Solar and battery storage

[kin]

That's what I was querying at Post 11.

Ok I better reread the whole thread again, lol!

 

[dirk362]

To be clear, whether it's V2L, V2H, or V2G, they are not all the same at the car end of the equation.
The point of V2G is that there is intelligence between the car batteries, your house supply, and the grid utility provider.
When say the grid would benefit from more power at peak times, with the right sort of automation and kit on-site at your house, you could offer to sell them some of your energy. Or indeed in reverse when you want power but only at non-peak rates. With the car being the energy storage unit in either case.
V2G is in its infancy.
Strangely, Wikipedia has a genuinely interesting entry for this. See here.

 

[BugEyed]

I’m confused now, MG4 had V2L, not V2G?

So how do you export energy back to grid?

You cannot export to the Grid from an MG4, the only option is V2L to run some appliances with significant potential safety issues. The output may not be a pure sine wave and certainly not phase synchronised with the grid.

V2G in the UK is currently only DC via Chademo, e.g. Nissan LEAF, with kit still approved mainly for testing.

 

[AlanIOW]

My first post here, I have an MG4 Trophy in White on order, hoping to get it soon.

I have been reading about V2L on the MG website here;

MG’s Guide to Vehicle Load Charging (V2L)

Vehicle load charging allows you to power electrical devices using your electric car battery. Learn more about this innovative technology and how it works here.

www.mg.co.uk

It seems to suggest [It actually says] you can sell excess energy from your battery to the grid;

" Better yet, you can actually make money thanks to vehicle load charging. You can sell the excess energy from your electric car battery back to the grid, just like those with solar panels do."

That would be fantastic, but how would it work?? This would be V2G not V2L.

Further down they mention V2H being a future possibility;

"There are even whispers that soon electric car batteries could power your whole house, not just the appliances inside, which can become useful in the event of a power cut."

Not sure we can rely on anything in this article, it seems all a bit optimistic and pie in the sky!!

Alan

 

[KAS118]

Interesting - thanks for posting that as I hadn't noticed it

 

[Prince of Darkness]

My first post here, I have an MG4 Trophy in White on order, hoping to get it soon.

I have been reading about V2L on the MG website here;

MG’s Guide to Vehicle Load Charging (V2L)

Vehicle load charging allows you to power electrical devices using your electric car battery. Learn more about this innovative technology and how it works here.

www.mg.co.uk

It seems to suggest [It actually says] you can sell excess energy from your battery to the grid;

" Better yet, you can actually make money thanks to vehicle load charging. You can sell the excess energy from your electric car battery back to the grid, just like those with solar panels do."

That would be fantastic, but how would it work?? This would be V2G not V2L.

Further down they mention V2H being a future possibility;

"There are even whispers that soon electric car batteries could power your whole house, not just the appliances inside, which can become useful in the event of a power cut."

Not sure we can rely on anything in this article, it seems all a bit optimistic and pie in the sky!!

Alan

 

[Prince of Darkness]

I know a little bit about this but not a lot take it with a pinch of salt

the VTL is to run loads or combined loads of 2kw from the car onboard invertor

your house power from the grid

if you were to connect VTL to your consumable unit you would have un phased supplies and voltages differences FIRST YOU WOULD GET A BRIGHT LIGHT FOLLOWED BY SMOKE and lights out.

i have experience hence my name on here POD

unless you have synchronisation connected to the car invertor somehow and this is not advisable
you can run vtl into the house as long as connected in isolation
running loads of the VTL cable independently

I have some experience black starting 40 mw but iam not electrician

 

[Hairyfool]

I suspect everything is automatic now but when an aircraft engineer we used to have similar problems with multi engine AC generators.

On the engineers panel would be a set of dials not dissimilar to a compass. If a generator was off line its dial would be spinning furiously. As it came up to speed its dial would slow until it came to a stop. Then it would nudge round until it was also pointing in the same direction as the others. This indicated that it was now at the same speed AND in phase with the bus bar it needed to connect to, only then could the contactor be activated. If that wasn't done the drive shaft shear point would snap and that was the generator off line until replaced.

With domestic AC if trying to connect a second AC supply to the grid exactly the same would be required. The AC would have to be exactly the same frequency and phase before being connected for V2G to work. The same is also true of the inverter associated with a solar PV system. All modern EVs have the inverter, only those certified for V2G will have the control systems to ensure phase lock before connection.

 

[dirk362]

You cannot compare a solar PV battery setup with an EV car battery. The capabilities of the inverters and phase matching are entirely different, and they work differently.

MG can't magically add V2G without some sort of changes on the MG4 so that it does all the checks and power adjustments before trying to send power out of the battery.
Only time will tell if they have the ability to do this via firmware, but these sorts of changes are fairly large in the scope of the electrics and BMS.

Personally, I see the MG website detail about V2L, V2G, more around future capability and future revisions of the car. It's a bit like they said it can do 800V, which it can't but they have the ability with a refresh to change the hardware to support that. This is of course true of any EV, so it's marketing BS.

 

[BugEyed]

The standards to do V2G via either AC (using the cars inverter) or DC (using an external inverter) connection exist, and both have been demonstrated with some medium scale public tests in the UK. But at present there's no commercially available charge point for either, and there's significant issues regarding the security of the connections. It will happen, but not soon.

 

[kin]

Most don't for safety reasons. To do it you need to "island" (disconnect) from the grid, swap to a local Earth, then connect specific circuits only to the inverter via a changeover switch with the correct type of RCD (B type for DC blinding protection).

