svetz
Works in theory! Practice? That's something else
Many people would like to have emergency backup up power for when the lights go out. But batteries are still pretty expensive (e.g., a BattleBorn is ~$800/kW and even the cheapest of DIY battery banks are still around $200/kW). If you're using a kW/h of power, than just for 8 hours you'd need ~9 kWh (taking losses and depth of discharge into account). For most people that's not practical as they can get a high kW rated generator for under $1000. But even buying a generator is still having to pay an extra $1000 for something you'll hopefully rarely use.
But suppose you could get emergency backup power, not have to pay anything extra, and not need to worry about storing fuels or extra maintenance?
Not sure how true it is... But when Dorian was threatening Florida just a bit ago, I heard Tesla offered to let owners reverse the power out of their cars (perhaps you needed their panels/powerwall or something).
Even if the Tesla story is an old wive's tale, EVs do have big batteries. Honda announced something called the Power Exporter to let you get backup power out of their EVs. It's been around for a while, but isn't released as far as I know (first heard about this in 2015).
So, perhaps you don't need a generator or battery bank for those emergencies? Perhaps a car-trade is a smarter approach.
Seems to good to be true, anyone know why we don't hear more on this?
Note: On the old forums @suneater posted an intriguing thought; vehicles were also portable power - so in the event of a crisis (e.g., natural disasters) neighbors could help neighbors. Hopefully he'll repost about his electric car (he's already doing this!)
But suppose you could get emergency backup power, not have to pay anything extra, and not need to worry about storing fuels or extra maintenance?
Even if the Tesla story is an old wive's tale, EVs do have big batteries. Honda announced something called the Power Exporter to let you get backup power out of their EVs. It's been around for a while, but isn't released as far as I know (first heard about this in 2015).
So, perhaps you don't need a generator or battery bank for those emergencies? Perhaps a car-trade is a smarter approach.
Seems to good to be true, anyone know why we don't hear more on this?
Note: On the old forums @suneater posted an intriguing thought; vehicles were also portable power - so in the event of a crisis (e.g., natural disasters) neighbors could help neighbors. Hopefully he'll repost about his electric car (he's already doing this!)