Wallbox Quasar: seems like a great power backup option

[WattsHappening]

I know this isn't a Tesla energy product, but this seems like a good place for this discussion. What do you guys think? We're considering adding a PW, but we are looking strictly for protection against PG&E power outages. This seems like a great option for the 1-2 times per year power is going to be cut off. I know Tesla currently doesn't want us to output power from the car, but the article indicates Wallbox is planning to talk to Tesla.

https://electrek.co/2020/01/06/wallbox-quasar-tesla-nissan/

 

[AEdennis]

You will also need a vehicle that supports bi-directional DC...

And as far as I know, none of the Teslas have that...

 

[Odiemac]

A first gen Leaf or Kia Soul should work, and probably cost less than 2-3 powerwalls installed .

That being said, hopefully Tesla supports bi-directional soon. Elon’s been talking about it almost as long as he’s been talking about going to Mars.

If the Cybertruck has a 220V output inverter, couldn’t it just be plugged into a generator port on a house and provide power from its ~80-200kWh battery?

 

[JayClark]

My guess is for now Tesla might be reluctant to support bidirectional DC given the amount of either free or very cheap charging they provide via super chargers in most major communities. Peeps with free super charging could put 90-100k in their car, and then turn around and run their house for up to a week. I guess they could make bi-directions dependant on not having free supercharging.

 

[Odiemac]

My guess is for now Tesla might be reluctant to support bidirectional DC given the amount of either free or very cheap charging they provide via super chargers in most major communities. Peeps with free super charging could put 90-100k in their car, and then turn around and run their house for up to a week. I guess they could make bi-directions dependant on not having free supercharging.

The vertically integrated nature of Tesla means they can easily solve this issue if they have the will. They could release a new wall box that supports bi-directional and WiFi and pings the Supercharger servers to see if the vehicle's electrons came from a free Supercharge. They just seem to lack the will / priority on this.

As I mentioned, I'm not sure how the Cybertruck with its 220V could be prevented from providing whole-home access, and it looks to have the best cost-per-kWh on battery capacity in the Tesla lineup.

 

[Dan203]

I'd like this to offset the time of use power plan. I work at home, which means my Model 3 and it's 75kwh battery are just sitting in the garage during those peak summer days when my A/C is running up my bill. If I could fill up the car overnight when power is cheap ($0.05/kwh) and then use it to power the house during those peak hours when it's $0.42/kwh it could reduce my usage significantly.

I'm already having some solar panels installed to offset that a little, but I'm not getting a big enough system for it to completely run the house on those super hot days. I looked adding into powerwalls as well, but at $7k/ea for just 13kwh I'd need 3 of them to run my whole house during those peak summer days. Even with the solar panels and the off peak charging they'd never pay for themselves within the warranty period.

But I already have the car sitting in the garage. And I only drive about 6k miles a year. So if it drained 1/2-2/3 the battery to offset the A/C on a hot summer day it wouldn't really affect me at all. And if I knew I needed more range on a given day I'd just turn that functionality off to ensure the car retained it's full charge.

 

[cwerdna]

but we are looking strictly for protection against PG&E power outages. This seems like a great option for the 1-2 times per year power is going to be cut off.

I'm in Vegas for CES. I spoke to these guys at their booth yesterday.

It's not shipping in the US yet. They told me that it still requires a connection to the grid. It won't help in an outage in its current form. I mentioned I'm PG&E-land and already experienced two "PSPS". The guy told me the reason is that if you have no grid power and let's say you turn on an oven. Suddenly, there's a huge jump in demand and CHAdeMO doesn't let you do have that sudden sharp increase. I don't recall if the words he used were that it has to be a ramp up or in steps.

It's something they want to work on addressing. I recall him saying that many folks either wanted the outage protection or mention PG&E PSPS.

So, for now, it's only useful cases where you might want to store power from the grid at cheaper rates or use during more expensive periods. Or, (IIRC), it can be useful for those who want to store excess solar energy.

 

[miimura]

I'm in Vegas for CES. I spoke to these guys at their booth yesterday.

