Using Leaf as emergency power backup - electrical question

I don't see why people are investing so much time, $$$, and possible damage to an expensive car just to play with powering some home appliances.

You want to power your house, do it right. Want to power some lights, get an $89 Harbor Freight generator. Want to power the house, get a 7000 to 10,000 watt gas generator and install a power switch into your house... Quick, easy, safe, and ready to use at a moment's notice when you need it.

All that junk that you may get for the Leaf is a waste of money if you never use it, and a serious investment because it has only one use. You can keep, move or sell a regular powerful gas generator in a day if you ever sell the car.

powersurge said:

I don't see why people are investing so much time, $$$, and possible damage to an expensive car just to play with powering some home appliances.

You want to power your house, do it right. Want to power some lights, get an $89 Harbor Freight generator. Want to power the house, get a 7000 to 10,000 watt gas generator and install a power switch into your house... Quick, easy, safe, and ready to use at a moment's notice when you need it.

All that junk that you may get for the Leaf is a waste of money if you never use it, and a serious investment because it has only one use. You can keep, move or sell a regular powerful gas generator in a day if you ever sell the car.

Click to expand...

What $89 generator are you talking about? The cheapest one I see is $125 at https://www.harborfreight.com/engines-generators/gasoline-generators.html?order=price-low and it'd be a horrific polluter being a 2 cycle engine.

Long ago before I got an inverter to use with my Bolt, I looked into stuff like a $500 https://www.harborfreight.com/engines-generators/gasoline-generators/2000-watt-super-quiet-inverter-generator-62523.html. But then I looked into the manual for the prep if you don't use for 20+ days on page 17 of https://manuals.harborfreight.com/manuals/62000-62999/62523.pdf and stuff like "NOTiCE: During extended storage periods the Engine must be started every 3months and allowed to run for 15 – 20minutes or the Warranty is VOID." And, it only has a 90 day warranty. :roll: Do I really want to spend $500 on something w/that short a warranty from a company that sells somewhat sketchy products as it is?

It's also over 50 lbs, so I'd likely need help in getting it home and back out of my car.

I have to worry about gasoline going bad and safely transporting and storing enough of it for a multi-day outage. The manual alludes to 12 hours of runtime (1 gallon of gasoline) at 25% load. I don't even have any gasoline powered cars at home. And, fuel consumption is kinda high. I'd need to worry about maintenance on page 13. I have to run it outside. I intend to (and did run) my NVR security camera system the whole time when I'm at home, including while sleeping. I also intended to run my fridge and I did so) This was all using my Bolt w/a Samlex pure sine wave inverter w/the car parked in my garage.

A generator MUST be outside unless I want to be poisoned by CO. But, since it's outside and is noisy, it might be stolen in the event of https://www.pge.com/psps/. Both times I lost power (which could be days long outages), my ENTIRE neighborhood was out. In the 2nd PSPS that happened at end of last month, my power went out on a Saturday night and didn't return until Monday 7 pm (https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=571661#p571661). We've been told to prepare for multi-day outages as the high fire risk event must pass, the lines must be inspected and any damage repaired before they're re-energized.

People on Priuschat have used inverters with their Prius for ages and the fuel consumption isn't bad but the car must be outside due to CO emissions.

I don't own the house I live in and it's likely I'll need to move within a year or two. I anticipated needing to move a few years ago into an apartment but that hasn't happened (long story).

There are probably more reasons for my case but I won't be able to elaborate on them until later tonight.

I've gone the gen route, and even with a 7kw NG generator and a generator port on the house it's a huge PITA. I recently installed a quasi-UPS circuit in my house, using 2 100AH batteries and an inverter, just to be able to run the fridge, freezer and some lights for a few hours in a short term outage before having to get the gen out. I have come to the position, though, that if you want to use your EV for home backup power, you should get a 100-200AH buffer battery, connect the inverter to that, and just use the EV to keep the buffer charged. That offers more protection for the EV, with virtually no hardware installed on the car. All you need to connect is a set of super heavy duty jumper cables.

For PG&E PSPS, we may not get that much notice and it's been a moving target as to when the power goes out and we don't have a good ETA as to when the power will come back. For the 1st one I was hit by, I knew maybe a week ahead of time that I might be affected (but that wasn't certain) but the outage time kept changing.

The notices have generic stuff like

In most cases, we would expect to be able to restore power within 24 to 48 hours after weather has passed
Depending on weather conditions or if any repairs are needed, outages (weather event plus restoration time) could last longer than 48 hours
For planning purposes, we suggest preparing for multiple-day outages

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And, usually that means be prepared for 3 to 5 day outages.

During the 2nd one (went out for my Saturday night), there was news buzzing that there might be a 2nd PSPS and thus power might not even be restored before a 2nd outage on Tuesday (for some unknown regions). Or, that you might have power for a few hours and then no power on Tuesday. Luckily, I wasn't hit again and I was in Japan by then.

