Enphase acquires Clipper Creek... 'Accelerates the Enphase roadmap to enable bi-directional charging capability for vehicle-to-home..."

[sunwarriors]

That blurb is the only thing interesting for probably most solar/energy storage folks.

Musk has voiced against vehicle to home since it's needed (he maybe biased since PW sales will plummet I think), but with ~60-100 kWh in pretty much any EV, and most EVs just sitting at home normally doing nothing while you're at home, that would be a great backup plan to have many days of additional power during a weather crisis far surpassing what anyone has in their current energy storage.

We'll need to see F150 EV real life stories to see if this actually happens probably by late next year.

Enphase Energy to Acquire ClipperCreek | Enphase Energy

Enables the Company’s Expansion into the Rapidly Growing EV Charging Market FREMONT, Calif. , Nov. 16, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Enphase Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENPH), a global energy technology company and the world's leading supplier of microinverter-based solar and battery systems, today announced

investor.enphase.com

 

[el-guapin]

Nice find!...THNX 4 sharing

 

[charlesj]

That blurb is the only thing interesting for probably most solar/energy storage folks.

Musk has voiced against vehicle to home since it's needed (he maybe biased since PW sales will plummet I think), but with ~60-100 kWh in pretty much any EV, and most EVs just sitting at home normally doing nothing while you're at home, that would be a great backup plan to have many days of additional power during a weather crisis far surpassing what anyone has in their current energy storage.

We'll need to see F150 EV real life stories to see if this actually happens probably by late next year.

Enphase Energy to Acquire ClipperCreek | Enphase Energy

Enables the Company’s Expansion into the Rapidly Growing EV Charging Market FREMONT, Calif. , Nov. 16, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Enphase Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENPH), a global energy technology company and the world's leading supplier of microinverter-based solar and battery systems, today announced

investor.enphase.com

I made a similar comment when that F150 capability was known to the public. One could buy that truck, most likely, just for storage, what a storage capacity.

 

[jboy210]

Does anyone know the cost of wiring in the charger/source to a home. Would someone need to do a site survey and determine whether you could do whole house backup or would need to create a critical loads panel as you do with Powerwalls?

 

[BGbreeder]

No firm idea, but if the idea of the V2H is to do a whole home backup, the wiring from the charger to the main service panel is going to be 3/0 copper or larger, and that isn't a small conduit run. Now if your gateway is on a garage wall, life might be pretty easy. If you have a detached garage...not so much. 3/0 copper runs $5/ft (x3) at my local home improvement store.

What I wonder about is getting power into / out the vehicle. Will it be 500V DC in the cable? 240VAC? Will there be an autotransformer to take out the neutral at the wall? At 240VAC, a four foot ten inch 100lb person is going to have a heck of a time hauling a fifteen or twenty foot 3/0, or 4/0 double or triple wire cable over to the vehicle to plug it in to charge every day.

There is a substantial step from powering a few tools, or a freezer from your F-150, and powering your whole home. The ROI is going to be idiosyncratic, and probably not just on electricity rates; e.g., running a home business, on dialysis, or CPAP, and suddenly the ROI looks a lot different.

YMMV...personally, I look forward to it as it opens up so many routes to grid stability and reliability. Would it be more cost effective to do large scale battery farms? In my opinion, yes, probably, but I don't see the likelihood of that happening as much for lots of nontechnical reasons, foremost among them IOUs being slow moving organizations, and PUCs being even slower.

All the best,

BG

 

[wwhitney]

3/0 copper runs $5/ft (x3) at my local home improvement store.

A good reason to use aluminum.

Cheers, Wayne

 

[GJones]

The Ford truck is export limited for vehicle to home. Supposed to support 240VAC but something similar to a single powerwall in terms of max rate of discharge - I seem to recall a 5kW rate limit somewhere. Therefore, not expected to support AC or large appliances on it's own but clearly a terrific support to solar and/or as a supplement to powerwalls. You would also need to have something similar to a gateway to protect power workers during an outage.
Predict that any vehicle that allows vehicle to home export would also require a gateway of some type.

 

[jboy210]

No firm idea, but if the idea of the V2H is to do a whole home backup, the wiring from the charger to the main service panel is going to be 3/0 copper or larger, and that isn't a small conduit run. Now if your gateway is on a garage wall, life might be pretty easy. If you have a detached garage...not so much. 3/0 copper runs $5/ft (x3) at my local home improvement store.

What I wonder about is getting power into / out the vehicle. Will it be 500V DC in the cable? 240VAC? Will there be an autotransformer to take out the neutral at the wall? At 240VAC, a four foot ten inch 100lb person is going to have a heck of a time hauling a fifteen or twenty foot 3/0, or 4/0 double or triple wire cable over to the vehicle to plug it in to charge every day.

There is a substantial step from powering a few tools, or a freezer from your F-150, and powering your whole home. The ROI is going to be idiosyncratic, and probably not just on electricity rates; e.g., running a home business, on dialysis, or CPAP, and suddenly the ROI looks a lot different.

