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Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

“At scale, when these vehicles are enabled to send energy back to the grid, flex alerts and notices of grid emergencies will be a thing completely of the past,”

He cannot possibly be that ignorant. Nobody is going to be willing to not only put cycles on their battery but risk being left with a half-charged vehicle during a grid failure.

Transforming a Lightning into a home generator requires Ford’s 80-amp charging station and a $3,895 home integration system from Sunrun Inc. Installation cost for the Sunrun system varies according to the home and location. The charging station comes with the extended-range version of the Lightning; it’s a $1,310 option for buyers of the standard 230 mile-range version of the pickup.

A nine kilowatt electric generator costs under a thousand dollars. What kind of idiot is going to shell out six grand just to drain his truck battery for the same purpose?

View on HN

A 9 kW generator that costs $1000 is going to be an open-frame, bottom of the barrel model. It'll be loud as hell, won't have an inverter so it runs at 3600 RPM (or 1800 RPM if you're lucky enough to have a 4-pole) constantly regardless of load, and as others have pointed out, requires a lot of maintenance. Not to mention, ones that large usually weigh about 200 lbs / 90 kg, and are not frequently hooked into your house's circuit so you will have to haul it out and hook loads up. Hope you understand how to safely run extension cords with heavy loading.

I have a 2.2 kW Honda that does have an inverter, is absurdly quiet, and sips fuel. I also have an extended fuel tank for it so it can run overnight. All of that, plus adequately sized extension cords, was somewhere around $2500. It's also still a pain in the ass to set up when it's necessary, but at least I get to run fridges, freezers, LAN, TV, fans, etc. I also have to do monthly load tests, source ethanol-free gas, rotate gas supplies, and practice running extension cords to everything so I'm not confused in the dark. Lest you think all of this is unnecessary prepper beliefs, I live in Texas (for now - about to move), and it has been required far more often than I'd like.

A standby generator that can run an entire house will run you $15-20K with installation, and that assumes you have natural gas plumbed to your house already. If you don't, you'll have to bury a LPG tank, or have an unsightly blob in your yard.

This feature of the Lightning is the major draw for me, and I am seriously considering it once they've proven themselves for a few years.

> source ethanol-free gas, rotate gas supplies,

Convert your generator to run on propane. In my experience, propane tends to be more available during natural disaster power outages than gasoline. And it's way less messy. But make sure you have a sufficient number of tanks in advance. Those tend to disappear when there's an outage.

> practice running extension cords to everything so I'm not confused in the dark.

Have an electrician install an inlet outside your house along with a transfer switch:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Reliance-Controls-10-Circuit-30-...

Instead of the transfer switch, your may also (depending upon your local code) be able to go with a simple lock out device in your panel like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Generator-Interlock-Kit-Breaker-Panel...

I would, but you lose about 400 watts due to the lower energy density of propane/LPG. This is already a small generator, and I usually am running it very close to its maximum.

If I had a bigger unit (Honda also makes a 3000 watt and 6500 watt model), or just had two of these in parallel, it would be worth consideration.

Re: transfer switch, again if I had a bigger unit I'd consider it, but I can run so few loads it didn't seem worthwhile. This is basically to keep food from spoiling, internet/TV going, and fans so we can sleep somewhat comfortably.

Honda is not the only game in town. I've been happy with my Champion. I have a non-inverter model because it was the only thing I could find days before a hurricane, which I then converted to natural gas. Champion has a few dual-fuel inverter models:

https://www.championpowerequipment.com/product/200994-4650-w...

I did the inlet and cutover switch install myself as well. I've got dual sub-panels but the circuits I wanted to power were all in my basement, so I've got it wired up for my kitchen fridge, a basement chest freezer, basement sump pump, and a few light and electrical outlet circuits. I can't run my normal HVAC, but I can run a portable HVAC I purchased that's sufficient for my basement in a pinch.

I was in Miami for Hurricane Andrew and have some fun stories about generators, extension cords, and siphoning gasoline out of our cars.

