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MASTER THREAD: Powering house or other things with Model 3
- Thread starter Vines
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- powerwall solar home
My Fiance and I put together a video this afternoon showing how we've been able to use our Model 3 as a makeshift generator to power our woodstove blower, computers, internet router, and cell phones during natural disasters and/or power outages. This method made all of the difference for us through the 2019 Blizzard and horrendous 2020 wildfire season.
Please feel free to share with anyone who could benefit from it. We made it with all of the folks across the southern US without power right now in mind.
Please feel free to share with anyone who could benefit from it. We made it with all of the folks across the southern US without power right now in mind.
cool I came here with this https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/18/som...hybrids-to-power-homes-amid-winter-storm.html and hoping TSLA will do something similar.
SmartElectric
Active Member
? Seems like a ridiculous waste of time and money and risk to your $50K+ car to shift load for a few pennies per day (what a fridge costs to run).
Seems like a real waste of an opportunity, almost negligent, for Tesla not to allow this during emergencies. If you could run your gas furnace fan with a Tesla that could make a huge difference for some people. Most Tesla's have like 10x the energy as that Ford.
Watts_Up
Well-Known Member
I think you looked a a different thread.
On this picture, @PianoAl was using an AGM batterie and an Inverter, not the Tesla battery.
My fridge uses between 1 kWh and 1.7 kWh a day, depending of the thermostat setting.
Off peak kWh is about $0.12 and peak kWh is about $0.30 in winter and $0.50 in summer.
So it's not too much about saving some dough, but to have a back up ready for my fridge and some lighting in case of outage.
And also to play with inverters to start building a small out of grid local system using solar panels and/or wind meal.
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SmartElectric
Active Member
Was responding directly to you, in this thread, with the knowledge of the components listed.
If you like tinkering, fine, but transferring load from day to night for a fridge is a science project and not a practical use of any of the components listed. It certainly will lose you money, it will not be possible even with a few hundred $ spent to "save" on load shifting for the meagre amount of electricity a fridge uses.
FYI . I have a (non-Tesla) whole home battery and solar system with fully spec'd separate backup loads panel, transfer switch, thousands upon thousands for the components and install, and I surely didn't put that in to save money. People shouldn't "play" unless they understand the electrical code requirements and specifications are there to save lives.
The point of this thread is to examine how a Tesla can be used in a practical manner to run a home fridge, home freezer, camping fridge and other comparable devices that tend to draw fairly low, semi-continuous power.
Summary of terms:
Watt is a unit of power. A kilowatt is 1000 Watts.
Kilowatt hour (kWh) is a unit of energy. A long-range model 3 battery holds about 75 kWh.
A home fridge uses about 1 kWh per day or about 1 to 2% of the capacity of a Tesla battery. (It does that by being “on” about 50% of the time and drawing 80 Watts when on, roughly.) A camping fridge such as the Dometic DZ65DZ uses about half that much energy per day. They key to running any refrigerator or cooler using energy from your Tesla battery is an intermediate battery in my opinion. The battery in your frunk is not well-suited to this task (too small). An additional 12 volt lead-acid battery is an option, however, a better and more practical choice is a lithium-ion battery system such as a Goal Zero Yeti, a Jackery or an Eco-Flow, to mention a few. These provide a useful buffer and can improve efficiency considerably in some scenarios. For brevity, I will call these “jacket batteries”: they include a battery made with cells like those in your Tesla, as well as built in inverters and converters that can supply 110 volt, 12 volt and 5 volt power fro your use. Let’s examine some specific scenarios here.
Scenario 1. Using a Jackery 1000 to run your home fridge and freezer: A Jackery 1000 can run your home fridge and freezer. It can handle to starting surges; it works fine and it is small, quiet and lightweight. (I am sure the Goal Zero, EcoFlow and other would work as well.) About 8 or 10 hours into a power outage you will need to charge your “jacket battery”. Here is where things get less than ideal. You can plug it into the 12 volt port in your Tesla and put the car in camp mode, however, the Jackery charges slowly (at about 100 Watts) and the overhead associated with keeping your car in camp mode is about 300 to 400 Watts, so this is extremely inefficient. Charging more rapidly is possible, but may involve tapping into power intended for your stereo system speakers. Maybe people would like to discuss this below? Overall, this is doable and helpful for shorter power outages, but tends to be inefficient in the long run due to the slow charging speeds of the jacket batteries. Efficiency could be improved by finding faster ways to charge jacket batteries and figuring out camping or dog modes with the least overhead. Suggestions are welcome!
