There are a lot of people throughout the world that power their homes via solar power and are able to sell the extra electricity they generate back to the grid. It’s not going to take care of your retirement but you may be able to make a couple of bucks here and there to buy yourself some lunch. Car manufacturers are slowly jumping on the EV bandwagon and probably even more so after Tesla opened up its EV technology patents to speed up development of the electric vehicles. The next decade or so should be pretty exciting when it comes to EV technology. Nissan is already on to something cool.
The Nissan Leaf to Home system is able to convert any of the company’s electric vehicles into a charging station which can potentially power your home for up to two days depending on usage of electricity. This technology was first demonstrated by Nissan back in 2012 but is now making it to the marketplace with a few thousand already sold in Japan. Check out the video below of a demonstration in Barcelana.
The Nissan Leaf battery is capable of storing close to 20kWh of power which is able to keep your average home powered for a few hours of “light” use. “Light” use of a few hours for us means about two days of emergency power in Japan where the population typically uses less electricity in their homes. This Nissan Leaf to Home would be ideal when the power is down because of a natural disaster.
The sytem has an EV Power Station which connects between the vehicle and the home’s appliances. Once you connect the car, the unit distributes the power as needed until the battery in the Nissan Leaf is depleted. As you saw in the video above, the battery was powering a full size ice cream freezer with the electricity from the car’s batteries. Another interesting aspect of the system is that you are able to hook the car up to the power grid which means you will be selling electricity back to the grid. Even better if you charge your vehicle and run your home on solar power.
The Nissan Leaf to Home is selling for $4000 in Japan and the price will come down as new manufacturing partners jump on-board. The unit can also double up as a fast 6kW charger for your electric vehicle cutting the recharge time in from from eight hours to approximately four hours.
This is definitely cool technology and it should be interesting to see the development of this system over the next few years.
[Via Nissan Global]
