Looking at options to power house during power outages, of course there is a power wall but we already have a model y with a big battery, is there a way to rig that up?
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Powering house with a Tesla during blackout?
- Thread starter tander
- Start date
Currently, your only real option is to connect a 2 kW 12 volt inverter to the 12 volt system under the rear passenger’s seat. The 12 volt system isn’t capable of supplying much more than 2 kW, so you probably won’t be able to power your entire house.
MASTER THREAD: Powering house or other things with Model 3 12V battery
the short answer is, no, there is no way to currently power your whole home from your car. The thread linked can give you some options on possibly powering your fridge or something.
Thanks for the link, seems like it would be great to be able to do, although I'm guessing it would eat into power wall sales
stopcrazypp
Well-Known Member
That plus it complicates the battery warranty. They very much do not want you putting significant amounts of non-driving wear on the pack.
That's understandable but for for emergency type things like in Texas it seems like a no brainer and really almost negligent for Tesla not to open it up for that, I mean it's kinda crazy to have this giant battery on wheels parked at a house with no power or heat, my back of the napkin math is a Tesla could power a furnace in a house for at least 3 days probably more, could literally save lives when you consider elders sleeping in 30-40 degree homes.
Personal opinion (which I have stated here on quite a few occasions)
There is ZERO chance that tesla will ever enable something like this for people who do not already have the infrastructure in place to safely automatically switch to a microgrid state ( read tesla's gateway, that gets installed when you purchase a powerwall).
There are a number of reasons why I believe this to be the case:
1. Its not safe for people to run their homes off their cars without some sort of automatic disconnect from the grid, because while work is going on by linemen / linewomen on the lines, someone WOULD forget to turn off the main breaker, and thus risk electrocuting people who are working on the lines who expect the lines to be de energized. It would happen, 100%, unless there was something to automatically disconnect.
2. People with free unlimited supercharging would expect to drive their car to a supercharger, go back home and run their home off that energy on a daily basis. It WOULD happen. The lines of model S and X owners lining up for their "free unlimited supercharging" tell you that its not a income thing for people wanting "free electricity".
3. People would do point 2 above, then, when they put an additional 5 years of usage on their car batteries (which I believe have slightly different makeup for stationary storage vs propulsion), would expect to exercise their battery warranties. Either tesla would have to do it, or claim "abuse" and all the bad press that would generate.
4. There is no business reason for tesla to enable this for anyone who doesnt have powerwalls already, because those people will already have all the permits, equipment and stuff to run in a microgrid state.
TL ; DR, there is virtually zero chance that this would ever happen for people who dont already have powerwalls. It makes a lot of sense for tesla to enable this (eventually) for people who DO have powerwalls, because they have the equipment to prevent injury to linepeople working on the lines, and it also makes business sense.
it makes no business sense for tesla to do otherwise, but it doesnt stop people from saying "I expect to use my car like a rolling powerwall". I just dont see it happening for people who havent already purchased powerwalls, with the accompanying permits, equipment etc in place.
All good points but imo it seems like like would be pretty easy for Tesla to software allow it for any car that is in a county that has a declared emergency or extreme weather or something like that. Also I wasn't talking about running an entire home from it, I just want to be able to basically run an extension cord from a Tesla to my Grandma's gas furnace fan which I don't think would pose a threat to any electrical workers. We're still looking at the details but as I understand it draws a maximum of 800w, so that would provide several days of full heat or many days of partial heating (enough to keep pipes and Grandma's from freezing) of a single charge. The biggest hindrance I see is if you allow that then Powerwalls seem a lot less attractive to people who could basically get the same thing with a car.
Can't see any way that not providing this could be described as "negligent".
Its too easy to look at something, not understand it, then erroneously extrapolate features to get to an inaccurate conclusion.
The hypothesis is that Tesla doesn't provide it because they want to sell Powerwalls - maybe, just maybe they don't provide it because there is no way for them to safely do it with currently delivered hardware.
V2G systems all rely on a whole set of house and vehicle systems to be in place and working together.
Not sure what software update could add the needed hardware to do this, or is there a suggestion that maybe all Teslas have a hidden 120v outlet installed that's just waiting to be enabled by OTA update.
Its too easy to look at something, not understand it, then erroneously extrapolate features to get to an inaccurate conclusion.
The hypothesis is that Tesla doesn't provide it because they want to sell Powerwalls - maybe, just maybe they don't provide it because there is no way for them to safely do it with currently delivered hardware.
V2G systems all rely on a whole set of house and vehicle systems to be in place and working together.
Not sure what software update could add the needed hardware to do this, or is there a suggestion that maybe all Teslas have a hidden 120v outlet installed that's just waiting to be enabled by OTA update.
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