Scenario 2. Using a small jacket battery as an interface to a portable Dometic fridge for travel or camping. Traveling with a Dometic fridge in a Tesla is fairly common. A small jacket battery can really improve the efficiency and practicality of this. I use a Jackery 250 (0.25 kWh capacity), which is small, light-weight and quiet, to run a Dometic 65DZ. While driving one can either charge the Jackery or run the Dometic fridge directly from the 12 volt power of your Tesla. When you are not driving, you won’t need to use camp mode because the jacket battery can run your fridge for up to about 24 hours. You could go with a 0.5 kWh battery if you want more power. These cost roughly $1 per Watt-hour, that is, about $250 for the smaller battery, $500 for the 0.5 kWh one. Overall, this works great and is a big improvement, in my opinion, in terms of not having to keep your car in camp mode overnight and some other machination when you are not driving.
Scenario 1, running a home fridge, is limited by charging speed issues. These could be less of an issue with the CyberTruck, which will presumably have 110 volt outlets capable of about 1500 Watts which are active in camp mode. This would enable charging a 1 kWh jacket battery in an hour or so, which would be much more efficient. However, I don’t see any fundamental reason why a Tesla sedan cannot, in principle, be used to fast-charge a jacket battery. This would involve developing a practical way to tap into a roughly a 1000 Watt source on the Tesla, as well as developing a fast charger for a jacket battery. Suggestions are welcome and encouraged. I am hoping to develop a compendium of practical ideas for use of Tesla car energy for refrigeration during power outages and while traveling. (Yes, I do realize this is not the first thread on this topic and I would like to acknowledge that I have learned a lot from reading other threads on this topic.)
Summary of terms:
Watt is a unit of power. A kilowatt is 1000 Watts.
Kilowatt hour (kWh) is a unit of energy. A long-range model 3 battery holds about 75 kWh.
A home fridge uses about 1 kWh per day or about 1 to 2% of the capacity of a Tesla battery. (It does that by being “on” about 50% of the time and drawing 80 Watts when on, roughly.) A camping fridge such as the Dometic DZ65DZ uses about half that much energy per day. They key to running any refrigerator or cooler using energy from your Tesla battery is an intermediate battery in my opinion. The battery in your frunk is not well-suited to this task (too small). An additional 12 volt lead-acid battery is an option, however, a better and more practical choice is a lithium-ion battery system such as a Goal Zero Yeti, a Jackery or an Eco-Flow, to mention a few. These provide a useful buffer and can improve efficiency considerably in some scenarios. For brevity, I will call these “jacket batteries”: they include a battery made with cells like those in your Tesla, as well as built in inverters and converters that can supply 110 volt, 12 volt and 5 volt power fro your use. Let’s examine some specific scenarios here.
Scenario 1. Using a Jackery 1000 to run your home fridge and freezer: A Jackery 1000 can run your home fridge and freezer. It can handle to starting surges; it works fine and it is small, quiet and lightweight. (I am sure the Goal Zero, EcoFlow and other would work as well.) About 8 or 10 hours into a power outage you will need to charge your “jacket battery”. Here is where things get less than ideal. You can plug it into the 12 volt port in your Tesla and put the car in camp mode, however, the Jackery charges slowly (at about 100 Watts) and the overhead associated with keeping your car in camp mode is about 300 to 400 Watts, so this is extremely inefficient. Charging more rapidly is possible, but may involve tapping into power intended for your stereo system speakers. Maybe people would like to discuss this below? Overall, this is doable and helpful for shorter power outages, but tends to be inefficient in the long run due to the slow charging speeds of the jacket batteries. Efficiency could be improved by finding faster ways to charge jacket batteries and figuring out camping or dog modes with the least overhead. Suggestions are welcome!
Scenario 2. Using a small jacket battery as an interface to a portable Dometic fridge for travel or camping. Traveling with a Dometic fridge in a Tesla is fairly common. A small jacket battery can really improve the efficiency and practicality of this. I use a Jackery 250 (0.25 kWh capacity), which is small, light-weight and quiet, to run a Dometic 65DZ. While driving one can either charge the Jackery or run the Dometic fridge directly from the 12 volt power of your Tesla. When you are not driving, you won’t need to use camp mode because the jacket battery can run your fridge for up to about 24 hours. You could go with a 0.5 kWh battery if you want more power. These cost roughly $1 per Watt-hour, that is, about $250 for the smaller battery, $500 for the 0.5 kWh one. Overall, this works great and is a big improvement, in my opinion, in terms of not having to keep your car in camp mode overnight and some other machination when you are not driving.