It's not shipping in the US yet. They told me that it still requires a connection to the grid. It won't help in an outage in its current form. I mentioned I'm PG&E-land and already experienced two "PSPS". The guy told me the reason is that if you have no grid power and let's say you turn on an oven. Suddenly, there's a huge jump in demand and CHAdeMO doesn't let you do have that sudden sharp increase. I don't recall if the words he used were that it has to be a ramp up or in steps.

It's something they want to work on addressing. I recall him saying that many folks either wanted the outage protection or mention PG&E PSPS.

So, for now, it's only useful cases where you might want to store power from the grid at cheaper rates or use during more expensive periods. Or, (IIRC), it can be useful for those who want to store excess solar energy.

Given this information, it's interesting that Electrek turned off commenting on their story. Their story pretty clearly indicated it was good for backup applications.

I think this still might be interesting as a runtime extender for a Powerwall system. The Powerwall can regulate the up and down demand from the house during a grid outage and this thing just pulls a relatively constant power out of the car to reduce the average demand from the house.

There is still a question about how it regulates power going into the house during normal grid operation. If you're trying to eliminate your Peak period usage you still have to ramp the power up and down to roughly match your consumption. It would be nice if they could do it wirelessly, talking directly to the SmartMeter instead of requiring a measurement device like a Neurio as Tesla does with the Powerwall system.

 

[WattsHappening]

I'm in Vegas for CES. I spoke to these guys at their booth yesterday.

It's not shipping in the US yet. They told me that it still requires a connection to the grid. It won't help in an outage in its current form. I mentioned I'm PG&E-land and already experienced two "PSPS". The guy told me the reason is that if you have no grid power and let's say you turn on an oven. Suddenly, there's a huge jump in demand and CHAdeMO doesn't let you do have that sudden sharp increase. I don't recall if the words he used were that it has to be a ramp up or in steps.

It's something they want to work on addressing. I recall him saying that many folks either wanted the outage protection or mention PG&E PSPS.

So, for now, it's only useful cases where you might want to store power from the grid at cheaper rates or use during more expensive periods. Or, (IIRC), it can be useful for those who want to store excess solar energy.

Good info; thanks.
So it sounds like there is still a ways to go. But I expect it's just a matter of time before viable solutions using EVs as power backups become available. It would be great if Tesla would come up with an elegant solution. I would pay several thousand dollars to Tesla. What I'm not willing to do is pay $20K for install of two PWs.

 

[jjrandorin]

Good info; thanks.
So it sounds like there is still a ways to go. But I expect it's just a matter of time before viable solutions using EVs as power backups become available. It would be great if Tesla would come up with an elegant solution. I would pay several thousand dollars to Tesla. What I'm not willing to do is pay $20K for install of two PWs.

My money is on any tesla solution involving "adding on" to existing powerwalls, not "instead of". What I mean is, since all the protections / gateway / shut offs / interconnection agreements are there for powerwall customers, I could see tesla designing 2 way communication between the car, and the powerwall gateway to enable the batteries in the car to supplement.

of course, not until ALL "free unlimited supercharging" is gone, because otherwise there absolutely would be people who would just attempt to supercharge, and then run their homes from it. They absolutely would, just like people now try to get their "free electricity" even though they have charging at home... because they can.

 

[Merrill]

Keep in mind that we are talking maybe 7 days a year that we need electricity during a psps. So having an option that does not cost $20,000 would be viable.

 

[miimura]

Keep in mind that we are talking maybe 7 days a year that we need electricity during a psps. So having an option that does not cost $20,000 would be viable.

For the 3 months a year that my solar doesn't generate enough energy for my Powerwalls to cover my Peak period usage, I would absolutely like to use my car to arbitrage some Off-Peak power after I get home in the evening. However, that's only going to save me $200/year so I don't think I'll be spending $4,000 for this piece of equipment.

 

[Dan203]

For the 3 months a year that my solar doesn't generate enough energy for my Powerwalls to cover my Peak period usage, I would absolutely like to use my car to arbitrage some Off-Peak power after I get home in the evening. However, that's only going to save me $200/year so I don't think I'll be spending $4,000 for this piece of equipment.