Meanwhile my uncle on Long Island is having a whole-house generator installed this summer, including burying a propane tank. I think he's spending something like $15K on that.

or just had two of these in parallel, it would be worth consideration.

--- That actually doubles your risk of failure, better to go with one big one.

It also doubles your likelihood of having at least one working generator in the presence of failures. Depending on how many of your loads are critical, it might be a better bet to have two in parallel. Best case you can run more, worst case you can run the essentials just like now. Also it might be a cheaper upgrade path. Instead of throwing away or reselling the existing smaller generator to buy a larger one, just add another of the same thing you already have to your system. Finally, you could have three smaller generators and get N+1 redundancy for cheaper than two larger generators.

The failure rate of Honda generators is vanishingly small; not a concern to me. However, when you step up to the 7000W (I forgot that they've discontinued the 6500W in favor of a bigger one) unit, you also get a 240V outlet, which makes wiring it into your house much more convenient. If you get a soft-start kit for your heat pump/AC, it can even run HVAC.

My problem is a bit different.

I have a healthy amount of solar but don't want to buy batteries (even in truck form).

The solar needs AC from the mains for some reason.

Is there some way to hookup a small generator to make the solar happy and then use the solar for power? (Yes, I'd have to disconnect everything from the grid.)

Let's assume that I don't try to use too much power. Will the solar be damaged if I don't use enough?

>Will the solar be damaged if I don't use enough?

Something will be damaged or the whole system will shut down. Typically grid-tied systems do not have the ability to dump excess power or throttle down panels to provide partial loads. You would be better off installing a proper battery-backed inverter, but depending on the wiring and design of the existing system, that might mean replacing everything except the panels, which is likely quite expensive.

My problem is a bit different.

I have a healthy amount of solar but don't want to buy batteries (even in truck form).

The solar needs AC from the mains for some reason.

Is there some way to hookup a small generator to make the solar happy and then use the solar for power? (Yes, I'd have to disconnect everything from the grid.)

Let's assume that I don't try to use too much power. Will the solar be damaged if I don't use enough?

A serious question. If power outages are that common that you need to have this backup, would you not consider a bank of LFP batteries and an inverter before you think of using your car for this? In case of a grid outage/emergency, having a car that is untethered to the house is handy right?

It's not the same, but my parents back in India have a few Lead acid batteries hooked up to an inverter to supply backup power when power outage occurs (about once a week). They have been doing this for decades now. I'm just wondering why a larger scale version of this with LFP batteries and may be solar panels to charge them wouldn't work where you are..

I've considered it, yeah. The truck's other advantage of course is that it's a truck. I have an older Honda Ridgeline that is perfect for me in terms of size (I don't tow anything, but frequently load the bed), but it is horrible on fuel consumption. 14 MPG (~ 17 L/100 km) or so is common for around town, 20 MPG (~12 L/100 km) on the highway if I'm lucky. With fuel costs rising as much as they do, it starts to make a little more sense.

The ROI on a new one would still be extremely long, but it starts to become more justifiable as features like this are added. If Ford makes an electric version of the Maverick - their small truck - it'll be a very easy decision, assuming it can still power a house.

On the other hand, I wonder if it will be able to compete with ICE trucks for pretty standard truck-things like towing. If it's anything like my Tesla, the range is going to fall off precipitously the moment anything touches that hitch, and if you're not graced with a California winter, doubly so (it's really a shame Tesla puts so much of its engineering in one locale or else it might've been more pressing to solve for this). And I'm guessing public chargers with room for a trailer/boat/etc are few and far between.

One test[0] put it at roughly half the range (150-160 miles) when towing near its rating of 10,000 lbs.

Personally I don't tow anything, I just use the bed to haul stuff, so I would probably see a minimal loss of range. Also, inter-city travel is unlikely to be affected as long as you can get back home at the end of the day.

[0] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/2022-ford-f150-lightning-...

> One test[0] put it at roughly half the range (150-160 miles) when towing near its rating of 10,000 lbs.

