Posted 08.02.2011 at 3:16 pm
9 Comments
The Nissan Leaf can run 70-plus miles on a single charge. Now, it can also power a family home for two days if it needs to. The “Leaf to Home” project Nissan is rolling out in Japan allows the electricity stored in the Leaf’s lithium-ion battery to be fed back into a home, running major appliances for up to two days.
The “Leaf to Home” system simply allows for a quick charging port to be mounted on the home’s electricity distribution panel to receive energy from the car. Those 24 kilowatt hours stored in a fully energized Leaf can run the average Japanese household for two days, even when the refrigerator, climate control, and other large appliances are running at the same time.
Given that Japanese communities are still dealing with the effects of the disastrous March earthquake and associated tsunami, its not hard to imagine how households might need a source of backup power, or how valuable that backup power might be during a bad situation. Some areas in Japan were left without electricity for days and days in the aftermath--a problem “Leaf to Home” could remedy, at least for a time. Not to mention, in addition to serving as a backup power source the system allows the car to store up power during off-peak electricity generation hours and feed it back into the house during periods of high demand.
[AFP]
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Fantastic! Thanks Nissan, we knew you could/would do it.
I've seriously considered a generator for emergency purposes. This area has suffered several long duration blackouts (24 hours plus). But it makes great sense to use the engine you already have instead of getting a second one for this occasional usage.
I imagine my next car will be some manner of hybrid, and this is a feature I'll be looking for.
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Read somewhere that Li-ion batteries that are no longer fit to power electric cars can find a second career as stationary power sources.
From what I can see, best case is 12KWh/day. This assumes that you can discharge the battery to zero. Maybe you can.
Probably is OK for the small Japanese houses. Not being critical, just doing the math.
Article doesn't say, but the interface must include a pretty good inverter, so that they can get AC into the house.
hj
The good news: Battery chargers are inverters when run in reverse. See Xantrex, Outback Power, others.
The bad news: Electric utilities will not tolerate uncontrolled proliferation of unregistered net metering parallel electrical supplies.
Electric Utlities WILL tolgerate outside source power generation as long as you use a power switch and remove them from the utlity company circuit. But yes, you do need good clean regulated power at the correct phase and hz. Many small generators don't have requlation circuits and the power is rather ruff. There great for running tools but electronics hate the unclean power and tend to die.
Clay - interesting stuff. Hoping to get your email address for future reference if possible. Mine is ballen at brunswickgroup dot com.
Many thanks,
Beau
read about V2G that can help regulate power, run your home and or sell back power and make your EV pay for itself.
The Future is connected.