Many GivEnergy users will, like me, have an electric car. EVs will typically have a battery capacity 4 or more times the capacity of our home battery. We can transfer energy from home battery to car, but until now transfer from car to home battery has not been possible.
However some EVs now come with V2L (Vehicle to Load), which allows them to supply a 240v load from the car, typically up to 3.6kw.
It would certainly be very useful to be able to freely exchange energy between home and car, particularly in the event of an extended power cut.
Is there any way of connecting an EV with V2L to an AIO with gateway? Could it appear to the AIO to be a solar inverter?
I guess the issue is whether the car will synchronise its output to the home system.
It would be nice to think that GivEnergy are already working on on this, and might give us an update?
I asked about a month or so ago but got no answer.
Such a shame
V2L is still very much in it’s infancy, there have been trials but as yet this is not possible. The trials all used the old style CHAdeMO connector so if you had a Nissan leaf it was great. The challenge with V2 H/L/G is that the car battery manufacturers would need to account for additional cycles in their lifespan, something obviously they don’t want to do.
V2L is now part of the CCS standard, and is available in an increasing number of number of EVs. I am aware of many Kia and Hyundai models, the MG range, the new Renault 5, and it is coming soon on the Volvo EX30. No doubt there are others. If the manufacturers are providing V2L, it would appear that they are not greatly concerned about the increase in the number of EV battery cycles which its use would involve; EV battery life is not proving to be a problem.
And many think that Vehicle to Grid has a significant role to play in smoothing the peaks on the National Grid. I am keen to encourage GivEnergy to play a positive role in this interesting development.
Your cause is a nobble one sir and I salute you as I would also like to see this :)
There is a difference here between V2L, V2G and V2H
| Feature | V2L | V2G | V2H |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power Target | Individual devices | Utility grid | Entire home |
| Equipment Needed | Onboard inverter/outlet | Bidirectional charger, grid interface | Bidirectional home charger |
| Use Case | Camping, emergencies | Grid stabilization, revenue | Home backup, tariff shaving |
| Grid Interaction | No | Yes | No (local use only) |
You are right V2L is going into many cars, but it’s intended purpose is not for powering a house or feeding into the grid. And this is probably why manufacturers are not worried about cycles and degradation.
Roughly, If I was to power my entire house including a HP using the car battery then in winter my battery would last about 2 days, equivalent to 450 miles of road use, over the period of one winter let’s say 30 days of battery cycles, 13000 miles of battery use , suddenly that 8 year guarantee on the battery looks a little risky.
V2L is just that to a load, eg out camping, plug some appliances in.
In order to provide power to the home as an inverter, it would need to output a voltage higher than your home and maintain that with some feedback from teh grid itself. Like an iverter does with its associated grid meter.
V2L is not possible to power the AIO, or your home, while grid tied.
That’s interesting. Presumably V2H and in particular V2G are designed to deal with the issues you raise, and they are coming soon to some models. Will that help?
The interesting one to watch at the moment would be SigEnergy (similar to the upcoming new AIO design)
They have an inverter, with battery packs 4 or 8 kWh. They say one of these battery packs can be replaced with an EVC that does V2H/G.
Australia have also signed V2G off at all public charging points going forward, so this may have an impact on cars being produced that offer this functionality.
This is clearly a technology to watch but from all that I’ve seen, the standards aren’t there yet nor are the manufacturers of EV’s or the government/DNO’s.
When the standards and the manufacturers do get there it’s likely to be incompatible with the existing EV’s and battery storage systems we have as they were not designed for the future standard.
So like many other technological innovations we either hold back and wait for the standards to evolve, or we buy now and have to live with a future replacement being needed.
IMHO when we do get to true V2H or V2G then the home battery market as we see it now will cease to exist as we’ll have a far larger battery sitting on the drive.
My question is similar, not having a gateway , in a power cut my solar stopped generating .
If I turn the DNO switch to off !
Could I plug my Honda E into a 3 pin socket to ‘fool’ the GivEnergy inverter into thinking it has grid power and then start generating and I could run my fridge and internet….