That's not bad.

> Also, inter-city travel is unlikely to be affected as long as you can get back home at the end of the day.

Agreed, but stuff like camping and boating is going to be limited, which is too bad because a giant battery would really open up the options for camping.

This isn't a truck for people gallivanting across the country with a camper in tow or the kind of guy that the local Sunbelt Rentals manager is on a first name basis with.

This is a truck for someone who has a commuter sedan and a Toyota Tacoma or Honda Odyssey parked in their garage somewhere the houses cost a million bucks and there are more Black Lives Matter signs than black people, i.e. the kind of person who would have bought a crew cab half ton a decade ago if daily driving one didn't make them feel like a backwards hick poisoning the climate.

I'm sure it will "do truck stuff" as well as any other F150 (OEMs don't play fast and loose with the reputation of flagship products like the F150) but the range will obviously be subject to the same tradeoffs as every other EV. but these are demographics that break out in a cold sweat at the idea of cramming five people in a compact car. They're gonna use the thing at a fraction of it's capability. Towing 10k will be a once a year thing if that. That should be fine for now as most buyers will just want to tow to home depot or the boat ramp.

The range will creep up over the coming years as batteries get better until finally the EV truck also makes sense guy who's towing the camper cross country.

I definitely know a lot of people who have felt torn between their guilt about ruining the planet with their gas guzzling SUVs and buying an electric vehicle from a company whose founder--though he supports gay marriage, drug legalization, environment, immigration, science, etc--says snarky things on the Internet. They would leap at the opportunity to buy a large electric vehicle from a company whose founder merely bought a newspaper and used it to spread racist propaganda.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford#Antisemitism_and_Th...

Actually this is a great truck for people "that the local Sunbelt Rentals manager is on a first name basis with." They often are working on projects with a generator, and typically are not far from where they sleep at night. The truck hauls tools from the hotel where they spent the night to the job and that is about it. Then they plug the tools into a generator - which this truck is.

At least in California, the fire code doesn't allow you to have a bank of batteries without building a dedicated room with active fire suppression for them. You need to prove (to your local fire department) that your array of batteries won't have a thermal runaway.

So, conveniently, the F-150 is a tested, self-enclosed array of batteries :).

Comparisons to developing countries usually forget about demand - the average electrical demand in a typical Indian home is hundreds of watts to a few kilowatts depending on how affluent the home is.

The average north american home has several kilowatts of connected loads, not to mention equipment that must run such as heating/cooling, large fridges and myriad electronics.

Banks of lead acid batteries can indeed work but they are large, may leak and always require some sort of hazard protection. You can get around all of this in a country with lax standards but are unlikely to do so in the west.

True. My parents actually have their apartment wired for "power groups that can run on inverter" and other power groups that will be without backup. Their power needs are substantially lower than an average American and European household. That is why I was wondering if this idea could be _scaled_ up.

I would not go around recommending anyone to buy Lead acid battery banks today. I'm in the midst of getting rid of the ones at my parents' too.

However, I found these LFP batteries where I live - NL for about 1K Euros [1] . They are 2.5KWh. Two or three of them and an inverter ought to be a good as reasonable backup for an American house dont you think? LFP batteries dont catch fire like the Li-Ion ones tend to. No worries about oil maintenance. They come with 10 years of warranty. What is a downside to this that I am missing?

[1] - https://greencell.global/en/lifepo4-batteries/4097-lifepo4-b...

The only 2 disadvantages of LFP batteries are that they're a lot more expensive than lead-acid and heavier than Li-Ion for the same energy.

But they can withstand many more cycles than Li-Ion without wearing out. If you can afford LFP, they seem ideal for a home backup situation.

It can certainly be scaled up, there are lots of models of 5 kwh lithium iron phosphate battery packs in server form factor for ~$1500-2000, 6 of those in a server rack and you have 30 kwh for ~$10k.

Oh wow that sounds like a great way to convince the wife to let me have that homelab :-) By any chance you have any links to share for my research?