Just over this past weekend, PG&E tweeted and the news reported there might be another outage but only affecting the the North Bay this time (won't affect me). https://twitter.com/PGE4Me/status/1196522440475762694 and https://www.pgecurrents.com/2019/11/18/with-forecasts-indicating-high-winds-and-dry-conditions-pge-notifies-customers-of-potential-for-public-safety-power-shutoff-for-wednesday-nov-20/ indicate I'm not in an affected county yet https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/emergency-preparedness/natural-disaster/wildfires/psps-weather-map.page shows PSPS watch for zones 2 thru 5. I'm in zone 3 yet PG&E's tool currently shows my address won't be affected.

evtifosi said:

I completed this project on Saturday - just in time for a possible PSPS by PG&E Wednesday... :shock:

The only thing I did differently than the original post I found (the one I posted the the link to earlier), is that I used a Red connector since I was able to get that one quickly, versus using a Yellow (12V) connector...

Since I will be the only one using this I don't see much of an issue, and I will remove it from the car when it is sold.

Here is a quick photo showing the wiring to the battery.

I hooked it up to a power strip that has a treadmill, a wine cooler, mini under-counter fridge, and some various battery chargers attached to it as a test - everything powered without issues...

Click to expand...

This looks like a perfect setup, can you share your sources for the shopping list?

alozzy said:

This looks like a perfect setup, can you share your sources for the shopping list?

Click to expand...

Here is what I purchased for this Mod for my 2015 LEAF.

1. a Xantrex pure sine wave 1000w (2000w surge) inverter - $265
amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002I04A74/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
2. some #2 AWG flexible red & black copper wire - $29
amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017GB470O/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
3. some #2 AWG 3/8" copper battery eyelets with heat shrink - $13
amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SFLVQJ6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
3. a RED connector with "2-4" AWG pins - $17
amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0129E1KF8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
4. a inline 150 amp fuse - $13
amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N9M4OI1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
5. a 6" long 2" x 1/4" piece of aluminum bar stock I had on hand
6. Some misc screws
7. the only additional tool I needed to order was a hydraulic crimper (I found a cheap one on eBay for $30).

That's supposed to be "2000 watt surge" I assume?

@evtifosi Thanks, much appreciated!

Looks like I won't be needing the Inverter setup I made.

I transferred if from the 2015 LEAF when we sold it to our new to us 2018 LEAF back in June 2020.

In the meantime, we have had a PowerWall installed at our home, and we are also selling the 2018 LEAF.

We never used it more than 2 times for testing the setup.

I would be willing to sell it here as a whole kit - I am also planning on selling the inverter on Ebay if I don't find a LEAF user to buy it...The Inverter was a lot cheaper 2 years ago compared to now.




edit: I would also sell just the Connector Setup - no inverter so someone can use there own or a smaller/larger one....

LeftieBiker said:

That's supposed to be "2000 watt surge" I assume?

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I've got the same model for my setup, they can do 2000 watt surge to start big things (like a fridge or AC unit), but can't hold it for long. They can actually do more than 1,000 watts, closer to 1,200 watts if you really push it, but 2,000 watt (4,000 watt surge) model, I also have, I've never tried to use it on my Leaf because I think it can draw more power than what the Leaf can put out at max.

I know what happens when you exceed the 2,000 watt limit on the Leaf because one of my relatives did that by accident when they tried to jump start an ICE car and connected the jumper cables backwards. They fried the battery and electronics in the ICE car, caught it on fire and, their Leaf went into a safe mode shutdown where everything was dead-off. I had to disconnect the 12V battery in the Leaf, wait about 5 minutes and re-connect it to get the Leaf to boot back up properly. So at least I know, there is a safety feature built into the Leaf to prevent it from destroying the 12V part of itself as it has worked fine for years afterwards with no issue for them :lol:

powersurge said:

I don't see why people are investing so much time, $$$, and possible damage to an expensive car just to play with powering some home appliances.

You want to power your house, do it right. Want to power some lights, get an $89 Harbor Freight generator. Want to power the house, get a 7000 to 10,000 watt gas generator and install a power switch into your house... Quick, easy, safe, and ready to use at a moment's notice when you need it.

All that junk that you may get for the Leaf is a waste of money if you never use it, and a serious investment because it has only one use. You can keep, move or sell a regular powerful gas generator in a day if you ever sell the car.

Click to expand...

I can tell you my reason for it. I did have a big gen setup before and it was just too expensive to maintain. Between having to run it monthly for testing, keeping up with oil changes, gas changes, gas stabilizer and that running a whole house on it drinks way more gas than you think. It was also as loud as hell to run. I sold it to get rid of the money sink that it was. Now my Leaf has a simple outlet in it, in an emergency, I plug in the inverter, plug in the house, turn the Leaf on, it's done. Yeah, it's not as powerful as what I had before, but I've learned that in an emergency, you don't need to power up the whole house like a light show. You just need the basics to either keep the food cold, run a heater or AC, use a micro-wave to cook food, etc. until power is restored. Have a big gen setup is too expensive unless someone lives where the power is going out every other day I suppose. :?

And no matter how nice of a genset you get, they make noise and draw attention to the fact there is a genset running. The Leaf is totally silent.

This Summer we had several 3 hour or so outages. Rather than fire up the generator, I connected an inverter to a 100AH (50AH usable) AGM battery I have in the main area of the house, and used it to power the fridge. We have plenty of battery operated lights, and I have a couple of battery operated fans. I also have a 60AH (55 usable) LiFePo4 battery in my bedroom that will power a fan, the computer, even a little 250 watt heater. As noted, generators are a PITA, even when you use full synthetic oil and don't do maintenance runs more than twice a year.