Cybertruck doubles as home battery storage

[OilHammer]

While I’m not a personal fan of the cybertruck design aesthetic, the capabilities that are coming out are interesting. They recently announced that you can sell power from the truck back to the grid. It has the equivalent of 9 powerwall units so that’s a substantial amount of power.

Interesting scenario- let’s say you are retired and don’t drive all day long, this means your cybertruck can replace using a battery backup for your house. Panels can charge the truck if it’s there or sell to the grid when it’s not.

Scenario 2- Lets say you are CEO of your business but don’t own the building. If land lord permits, you could set up temp solar at work to charge all day long then drive home and power the house all night long.

The future is starting to look a whole lot like the power company has less importance until they figure out how to tax you differently.

 

[Hulk]

The Ford F-150 Lightning can do this too. Ford even has a web page about using it to power your home during outages.

https://www.ford.com/support/how-tos/electric-vehicles/home-charging/what-is-ford-home-backup-power/

 

[OilHammer]

Regardless of the brand, the tech is moving in a direction that makes sense. What got me started on this was wondering if people like Nak were taking Prius batteries and converting them to home batts. Seems like something he would try!

The real game changer will be hot swappable batts where you could have three in rotation. Leave two at home charging then swap one out when you get home from work.

 

[brettf]

Some discussion in the neighborhood on this. What's the limitation on other vehicles that have huge battery capacity but CANNOT send power back to the panel? I assume that's a hardware limitation of that vehicle? Or both hardware and software? Seems like if it was just software, these companies would be updating in order to charge directionally and market that capability.

 

[OilHammer]

I assume it’s software and lawyers.

 

[MileHigh80Guy]

The Ford F-150 Lightning can do this too. Ford even has a web page about using it to power your home during outages.

https://www.ford.com/support/how-tos/electric-vehicles/home-charging/what-is-ford-home-backup-power/

Can confirm, used it with my fridge and a couple neighbors freezers when Xcel tried to limit their future lawsuits in West Denver.

 

[txanm]

One easy thing to do is to wire in a bypass to run your furnace if you have one that heats by natural gas. Your furnace runs on a 20amp 110 breaker so when the grid is shutoff due to wind and it’s super cold out you can still heat your home with a small generator or your car.

I have 3x 10kWh battery banks on my system already and I’m trying to get to the point of dumping all the battery to the grid at the last hour of peak pricing. It’s a game of trying to maximize the crappy payout of these systems.

One additional thing I did run across with the solar install is you can only go to one 200amp panel with the system. I have a couple 200amp panels after remodel and had to choose which panel I powered with my system. It took some wiring changes to ensure I have my AC and furnace together on this panel. Food for thought on anybody looking at going solar. I’m sure I could run a disconnect or something between panels if needed but that isn’t code compliant from what I was told during the install.

 

[MileHigh80Guy]

Some discussion in the neighborhood on this. What's the limitation on other vehicles that have huge battery capacity but CANNOT send power back to the panel? I assume that's a hardware limitation of that vehicle? Or both hardware and software? Seems like if it was just software, these companies would be updating in order to charge directionally and market that capability.

For the F-150s, you need to have specific package for "on board power" package, $500 one time fee (although I think that may be for the last 2 model years only?), then you need the 80amp home charger from Ford, THEN you need the breaker box switch over connection wired to the main circuit in the house, same as normal auto switchover generator system has.

The only benefit to the above is that its all automagic for the cutover.

There are of course, other methods to get creative with wiring using backfed 120v outlets and turning the main and that circuit off, or you could use the 240v bed power output into a 240v generator connect for the whole home too.

In my case, we just plugged the fridges into the 120v frunk and bed outlets, went to the inlaws for the night and work the next. 2 days later, barely used 10% of the battery running 2 fridges and a freezer.