YMMV...personally, I look forward to it as it opens up so many routes to grid stability and reliability. Would it be more cost effective to do large scale battery farms? In my opinion, yes, probably, but I don't see the likelihood of that happening as much for lots of nontechnical reasons, foremost among them IOUs being slow moving organizations, and PUCs being even slower.

All the best,

BG

Good point about the ROI. One of the reasons we have Powerwalls is because we have been working from home for 7-8 years. If you lose several hundred dollars per hour if you cannot use your computers and/or internet, Powerwalls, F-150 Lightning, and UPSes get real cheap, real quick.

 

[Krash]

Does anyone know the cost of wiring in the charger/source to a home. Would someone need to do a site survey and determine whether you could do whole house backup or would need to create a critical loads panel as you do with Powerwalls?

Besides the transfer switch issue, so that you don’t backfeed the grid, you have to figure out how to not exceed the panel bus bar if the vehicle can’t talk to the switch/gateway to only run when removed from the grid.

You should have a site survey regardless. The risk with whole house backup is you pull more power than you generate and brown out.

 

[charlesj]

The Ford truck is export limited for vehicle to home. Supposed to support 240VAC but something similar to a single powerwall in terms of max rate of discharge - I seem to recall a 5kW rate limit somewhere. Therefore, not expected to support AC or large appliances on it's own but clearly a terrific support to solar and/or as a supplement to powerwalls. You would also need to have something similar to a gateway to protect power workers during an outage.
Predict that any vehicle that allows vehicle to home export would also require a gateway of some type.

But, running that at night, perhaps after dinner or at bedtime until you wake up, about 8 hours at 5kWh well, it could recharge two batters overnight?

 

[jboy210]

But, running that at night, perhaps after dinner or at bedtime until you wake up, about 8 hours at 5kWh well, it could recharge two batters overnight?

Would the Tesla Energy Gateway transfer power from the grid to PWs?

 

[charlesj]

Would the Tesla Energy Gateway transfer power from the grid to PWs?

I am thinking the truck would or could, especially in a grid down mode.

 

[Vines]

No firm idea, but if the idea of the V2H is to do a whole home backup, the wiring from the charger to the main service panel is going to be 3/0 copper or larger, and that isn't a small conduit run. Now if your gateway is on a garage wall, life might be pretty easy. If you have a detached garage...not so much. 3/0 copper runs $5/ft (x3) at my local home improvement store.

What I wonder about is getting power into / out the vehicle. Will it be 500V DC in the cable? 240VAC? Will there be an autotransformer to take out the neutral at the wall? At 240VAC, a four foot ten inch 100lb person is going to have a heck of a time hauling a fifteen or twenty foot 3/0, or 4/0 double or triple wire cable over to the vehicle to plug it in to charge every day.

There is a substantial step from powering a few tools, or a freezer from your F-150, and powering your whole home. The ROI is going to be idiosyncratic, and probably not just on electricity rates; e.g., running a home business, on dialysis, or CPAP, and suddenly the ROI looks a lot different.

YMMV...personally, I look forward to it as it opens up so many routes to grid stability and reliability. Would it be more cost effective to do large scale battery farms? In my opinion, yes, probably, but I don't see the likelihood of that happening as much for lots of nontechnical reasons, foremost among them IOUs being slow moving organizations, and PUCs being even slower.

All the best,

BG

I personally suspect that whatever V2H is installed it will be of a similar size to the typical 48A continuous/60A circuit that the large EV chargers use.

Though the home might use a 3/0 service, there's no reason you couldn't get by with less while under backup power. The Tesla cars already have the limitation of 32/48/64A depending on the year and model, so the EVS that do this likely rely on the charger to be bi-directional, and limited at the throughput of the cars. This is plenty for most home backup as long as managed well.

My home personally is still running entirely on a 60A circuit, until our Powerwall project is complete. We just got the good word that the 400A service upgrade will cost nothing, and not need a transformer upgrade either. Total cost from the PGE side is $75!!

I seriously doubt anyone is getting a 400V DCFC installed in their home powerwall system and then pulling 100+kW.

The Ford truck is export limited for vehicle to home. Supposed to support 240VAC but something similar to a single powerwall in terms of max rate of discharge - I seem to recall a 5kW rate limit somewhere. Therefore, not expected to support AC or large appliances on it's own but clearly a terrific support to solar and/or as a supplement to powerwalls. You would also need to have something similar to a gateway to protect power workers during an outage.
Predict that any vehicle that allows vehicle to home export would also require a gateway of some type.

This is going to be true 100%, and why some automatic disconnect like the GW2 will be required likely.

The only other current code-compliant way to backfeed your house would be to have a generator interlock in the breaker panel, or 2 position transfer switch. Both of these would mean that there would have to be a dedicated charger, and then a dedicated discharger, on the other end of the 2 position switch.

Also as is pointed out above, any backfeeding sources need to adhere to 705.12 busbar rules, or have a PCS system to ensure that the backfeed limits are honored. Many systems run right to the edge of what is possible, so the designer may not have considered the car charger/discharger as a breaker that could backfeed.