I was talking to another company re power back up from battery, he said I’d need to install a earthing rod , they’ll connect their Solis hybrid inverter via a separate consumer unit, he went on a little bit and he sounded like really easy, most went right over me to be honest?
Does that sound about right to you?

 

[kin]

The alternative that some (including me) have is a separate "emergency" socket that I can connect specific devices via extension leads.

Am I right in saying this emergency socket is coming out of your battery? Is there a provision from the battery to install a socket to run power off it?
Do you have a pic?
Apologies for all the questions!!

 

[Hotlush]

Am I right in saying this emergency socket is coming out of your battery? Is there a provision from the battery to install a socket to run power off it?
Do you have a pic?
Apologies for all the questions!!

Can only speak for my inverter, Solis Hybrid.
There is an AC backup outlet, not used on mine. Idea is you'd have a separate consumer unit and connect "critical" loads to that.
In the event of a power cut it will just power that, rather than the whole house.
My installer has been posting about the subject recently, albeit with different equipment than they currently install;

 

[Johnny 5 is alive]

I've been solar charging my MG5EV for the last 6 months using a cheap bank of 16 leisure batteries, works well. 18 250w ex-farm panels £50 each and a hybrid 5kw/10kw burst charge controller / inverter.
Generates about 15-20 kw/h per sunny day, runs the car and the house so I only pay a standing charge.
That will probably change during the winter though!

 

[Ian Morton]

I’m interested in the solar and battery storage, I’ve registered with First4solar after watching Electric vehicle Man on YouTube, but they still have not got in touch yet?
Could anyone recommend me a reputable supplier/installer in the NW area, I’m based in Manchester.
I also have one question, should we have black out, would the battery storage takes over and power the house up?

Any advices would be much appreciated.

I've I stalled Givenergy Energy 8.2 Kw

I’m interested in the solar and battery storage, I’ve registered with First4solar after watching Electric vehicle Man on YouTube, but they still have not got in touch yet?
Could anyone recommend me a reputable supplier/installer in the NW area, I’m based in Manchester.
I also have one question, should we have black out, would the battery storage takes over and power the house up?

Any advices would be much appreciated.

No. I've got a GivEnergy battery with a separate plug socket attached, so if there's a power cut I can plug things in that will work from the battery. I sked the question but apparently getting the battery to power the house if there's a power cut is complicated and very expensive. So I e got what I can. Cost me an extra £200 on the install as I recall

 

[Esi]

I’m interested in the solar and battery storage, I’ve registered with First4solar after watching Electric vehicle Man on YouTube, but they still have not got in touch yet?
Could anyone recommend me a reputable supplier/installer in the NW area, I’m based in Manchester.
I also have one question, should we have black out, would the battery storage takes over and power the house up?

Any advices would be much appreciated.

Hi
I used them a few years ago. The installation was good but the after sale service was really bad.
When I had an issue with the panels it took me 100 of calls and emails and 3 months for them to fix it

 

[Hairyfool]

I've I stalled Givenergy Energy 8.2 Kw

No. I've got a GivEnergy battery with a separate plug socket attached, so if there's a power cut I can plug things in that will work from the battery. I sked the question but apparently getting the battery to power the house if there's a power cut is complicated and very expensive. So I e got what I can. Cost me an extra £200 on the install as I recall

If you can get past expensive installer double speak then it's not that complicated.

As has been suggested a separate CU with the dedicated essential circuits on it. i.e. lighting, heating pump and boiler, a few key sockets on their own ring remembering that the standby power will be limited so not the oven. Wire this CU incomer to a 32A or 16A socket depending on what you can use it for.

On a spare fuse wire the matching plug on a short flying lead from the main CU. Similarly fit the standby power with a matching flying lead.

The setup tends to get expensive when you try to automate the process with make before break relays, supply sensors etc. and controllers. If you make it that the only way you can connect in the standby power is by disconnecting the grid supply 1st you are complying with the DNOs requirements to prevent the two supplies connecting together. Grid goes off, disconnect the grid powered CU from the standby CU and plug in the standby power. If the grid comes back on the standby power is still isolated on its own CU and the only way to join the two CUs is to unplug the standby power.

So apart from the costs of splitting the loads between two CUs (which is inevitable) the cost is the socket and two plugs.

We used to get regular power cuts so when the house was being rewired I discussed such an option with the sparks. It was him that pointed out that the requirements are only that the two supplies cannot be connected at the same time to the same CU. Since then the DNO has made major improvements and our longest outage in the last 8 years has been 3 hours.

 

[kin]

I’ve given up the idea of powering up the house after black out, too complicated and expensive!
I’ll keep it simple with solar and battery with a separate plug socket, same sort of set up as @Ian Morton but my output would be far less, probably around 3kw with 6-9kw battery as I only wanted solar on my double garage. This from my estimation should be enough to cover daily household energy consumption during summer time? Except car charging of course.

 

[BugEyed]

If you can get past expensive installer double speak then it's not that complicated.

So apart from the costs of splitting the loads between two CUs (which is inevitable) the cost is the socket and two plugs.

I'd suggest that anyone thinking of doing this get professional advice as there's a lot more to it than this legally and safely.

 

[BugEyed]

around 3kw with 6-9kw battery as I only wanted solar on my double garage. This from my estimation should be enough to cover daily household energy consumption during summer time?

It all depends on your typical daytime usage, but it should be plenty. It should cover your background usage from storage alone in the winter allowing you to timeshift that to a cheaper overnight rate if such things still exist after the current Government madness.