Scenario 1, running a home fridge, is limited by charging speed issues. These could be less of an issue with the CyberTruck, which will presumably have 110 volt outlets capable of about 1500 Watts which are active in camp mode. This would enable charging a 1 kWh jacket battery in an hour or so, which would be much more efficient. However, I don’t see any fundamental reason why a Tesla sedan cannot, in principle, be used to fast-charge a jacket battery. This would involve developing a practical way to tap into a roughly a 1000 Watt source on the Tesla, as well as developing a fast charger for a jacket battery. Suggestions are welcome and encouraged. I am hoping to develop a compendium of practical ideas for use of Tesla car energy for refrigeration during power outages and while traveling. (Yes, I do realize this is not the first thread on this topic and I would like to acknowledge that I have learned a lot from reading other threads on this topic.)
You may want to re-read the master thread as several people including me have already addressed some of the topics you mentioned.
You can run Sentinel Mode on M3 for lower overhead ~200W compared to Camp Mode. For 1KW load you can easily connect to the DC-DC converter under the rear seat with 12V devices or an inverter for AC output. As for extended small load usage, it has already been pointed out that M3 overhead makes it inefficient for such usage scenario. So, a portable power station makes sense as long it has enough capacity to power the small loads long enough. As for charging power station fast, it's mostly limited by the power station's battery and charger.
Using your Dometic DZ65DZ example, it appears to have about 50W average power. So, you could use an *appropriate* power station to power it through the night (e.g. 12 hours) to avoid keeping M3 on all night and then charge the power station from M3 during the day to minimize M3 overhead consumption. Your Jackery 250 is not appropriate as it doesn't have enough capacity or adequate charger. On the other hand, an Ecoflow Delta or similar would be more appropriate. So, as example, Ecoflow Delta can power your Dometic DZ65DZ through the night for 12 hours resulting in 600Wh consumption. Then you can recharge the power station from M3 while in Sentinel Mode or driving during the day using its AC charger (up to 1.2KW) powered by a 1.5KW inverter connected to the DC-DC converter. The power station should be fully recharged well before starting the next night to repeat the cycle. Assuming you start with a full M3 battery (~75KWh) then you should be able to repeat cycles/days for weeks.
Thank you Cali84! I did go back and reread everything. Really interesting discussions!
So if I understand correctly, you are saying that I can wire, for example, a panel mount housing for 45 amp Anderson connectors (pic attached) somewhere near the DC-DC converter under the rear seat (with say 8 AWG wire) and I can then draw up to 45 + 45 = 90 amps with the car in Sentinel Mode, and the computer won't even mind? As long as I don't surge the current, the car will not complain or shut down or rat me out? Because that would be ideal for charging an Ecoflow Delta or the new Jackery 1500, which each accept about a 600 Watt charge rate.
So if I understand correctly, you are saying that I can wire, for example, a panel mount housing for 45 amp Anderson connectors (pic attached) somewhere near the DC-DC converter under the rear seat (with say 8 AWG wire) and I can then draw up to 45 + 45 = 90 amps with the car in Sentinel Mode, and the computer won't even mind? As long as I don't surge the current, the car will not complain or shut down or rat me out? Because that would be ideal for charging an Ecoflow Delta or the new Jackery 1500, which each accept about a 600 Watt charge rate.
Attachments
I haven't personally done it, but as I understand it, the car will not complain about a continuous draw of 100A from the PCS terminals while the car is kept awake.
Just for those looking to use their Model 3 battery but are maybe nervous about lifting the seats and wiring a solution that may void warranty, another option to power a fridge over night is something like the Goal Zero Yeti 1000X, 1400X, 1500X (models constantly change), and get the "Yeti 12V charging cable" that they also offer. This 12V charging cable is rated for 120W output continuously, and can charge the Yeti even while it's providing power to AC devices.
This allows you to have enough surge and immediate power for a full size Fridge, Freezer, etc via the Yeti.. and also 'trickle charge' the Yeti constantly from the Model 3 battery.
If you take a full size fridge that uses 1.5-2.0 kWh per day (i.e. you open/close it, use it, etc), on average that Fridge is using 63-83W continuously, which is less than the 120W the 12V charging cable can provide.
It's not *super* efficient because as others have pointed out you have to run Sentry mode for another 200W draw, so worse case you're looking at 320W draw (* 24 hours = 7.7 kWh/day) if you're pulling at full tilt. Though for a LR Model 3 that's only a little more than 10% (assuming some other losses) per day.
