coil wires out where I could just hook 'em to a battery when I need to disable.

Here's a link to the "tech sheet" if anyone wants to take a gander: https://www.applianceblog.com/mainforums/attachments/tech-sheet-krfc300ess-wp-ref-rev-d-1-pdf.48998/
 
dmacarthur said:
I definitely want 240v. My main issue with my current rig (1kW/120v inverter connected per this thread) is that I can't run my well pump.

We have used a step-up 120V/240V transformer for many years to run a deep well pump, works fine, the inverter simply needs to be large enough to provide the power (ours is a 2.5 kW inverter). Transformers are fairly cheap, the one we use is rated for 1.5 kW and works fine.
That's good to know - my well pump is 1/2HP, I believe, which is about as small as they get.

But isn't the opinion here that the Leaf's 12vdc system can only support 1000-1500 watts ?
 
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