I work from home, so my car is typically sitting in the garage during the peak 1pm-6pm hours in the summer where the cost of the TOU plan jumps to $0.42/kwh. Allowing the car to run the house at that time could potentially save me a lot of money as I typically use about 5-6kwh per hour for those 5 hours. Having that reduced to the cheaper overnight rate of just $0.05/kwh stored in the car would save me almost $1,000 a year.

Right now my power company offers two options.... a TOU plan that spikes to $0.42/kwh from 1-6pm June-September and $0.15/kwh for the rest of the year between 5-9pm, then dropping to $0.06/kwh for off peak and $0.05/kwh for super off peak. Or a flat rate plan of $0.09/kwh all the time. I've run the numbers and fo4 me the flat rate plan is cheaper, mainly because of that $0.42/kwh spike in the summer where I'm running the A/C.

I am having some solar panels installed right now. (Tesla guy was here measuring stuff a couple days ago) So I'm going to see how much that cuts that peak time, since my roof faces west and they should be at their peak right at that time. If it's enough I'll switch to the TOU plan and see i& it saves me any money. (they have a 1 year guarantee where if you switch and it costa you more they'll switch you back and refund you the difference, so no risk)

I considered getting powerwalls too, but at $10k each and the fact I'd need 3 at peak usage times, they'd not really save me any money. But I already have the car, and it's just sitting in the garage, so if it could be used instead using an adapter like this I might consider it.

Although from what Ai understand this particular unit doesn’t run the house like a powerwall, it only feeds the grid in an attempt to offset your usage via net metering. We have wholesale net metering in my state, so they only pay you $0.07/kwh regardless of the time of day, so that wouldn’t really save me anything. I'd need one that could actually run the house like a powerwall.

 

[jjrandorin]

I work from home, so my car is typically sitting in the garage during the peak 1pm-6pm hours in the summer where the cost of the TOU plan jumps to $0.42/kwh. Allowing the car to run the house at that time could potentially save me a lot of money as I typically use about 5-6kwh per hour for those 5 hours. Having that reduced to the cheaper overnight rate of just $0.05/kwh stored in the car would save me almost $1,000 a year.

Right now my power company offers two options.... a TOU plan that spikes to $0.42/kwh from 1-6pm June-September and $0.15/kwh for the rest of the year between 5-9pm, then dropping to $0.06/kwh for off peak and $0.05/kwh for super off peak. Or a flat rate plan of $0.09/kwh all the time. I've run the numbers and fo4 me the flat rate plan is cheaper, mainly because of that $0.42/kwh spike in the summer where I'm running the A/C.

I am having some solar panels installed right now. (Tesla guy was here measuring stuff a couple days ago) So I'm going to see how much that cuts that peak time, since my roof faces west and they should be at their peak right at that time. If it's enough I'll switch to the TOU plan and see i& it saves me any money. (they have a 1 year guarantee where if you switch and it costa you more they'll switch you back and refund you the difference, so no risk)

I considered getting powerwalls too, but at $10k each and the fact I'd need 3 at peak usage times, they'd not really save me any money. But I already have the car, and it's just sitting in the garage, so if it could be used instead using an adapter like this I might consider it.

Although from what Ai understand this particular unit doesn’t run the house like a powerwall, it only feeds the grid in an attempt to offset your usage via net metering. We have wholesale net metering in my state, so they only pay you $0.07/kwh regardless of the time of day, so that wouldn’t really save me anything. I'd need one that could actually run the house like a powerwall.

I still feel that there is less than zero chance of tesla allowing this without powerwalls already in someones residence. I wouldnt plan on them allowing cars to just become powerwalls.

 

[Dan203]

I still feel that there is less than zero chance of tesla allowing this without powerwalls already in someones residence. I wouldnt plan on them allowing cars to just become powerwalls.

You're probably right, just for business reasons. They don’t want to undercut their powerwall sales. 13kwh for $10k probably garners them a hefty profit margin. Why would anyone bother if they have a 75-100kwh battery sitting in their garage.