Benefits:
- Doesn't void warranty (you're just pulling power from the 12V lighter socket)
- No custom wiring - just buy the Power station and the 12V adapter
- Using off the shelf hardware that has been around for some years
Cons:
- More expensive than some other solutions/DIY
- Less efficient than other solutions/DIY
This allows you to have enough surge and immediate power for a full size Fridge, Freezer, etc via the Yeti.. and also 'trickle charge' the Yeti constantly from the Model 3 battery.
If you take a full size fridge that uses 1.5-2.0 kWh per day (i.e. you open/close it, use it, etc), on average that Fridge is using 63-83W continuously, which is less than the 120W the 12V charging cable can provide.
It's not *super* efficient because as others have pointed out you have to run Sentry mode for another 200W draw, so worse case you're looking at 320W draw (* 24 hours = 7.7 kWh/day) if you're pulling at full tilt. Though for a LR Model 3 that's only a little more than 10% (assuming some other losses) per day.
Benefits:
- Doesn't void warranty (you're just pulling power from the 12V lighter socket)
- No custom wiring - just buy the Power station and the 12V adapter
- Using off the shelf hardware that has been around for some years
Cons:
- More expensive than some other solutions/DIY
- Less efficient than other solutions/DIY
90A would be no issue for the DC-DC converter but I would suggest bigger Anderson connectors. I use SB150 with 1/0 cables to minimize voltage drop and current draw. For your case, maybe SB120 and 2AWG?
BTW, I only used Ecoflow Delta as an example and not recommending it per se as I have no experience using it. Please do your own research to pick appropriate battery station.
For anyone not comfortable doing the wiring, you can always get your local custom audio pros to set it up for a fee. Custom audio guys use the DC-DC converter for high power amps that can easily draw 1000W+ without problems.
As for voiding warranty, it's a red herring. It's actually illegal in the US to automatically void warranty. Read the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Manufacturers must explicit show damages resulted directly from an aftermarket add-on in order to void warranty. The custom car audio industry knows this very well. Manufacturers like to put "warranty void if removed" stickers everywhere but they are not actually legally valid but they are good for scaring off uninformed consumers.
FlatSix911
Porsche 918 Hybrid
Beware- Tesla is now monitoring social media sites... Tesla voids your warranty if you try to power your home with your electric car battery pack - Electrek
Tesla owner Bob Schatz described his own setup in a post on the Tesla Owners Club Portland Facebook group (via Green on Twitter):
Over the next few days, the vehicle started sending alerts that the 12-volt battery needed replacing despite the shop saying that the battery seemed strong.
The Tesla service center said that the battery needed replacing, but they actually found this post on the Facebook group and said that his setup voided the warranty.
Tesla owner Bob Schatz described his own setup in a post on the Tesla Owners Club Portland Facebook group (via Green on Twitter):
Over the next few days, the vehicle started sending alerts that the 12-volt battery needed replacing despite the shop saying that the battery seemed strong.
The Tesla service center said that the battery needed replacing, but they actually found this post on the Facebook group and said that his setup voided the warranty.
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Just found this thread, I had my own thread here:
teslamotorsclub.com
I ended up writing my solution here:
How many amps can you get from the 12V system for emergency situations?
Question: Is there a better 12V bus I should tap into that gets more amps from the DC-DC converter than what is being sent to the battery (only a few amps it seems) Details: I'm interested in getting a decent amount of amps from my car while it's parked at home if I'm in a power emergency...
teslamotorsclub.com
I ended up writing my solution here:
Tesla has been watching social media sites for a long time, just like every other company does. According to your quote, they voided the warranty on his 12 volt battery (which is a roughly 80 dollar part) while your header makes it sound like they voided his entire car warranty, or his high voltage battery warranty.
FlatSix911
Porsche 918 Hybrid
The subject header is from Electrek as cited... not so sure about your interpretation of the warranty.
Tesla could always claim additional limitations to warranty coverage on all electronic systems... YMMV.
Thats Electrek's style, one reason why I pretty much ignore that website. I also didnt say tesla COULDNT fight to invalidate a warranty for the HV battery, I said that based on what you linked the person had a problem with the 12V and tesla didnt cover it (the 12V) because using the car like that puts additional strain on the 12V battery.... which is actually a fairly reasonable assumption.
The article title makes it sound like they denied a HV battery claim, or "the warranty" for the car was invalidated and this was proof of that, but thats not your fault, its electreks, but its par for the course with them.
Im not saying using it like this is a good idea, btw... just challenging the article stating that "The warranty" was invalidated making it sound like the HV battery warranty was stated to this person to be invalidated by tesla, rather than the 12v which is a cheap part they put additional stress on by using it in this manner.
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