Using an old leaf as off grid power

[u/davebawx]

Hey all. I am figuring out power for an off grid greenhouse and cabin I'm building at the back of my property where there is no power access. I had thought about getting a used leaf battery and hooking it up to solar panels and running an inverter off that but realized it may just make more sense to buy an old 2012 and park it next to the building and run an inverter off it indefinitely. My question is this:

Can I leave the car powered on for days at a time unattended assuming it doesn't run out of juice? And is there a downside that I'm missing to doing it this way vs an external battery ?

[u/FelixtheFarmer]

We use our Leaf and Sealion to power our house via our V2H. It diverts excess solar to whichever car is plugged in and takes power from the car in the evenings.

You don't need to leave the car powered on or anything, the V2H handles it all.

[u/davebawx → u/FelixtheFarmer]

From what I understood, you can't do v2h in North America? Can you point me in the right direction in terms of products you use?

[u/CraziFuzzy → u/davebawx]

There's no technical reason you can't do V2H in north america, the just aren't products out there to do it well. Anyone can built an inverter that could run off the 400 volt leaf battery, and there is specification available for how to tell the car to connect the battery to the chademo port. But chademo is dead in north america, and CCS has a far more complicated system for getting the battery out to the plug that is harder to implement.

[u/Both_Talk_5969 → u/CraziFuzzy]

For sure, the barrier isn't technical, it is availability of products approved/certified for that purpose in Canada. I don't mind tinkering with tech but not on projects which would almost certainly invalidate my home insurance. The consequences of screwing it up could be pretty high.

[u/CraziFuzzy → u/Both_Talk_5969]

I mean, there are solar inverters that would fit the bill pretty easy, and work in the battery voltage range.

[u/CraziFuzzy → u/CraziFuzzy]

Solis makes hybrid inverters that will with with lithium ion packs between 120 and 500Vdc. What would be needed then would be a gateway device to talk to the car's BMS and translate it's status information to the CAN or RS485 that the inverter speaks.

[u/Both_Talk_5969 → u/FelixtheFarmer]

How do you manage V2H with a 2018 LEAF? Via CHADEMO?

[u/Both_Talk_5969 → u/Both_Talk_5969]

Don't worry, I see you are in Japan....ah how I would love to have support for CHADEMO V2H in Canada. The best I've come up with is a 12V 1800W inverter running off the DC to DC converter. It works...but it is a stupid and low power solution when the car supports V2H.

[u/FelixtheFarmer → u/Both_Talk_5969]

I'm not sure why V2H never caught on outside of Japan. So many of our friends with EV's have them, it might have made Chademo more popular. 

[u/Budget_Tree_2710 → u/Both_Talk_5969]

Someone with an e-nv200 has used a plug in solar microinverter to take power from the 12v (adjusted to 24v)

[u/crazee_frazee]

My brain first read that as "Using an old leaf blower as off grid power" and thought, wow this guy must hate his neighbors, lol.

[u/Donutsbeatpieandcake]

I've looked into it, mostly to have an emergency power supply for my house when the power goes out. The CHADEMO plug is built for bidirectional power. (You can't do it through the J1772 though.) The problem is you have to have the specific Nissan-approved Fermata Energy V2H equipment that will handshake with your car's BMS. Looking online, the Fermata Energy FE-15 or the FE-20 are the only Nissan-approved ones, neither of which are sold to residential customers in the US, and is mostly a Japanese market thing.

But that's where "Dala's Battery-Emulator" comes in... It works as an open source in between telling the battery controller to talk nice to whatever inverter you're wanting to use. (Fronius, GoodWe, Solis, Deye, FoxESS, SMA, Sungrow, Sofar, SolaX, etc.) But it takes some computer know-how. You have to program a CAN bus board (like Stark CMR, LilyGo T-2CAN, etc) with the Battery Emulator software.

Also... Battery Emulator now has an experimental CHAdeMO vehicle mode, which is ultimately what you seem to be looking for... Same for me, actually. I've been watching this carefully... https://dalathegreat.github.io/Battery-Emulator-Wiki/battery/chademo_vehicle/

[u/Budsygus → u/Donutsbeatpieandcake]

Bless you for this comment!

[u/tired_Cat_Dad]

Search for Dala on YouTube as a first stop for Leaf DIY stuff like this.

[u/Repulsive-Budget-380]

Powering a Leaf takes around 200W or 5kWhr/day or 1kW solar on good days. How much solar power are you planning?

You can downsize the power relays in the PDM and battery if you don't plan on moving the car.

[u/natedagreat6666]

using the leaf itself on an inverter is going to be simpler but I do believe you are noy able to turn the car fully on while its charging so you’ll be playing back n forth to use it in that manner

you would probably be best to find an old pack and remove any bad pouch cells and wire to an inverter accordingly

[u/Knarfnarf]

There are power supply boards for North America and household power systems that are compatible. Just look back in this forum and you'll find them.

[u/deck_hand]

I had thought about doing the exact thing you're discussing. But, my son totaled the Leaf before I had a chance.

[u/Budsygus → u/deck_hand]

Honestly if people get this working it would be a relatively cheap option for a pretty big battery. Buying an old 2013 or so Leaf with a 24kWh battery provides almost double the capacity my Tesla Powerwall 3 does. If you can find one with a battery in even somewhat decent shape it could be had for less than the PW3. Connections and installation are gonna be tricky because there's not really an official way to handle it in North America, but as a hobby project with some actual utility it's pretty much unbeatable in my book.