New user
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2 Messages
Are home chargers worthwhile?
We have been driving our 2021 Nissan leaf since FEB this year, We have solar panels and a Tesla battery. We generally don't drive more than 100KM a day - mainly short trips around town. We have never had to use a public charging station.
I see a lot of advertising for home wall chargers, but so far I have not seen much benefit except the ability to use a smart phone to check charge state.
A much more important use for us would be a reasonably priced V2h device, It will be very frustrating when we have our next power failure and we can currently only use the USB dash outlet off the 12V battery.
I have seen a good looking bi-directional charger available from Thailand - see https://deltathailand.com/en/products/Infrastructure/Energy/EV-Charging/AC-Charger/V2G or https://tinyurl.com/4s2p2v7r for the short version. But the cost is greater than US$ 3000 before shipping. :-((
Where to now? All the best - JohnS in warming Canberra Springtime.
PCLoadLetter
Bronze user
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52 Messages
2 years ago
Better to use the car as an air conditioned lifeboat with reclining seats and onboard entertainment systems during a power outage. Leave the fridge door closed, and/or buy a UPS for it. Let everything else stay offline until the power comes back.
At least you can run the car's air con in your garage, keeping the car under cover & out of the sun, without draining the starter battery or asphyxiating yourselves.
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Cotman
New user
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7 Messages
2 years ago
Assuming that you are asking about an EV car battery powering your home, not all EV allow V2H. Japanese cars do, I gather because in Japan cars form part of the grid balancing strategy. So Nissan is OK. The battery would need to be quite formidable to run the house in a serious outage and justify the cost of the wall system. One issue may be how energy efficient your house is. ie what is its baseline power consumption for mission critical uses. Your solar panel management system will probably give you that data which can be matched to the car and Tesla battery capacity to see just how much bangs you will get for the bucks to be spent over and above what the Tesla battery is giving you anyway.
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EVJourney
New user
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2 Messages
2 years ago
Charging using a standard 10A outlet isn't optimal for utilising your solar system because you can't take full advantage of the solar energy, unless you only have a small system. For example, say you have a 6kW solar system that generates more than 4kW over a 6 hour period of sunlight (24kWh of energy over the day). If you are only charging at 8A (the limit for many 10Amp socket chargers) this is only 2kW going into the car's battery. The rest of the solar power you are generating is going into the grid (at a tiny feed-in tarif) rather than charging your battery. Only 6 x 2kW = 12kWh goes into your battery.
However if you have a 7kW or 11kW charger installed at home, then you can set it to charge at 4kW and then you get the full 24kWh of solar energy going into your car's battery instead of back into the grid, saving you money.
Another advantage of having the 7kW or 11kW charger installed at home is the ability to charge your car from flat to full overnight. This isn't possible when charging from a standard 10A socket.
For more information on charging electric vehicles, see https://www.evjourney.com.au/evcharging
Happy electric motoring!
Oliver
(edited)
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Ecogreen
New user
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2 Messages
2 years ago
Try a solar diverter charger.
100% of the feed into the grid energy is now diverted In to your car. Changing for $0.
It's slow but you don't have to buy the energy. Once your car is full it will then diverted excess energy you make back into the grid.
Or use your cheaper off-peak power
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OldPhart
New user
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5 Messages
2 years ago
We have had an EVSE since late 2021. Initially it probably wasn't all that necessary as we just had a 40kWh Nissan Leaf, but now we also have a BYD Atto 3 and the ability to get some electrons into either car when required is worth the $1800 it cost to get it installed (a Zappi so slightly more expensive that some).
Ours is only single phase (up to 7kW/32A) as we couldn't justify getting three phase installed for future proofing.
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BernieG
New user
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3 Messages
2 years ago
Hi, There are charges which can charge
I have one of these and it will pay for itself. If you travel 100km, you will likely use less than 20kWhrs of power each day. That is probably more excess power than available from solar power with a 5 kW inverter but close if you are not using much power in the house, so you could top up on off-peak (about1/3 the cost of peak power). Such a charger will cost you a couple of $K to install but it will definitely pay for itself & give you a feel good home 'petrol charging station. I have a Zappi charger which does this for me 'automagically'. (Requires 6mm submain & gives a max 7 kWhr charge ie 3 hrs to charge 20 kWhr on mains power).
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Enforcer
Bronze user
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52 Messages
2 years ago
@JohnS ...... you originally posted this late last year, what have you done regarding getting a home charger? Did you recently go to the Fully Charged Show in Sydney? There were plenty of people to talk to and discuss with there.
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gonzoB
New user
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7 Messages
1 year ago
When I bought my MG ZS, I installed a 7kW wall unit. I didn't have solar, but I thought it was a good idea. I charged about twice a week.
I've just moved to an retirement village where I have access to only a 10A socket. It's changed my ideas on charging. We do, on average, 30km per day, and we plug in every day. That's about 3 hours charging per day. So, unless we were doing around 120 km per day, the standard 10A outlet will meet our needs. You get home, plug in, and when you come out in the morning it's charged.
If you have solar, it's a different matter, as you want to get the max benefit from the sun. You'll need a hi-speed wall unit under those conditions, and one that can optimise charging from solar.
Gonzo
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