I be amazed if you find a fully commercialised bi-directional proposition at the moment. Still very much in its infancy.
I had assumed that it had been a thing for a while, do you know if the situation changes if you also have a home battery and/or solar?
Nope, there are some closed trials happening with a very limited range of compatible cars, on a very limited range of compatible EVSEs, with a very limited number of power operators.
Theyâve been going for 2-3 years. Itâs very slow going. I donât think anything mainstream is around the corner.
Well thatâs annoying, it was going to be part of my sales pitch. My wife is not that keen on automatic cars.
Slightly surprising that there is anything being done, I thought the operators would be more focused on home storage batteries for the reliability of them being attached when any smart demand stuff happens.
7 hours is good, but at what rate? Octopus Cosy gives 8 hours (4-7, 13-17, 22-00) at half price.
Last winter we didnât pay for any higher rate power by charging the batteries during the three low rate periods.
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Rates are in image posted above, 6.2p, think I prefer overnight cheap rate as the EV would be guaranteed to be at home. But if I canât power the house or feed into the grid from the car I am less tempted to move to an EV.
Maybe have a static battery pack as well as an EV, then you can have the best of all worlds.
I donât particularly like automatic cars, as you canât be quite sure of how much power youâll get when you press the accelerator - the delay and uncertain gear changes can be a thing, albeit better in recent years.
But EVs are totally different to drive. You press they go, no delay, no gear change, just works like a go kart. In terms of the general driving experience, I think that EVs are streets ahead of any other option. Why not take her on a test drive?
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We will test a few before deciding but at the same time I am also hesitant to commit until the car is part of the home power system. Home battery costs are a joke compared to car battery capacity where you also get a car!
The problem with having the car as part of the home battery system is around capacity.
A home battery can be at 70% of capacity and you donât care. A 20kWh system versus 30, whatever. If youâre bothered just get another battery. But if your car battery is at 70% capacity you have shit range and your car is fucked, and itâs proper money to fix. Overusing your car battery for a fairly trivial purpose could bite you.
There are some niche use cases where people might be fine with not knowing if their car battery will be on 40% or 80% in the morning, or are willing to spend time thinking about it every day, you may be one. But for most people, I think that separating car battery and home battery makes good sense.
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Fully understand but would be leasing for 3 years at a time
Umm, not so much. A typical car battery is 70kWh capacity. A house drawing 28kWh from a battery overnight would be quite unusual. Most scenarios would have the battery charging on cheap rate electricity at that time.
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Iâm thinking of when the car might be more depleted. So assuming daily home user is, say, 30kWh, car charged up overnight to 60kWh, depleted over the day so in the evening itâs at maybe 40%.
Itâs fine, it all works until granny calls, sheâs had a fall and your car isnât charged enough to get there.
If you have a 10-20kWh home battery then your car wonât need to do much, that would work, but just using a car for this Iâm not sure I can really get behind.
Really not. Our underlying use is 10kWh per day with 3-4kWh for hot water.
Youâre creating edge cases to dismiss whatâs fundamentally a good idea.
Probably true! I just think that an actual home battery is a great idea, whereas using the car battery for the same purpose has more downsides.
We have a 3 phase Zappi, but dont know if it is bi
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Thanks Simon, will have a look but it seems that it is some way off for now, As Mark said there are some trials but no mainstream solution as yet.
I did my usual âCan I DIY itâ rabbit hole then common sense took over thankfully.
We have an etron milk float and 3 phase zappi.
We dont have solar or batteries yet. We charge the car overnight on cheap rate, and the rest if the house obvs also runs at cheap rate, so dishwasher, washing machine and tumble drier increasingly run overnight.
Our car fuel cost went from about 23p per mile to 7p per mile when we switched from diesel to leccy.
I would never use the car battery to run the house tbh even if i could
But i have looked at batteries without solar to charge overnight and run the house and hot water during the day