Plus I'm not sure if the electronics in the car have the ability to send power in the other direction. The only reason this Quasar thing works is because the CHADeMo standard has that ability built in.

 

[israndy]

CHAdeMO standard supports bi-directional power exchange? So my Telsa adapter allows me to do that?

I hate the idea of burning thru my car's battery the way you eat up a Powerwall. It's expected life is like 8 years, hope you can pay it's existence back in that time, it will certainly be out of warranty anyway even if you were not cycling it every day (and if not, why did you buy it?)

 

[jjrandorin]

You're probably right, just for business reasons. They don’t want to undercut their powerwall sales. 13kwh for $10k probably garners them a hefty profit margin. Why would anyone bother if they have a 75-100kwh battery sitting in their garage.

Plus I'm not sure if the electronics in the car have the ability to send power in the other direction. The only reason this Quasar thing works is because the CHADeMo standard has that ability built in.

The Powerwalls are 6700 each, but third party installers tend to charge around 10k each, installed.

They are 6700 each, the gateway is 1100 (but only need 1) and then installation. My Out the door price right now is 18,234 and change, installed. Tesla is supposed to give me a 4% refund since they missed my install date late last year, and I will get 26% back on my taxes. So 5470 back, or 12,764 net cost to me.. or 6382 each (not counting any savings on electricity or the piece of mind it now gives me).

Anyway, thats not on topic for this thread, sorry. This unit is interesting, and the entire idea of using the car as a backup is VERY interesting. I just expect at some point, those of us that have powerwalls (and thus existing interconnect agreements, proven ability to automatically disconnect from the grid and not endanger linemen working on lines when power is out, etc) it would seem to be relatively simple for tesla to enable communication between car and gateway, and have the car charge the powerwall.

I dont like charging my car from my own solar on powerwalls because i liken it to using a AAA battery to charge a D battery (using powerwalls to charge the car). The reverse is using the car to charge the powerwalls, in an outage situation, would be like using a D battery to charge AAA batteries.. no issue at all.

I love the idea in general of using the car in a backup situation, I just think that tesla has no incentive to allow this with their cars, unless there is a powerwall installed, and lots of incentive to allow it with powerwall installed (financially as well).

 

[miimura]

CHAdeMO standard supports bi-directional power exchange? So my Telsa adapter allows me to do that?

I hate the idea of burning thru my car's battery the way you eat up a Powerwall. It's expected life is like 8 years, hope you can pay it's existence back in that time, it will certainly be out of warranty anyway even if you were not cycling it every day (and if not, why did you buy it?)

It is quite possible that Tesla will shut down the DC connection if it sees the power flowing out of the car through the CHAdeMO adapter. However, I've not heard of anybody trying it, so we don't know for sure.

 

[Dan203]

The Powerwalls are 6700 each, but third party installers tend to charge around 10k each, installed

When you're ordering Tesla solar it adds $10k to add a power wall. Maybe it's because they include the install and connection to the solar system?

With a warranty of just 8 years a single powerwall wouldn’t have saved me enough to even pay for itself at the rates my power company charges, so I opted out. That's actually true of the so,ar panels themselves as well. Even over 20 years they'll never pay for themselves, but I got those more to help offset my carbon footprint not to save money. But the powerwall just felt like a luxury. My solar panels aren’t going to generate enough to even run the house, so there will be little if any overage. They'll just reduce my usage of grid power. And even if I charged them late at night when power was cheap and used them during the peak of the TOU plan it would have taken almost 30 years to pay for themselves. And where I live power outages are rare and usually only last a few hours, so I don’t really have a need for a full house backup system.

 

[Dan203]

CHAdeMO standard supports bi-directional power exchange? So my Telsa adapter allows me to do that?

I hate the idea of burning thru my car's battery the way you eat up a Powerwall. It's expected life is like 8 years, hope you can pay it's existence back in that time, it will certainly be out of warranty anyway even if you were not cycling it every day (and if not, why did you buy it?)

I'm leasing so in 3 years it goes back to Tesla. Not really worried about the longevity of the battery.