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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Since I’m not familiar, can someone explain how powerco workers working to repair lines would be affected by households which get powered by their vehicle automatically when mains power goes out if their vehicle is plugged in? Is a switch going to auto trip to keep power from going out to the street?

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In general, the electrical code requires that you install a transfer switch that switches your home between grid and local power.

The easiest way to do this in the US is with a "lockout device" on the panel where you're mechanically prevented from turning on the generator feed breaker until you've turned off the main breaker, or you can use what is effectively a manual DPDT switch rated for house power. For automatic backup generators, there are automatic transfer systems that start the generator and switch without user action. I would hope part of Ford's solution is an integrated automatic transfer switch that only requires one heavy cable between the main panel and the charger/inlet, rather than the two that a traditional transfer switch would require.

FWIW The practical problem isn't really line workers (they assume all wires are live anyway), but rather that your local power generation won't work if it's trying to power the whole grid.

It wouldn’t affect it at all, the transfer switch for transferring from utility power to car battery power would be located after the service disconnect or meter socket, power isn’t backfed into the grid, since the transfer switch has lockout provisions to prevent it. This is a solved problem, backup generators have been around for a while.

Also, linesman assume that utility lines are hot.

I think the idea is that you plug the car after the mains switch, and you disconnect the mains from your utility when you use the car’s batteries as a source of current.

So it’s manual but it makes sense, you don’t want (yet) to send back energy to the network.

Maybe later on there’ll be a way for the energy network to broker power from plugger cars in the neighborhood.

That makes sense. I’m trying to make sense of this statement (which seems to indicate it’s happening automatically when no one is home):

>” If a weather event knocks out power, or if a car happens to hit a nearby electrical pole, the F-150 will seamlessly transfer its stored energy back into the home and automatically notify the owner via a push notification sent to their phone.”

I assume that they are implying the equivalent of an automatic transfer switch. It's not like Ford just invented the concept of a backup generator. Automated backup generators have existed for a long, long time. There are modifications and components required for your home.

Article says it's not manual: "F-150 will seamlessly transfer its stored energy back into the home and automatically notify the owner via a push notification sent to their phone"

Either the car has an automatic transfer switch built in, or they forgot an asterisk and the sentence “Provided you have an automatic transfer switch, that is also connected to the internet”

This comment reminds me of a Mac menubar app I once saw that had an interesting story behind it (which I only remember vaguely): the author lived in a Middle Eastern city with shoddy power delivery that municipal power cuts off a lot. "The market" has a solution in that there are people in the neighborhood who own generators and rent out connections to it so you could just run down stairs, and rewire your apartment's power to that generator. I don't even remember what the app does, a quick google gives me an iPhone app that has a schedule for your neighborhood, and mentioning the city as Beirut:

https://archive.is/qrZZr

> Sam says he doesn't buy backup juice for his apartment, which he rented last spring. Somewhere along the electrical wires cast like nets across the city, a bootlegged electrical line running from a generator was spliced in his favor: A single “magic” outlet powers his wireless router during outages. It’s one thing to be kept from doing your laundry, and another thing entirely to be kept from your friends or family. Besides, tracking down the generator owner responsible for this one outlet would be a journey of more than 1,001 nights. In the city of Beirut alone, there are roughly 12,000 generators and their owners. Though it is technically illegal, regulators have a hard time squashing the network, which has grown to cover most of the country. Officials aren’t so much paid off to look the other way; they’re paid because, it is said, they own some of the generators.

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