This one’s pretty popular: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-battery-48...

And is made to work well with this kind of inverter: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-6-5k-off-grid-inverter-6500ex...

(They have a smaller 3 kw inverter for about half the price)

Check out diysolar forum. Google it. Lots of very good information.

Also watch Will prowse on YouTube.

Seconding this, Will’s channel and forum are excellent.

Here's a nice overview of setting up a 30 kwh battery and inverters to charge/use them: https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/48v-complete-system-bluepr...

It might make sense to have both. Its rare to see a home backup system that has as much capacity as this truck. It'd effectively extend your home capacity and also provide a resource that could be charged away from home.

We don't have many grid outages here, but the ones that happen tend to happen around large weather disasters. Commercial areas, often with DCFC tend to get restored a little more quickly than more distant suburban residential power and tbh, most people aren't driving that much during those periods anyway.

It would be cool to drive this setup to my mom’s or a friend’s and just take their vehicle for the week. Sub them out as needed for a charge.

Would be cool if a mass grid failure resulted in a callout for electric cars to drive over to a community centre or whatever.

>A 9 kW generator that costs $1000 is going to be an open-frame, bottom of the barrel model.

Not even close to bottom-of-the-barrel. In fact, pretty standard, and can last forever.

>requires a lot of maintenance.

Lots of maintenance? Like what, changing the oil and plug once a season?

>If you don't, you'll have to bury a LPG tank, or have an unsightly blob in your yard.

You seem to have very particular tastes about "sound" and "looks", so go ahead and spend $20k for a backup system. But don't try to tell people it can't be done for far cheaper, because I've been running my house on a backup system with a $1000 Generac portable coming up on a decade. The generator I replaced was from the 70s.

An open-frame generator under load is going to be somewhere around 72-76 dB, and that's usually measured at around 20 feet. That is entirely too loud to be running overnight in a neighborhood when everyone's power is out, and thus things are dead quiet. Inverter generators, especially good ones, are more like 50-56 dB.

Maintenance requirements are usually spec'd by runtime; mine is oil change at 20 hours for break-in, then every 100 hours. It's not difficult, but it's annoying. Beyond that, if you aren't running it at least quarterly (I do monthly), you're risking it not starting when you need it. Not to mention the aforementioned fuel requirements - ethanol free is sometimes hard to find, and you need to keep a mental note of when you bought it so you can rotate fuel supplies.

It comes down to personal taste and willingness to be loud in your neighborhood, sure. If I'm going to spend the money on backup power, I first and foremost don't want there to be any question about its reliability. I trust Honda's engines and electronics. I also don't want to piss off my neighbors, or make myself an easy target of theft, so it needs to be as quiet as possible.

That seems awfully expensive for a generator… our 22kw generac was ~5k … I guess we spent about 1k digging trenches and laying conduit…

But that was it … installation is nothing more than installing a 100amp breaker in your panel … and the $30 lockout tab.

Homeowner work.

I'm relying on this blog post[0] that was originally posted to r/homelab, which stated $20K for purchase and installation of a 27 kW Generac.

While I am comfortable running new branch circuits and panels to code, I suspect most people are not.

[0] https://blog.networkprofile.org/generac-rg027-install-27kw-1...

You make it sound like I can soon see the sequel "Mad Max: The Plains of Texas".

10 days ago I had a 3 day power outage, and lost all the food in my fridge.

Generators are a giant PITA. You need to use and maintain them regularly or they're going to be broken and filled with stale gas when you need them. For something you only use once a decade or so, that's a big ask. Better to have something you use daily, like your truck, so you know it works.

A half charged vehicle is no problem during a grid failure. That's 150 miles. An EV gets better mileage in a traffic jam than it does at highway speeds, so it's a true 150 no matter road conditions. Also remember that you don't have to find a fast charger -- EV's can be trickle charged off a normal 115V outlet, and that's usually easier to find than gasoline during a crisis. All the gasoline stations around me last week either had multi-hour lineups or were out of gas.

> An EV gets better mileage in a traffic jam than it does at highway speeds, so it's a true 150 no matter road conditions.

You don't live in snow country. While winter reduces ICE vehicles' range as well (this isn't meant as a slam against EV's), you may lose 40% of your EV's range just due to cold weather. A multi-day power outage could easily drain what remains.

Also, ice storms cause a lot of power outages. This isn't a hypothetical for large parts of the country; power outages are more frequent in the winter.

Personally, my response is a variation on "do nothing". I have propane around for cooking and heating water, and I have a clean-burning kerosene heater to help keep the house warm-ish if we can't run the furnace for an extended period of time.

worth noting that the electric F-150 does not use a heat pump yet for some reason so cold weather performance will probably be poor.

I'm not sure why anyone is making EVs without heat pumps - that is something Tesla pioneered years ago - and seems to be the obvious route to take for heating.

Worth noting that the electric F-150 was designed and built in Michigan, where they have brutal winters, and are presumably aware of the effects of cold on EV systems, having tested these vehicles in the cold.

I own EVs, though Tesla doesn't do this (they want you to do a powerwall instead, which starts at 10-20k).

Instead, I have a whole house natural gas generator. No gas to go stale. It powers my entire house. And it costs similar to this.

Maintence: Every 2-3 years, it needs an "oil/filter" change.

I have never had one before this house, but wow it is nice. We seem to be on some flakey power lines, we have lost power ~8 times in the previous year, ranging in duration from 1 hour to 2 days.

Are you basing your "every 2-3 years" on something the salesman said?

You are using your backup generator a lot, you need to seek out the maintenance schedule for your model and ensure you are following it!

In my area, Generac [1] and Kohler [2] are what everyone uses for their homes. The maintenance schedules are much higher than every 2-3 years. Good luck :)

[1] https://www.generac.com/service-support/faqs/maintenance-kit...

[2] (Page 60) https://resources.kohler.com/power/kohler/residential/pdf/tp...

Based on my experience running all manner of clapped out junk with engines 2-3yr for an engine that sees dozens of operating hours per year and runs on propane/natgas seems fine. You're not pampering it by any means but you're not neglecting it either. Engines running on gaseous fuels tend to have really clean oil.

I'd be more concerned about things nesting in it than anything else.

I’m basing that on the manual that came with my generator, but I’m glad you as a hacker news stranger knows more than the actual person who read the manual.

My parents have one of these. They work great, but have a few limitations:

* the oil typically needs changed every 100 hours of operation. That was fine, until an ice storm knocked out power for 11 days to my parents house.

* if you live in an earthquake zone, most likely after a major quake the gas lines will be down.

"Maintence: Every 2-3 years, it needs an "oil/filter" change."

This seems suspect to me. The ones I've seen call for it once a year or every 24 hours of run time.

Every 24 hours of runtime would be insanely wasteful. A quick Google for a Generac manual shows they recommend annually or every 125 hours, whichever comes first. They do recommend an oil change after 30 hours to replace the break-in oil.

The Onan/Cummins LP generator in my RV requires an oil change every 150 hours or annually, whichever comes first with the first oil change after 50 hours.

Ah, I probably forgot the 1 in front. But the annual thing still stands. Every 2-3 years is not something I've seen recommended.

I believe the reason for that is no engine oil manufacturer warranties their product longer than one year.

However, engine oil these days is very high quality and should last longer than a year.

0: https://youtu.be/T-yt5a1cWd4

> and that's usually easier to find than gasoline during a crisis. All the gasoline stations around me last week either had multi-hour lineups or were out of gas.

I'm shocked at how many people overlook this. I've had the same experience, as our "crisis" situations tend to be combined with widespread gas shortages. EVs are surprisingly convenient during most of those.

It wouldn't be fun to depend on a supercharger or other DCFC during that time, though... but maybe not significantly worse than gas even then. I've been in those gas lines.

Just look at the situation in Ukraine.

There are cities where pretty much all gas stations are literal holes in the ground from being blown up. On the other hand most apartments do have electricity and the only vehicles on the road are military or EVs.

If your power outages are "once a decade or so", "do nothing" seems like a reasonable (likely optimal) point on the response curve if you're not dependent on electricity for literal survival.

This is our strategy in Cambridge, MA with some overhead supply lines, but it’s very rare to have an outage over an hour [the last one I recall was about 10.5 years ago]. We bought a few extra flashlights after that one.

> You need to use and maintain them regularly or they're going to be broken and filled with stale gas when you need them.

My trick is that, instead of buying a gas or battery leaf blower, I just drag my generator out to the street and plug in a leaf blower to clean up my grass clippings. I do it often enough that I know my generator still works.

with 1 powerwall and 4kw solar, i could get through 3 days just by turning off the AC and the hot tub.

i'm sure it was way more expensive than a generator, but a generator doesnt generate daily profit for the next 20 years either...

PS i've also done 3 day camping trips in my EV so if i needed AC i could have it any time.

i'm not a fan of those "true milage no matter what conditions" a half charged EV up north during winter would cut that 150 miles to 75 miles (at around minus 10 celsius which is common in Canada). i wouldn't dare to go very far with that.

It all depends on your use case. It can get below zero F here (northern Minnesota) for weeks at a time, but I don't regularly drive more than 10 miles round trip.

As a second/town vehicle, a cheaper EV sounds great for conditions I can't use the e-assist cargo bike.

In my experience, at -20C you lose about 10 miles of range to get the car up to temperature, plus about 20% of range to keep the car at temperature.

First off, safely using a generator to power eg your home furnace requires some costly wiring and installation of a transfer switch (yes you can do it more jankily but let’s please not.) Moreover: this installation does not compete with the cheapest portable generator at Home Depot, I assume it competes with a dedicated standby generator. Those are much more expensive, and run closer to $3k without installation (which is way more: they require a pedestal and a bunch of hardwiring and a dedicated fuel tank/gas connect.) I looked into a standby generator after an all-day wintertime power outage: it was both annoying and cost-prohibitive. If I could protect my home pipes from freezing in such a future outage by using my existing vehicle, that would be amazing. My threat model here is not “prepper looking for weeks of regular grid independence”, it’s “cheap and clean way of keeping my pipes from freezing during a 1-3 day wintertime power outage.” If I can amortize the electrician cost of installing a charger while also getting this feature, that’s even better.

We just had a massive power outage last weekend. (In fact, there are still people without power). The neighbors inquired into the cost of a whole home natural gas generator. $15K for installation sometime this year, $25K to get it installed this week.

It should be <5k to install. Of course depending how far you need to go for the gas run etc.. but it's only maybe 1-2 hours work for someone with the gas line, and 1-2 hours work for an electrician.

Source: Have a whole house gas generator

The 15K quote was for the generator + installation.

Exactly and on top of that, building in this capability as new battery technology emerges will only expand the benefit. Graphene Aluminum Ion batteries as well as solid state batteries are expected to both increase energy capacity and expand the lifetime of the batteries themselves.

I'm not going to be a 1st year buyer of a Lightning but I'll probably be a buyer as soon as the newer batteries start getting introduced.

A transfer switch should cost a few hundred bucks by a licensed electrician - not costly. I picked up a 1200W generator for under a thousand bucks and a few cans of propane to store and run it on. I can power most of my home, including my mini-split, on it. The whole ordeal was simple and inexpensive, unlike trying to get a truck to do the same.

1200W is nowhere near enough to power most homes. Do you have a small condo?

Sorry, that's a typo (I was shopping for microwaves) - I meant 12,000W or 12 kW.

A transfer switch is not required.

The $30 lockout tabs are simple, safe and code-compliant.

Nothing janky about them and also no unnecessary complexity.

> A nine kilowatt electric generator costs under a thousand dollars.

For just the generator, yeah.

Then you need cans for the fuel and somewhere to store it. And you need to maintain that fuel by periodically pouring it into a vehicle and refilling the cans. Even with preservative, it's good to do that yearly. If you don't own an ICE vehicle, I guess you have to find a neighbor who does, and who won't be suspicious that you're offering them a bunch of gallons of free gas?

And even with all that, it still needs oil changes and test-runs, or it's liable to not work when you need it.

And even with all THAT, most generators that large absolutely guzzle fuel. Ten or twenty gallons might get you a day, maybe two? And that's a LOT of fuel to store, when you consider having to refresh it.

If you can just use the vehicle you already own, and the battery pack that you already charge, ALL those concerns go away. You've got tons of power. It's already proven to work. It's already wired into the house. And the little maintenance it needs, you're already doing because it's your daily driver.

This approach is not without its downsides -- if you go out to run errands, the house loses power until you return -- but the benefits may outweigh that for a large number of people.

True. Most of these truck owners when faced with an outage will simply run an extension cord from the 120v outlet on their truck to their refrigerator until the power comes back on. Nothing wrong with that solution and it costs $20.

Exactly. One can live without AC for a few days almost anywhere in the US and deal with the discomfort. If you can power a refrigerator and then have a general purpose light / charging out, it will get most reasonable people through a multi-day outage and not be vulnerable to NG supply disruptions.

A quick note: It should cost more than $20. When fridge compressor cycles on, it can draw up to 20A. Extension cord wire gauges are based on 1) length and 2) amperage and depending on home layout, you'd might get away with a 50 foot 12 gauge cord ($40). If it's 100 feet, you'd want 10 gauge ($100+). It'll vary by cord and refrigerator, and there are many extension cord sizing guides freely available.

> it can draw up to 20A

can being the operative word - the LRA (Locked Rotor Amps) of a typical fridge/freezer's compressor might be that high, but starting current is not unless something is hideously wrong. I've never metered mine, but I have ran three fridges and a deep freezer off of a 2200/1800 (start/run) watt generator with zero issues, and plenty of headroom left. The generator has tiny dip when the compressor kicks on, and then it jumps back.

You are correct that sizing cords is very important, though, and something that most people don't do. Also if you have a roll-up extension cord (the kind with multiple outlets at the end), it's vital that it is completely unrolled when in use, so the cord doesn't heat itself.

I run 12 gauge splitters --> 14 gauge for individual loads, but I also know exactly how much those loads are pulling, and have verified it's within safe limits for the wiring.

It's worth remembering that a house's wiring is almost always 12 gauge, and is rated for 20 amps assuming the correct outlet.

I thought most recent US houses were built with 14 gauge wire which is only rated for 15 A? It's cheaper than 12 gauge and code-compliant (at least in my state).

I used 12 gauge in my house on purpose but sadly I don't think that's the norm.

That very well may be true - I've never had a house newer than about 20 years old, and they've had 12 gauge everywhere.

Most recent houses I've seen are using 12 gauge for outlets and 14 gauge for lighting. 12 gauge is mandatory in many locations, since 20 amp circuits are the minimum by code. Either way, 12 gauge is always safe obviously.

That's exactly what I did; lighting got less power hungry as we moved away from incandescent so there was no reason to continue to use fatter copper there. But it would have been legal to use 14 gauge/15A for every circuit in my house in New Mexico; I chose to use 12 gauge/20A for outlets instead.

Not actually true, to be clear, for outlets. Yes, the majority are allowed to be 15 amp circuits, however there are a few circuits (notably, ones in the kitchen) that by code (any recent code, NEC 2007 or beyond I think) that mandate that they be 20 amp circuits.

Notably:

* Kitchens must have at least two separate 20 amp circuits (for use for small appliances on countertops, traditionally) for general use

* Fridges need a dedicated 20 amp circuit

* Microwaves need a dedicated 20 amp circuit

Beyond that, yeah, absolute minimum is 15 amp throughout the house.

I built my first house in 1997 so my memory of NEC is mostly from then. It seemed ludicrous to run 15A circuits especially to kitchens and bathrooms, so I didn't. It did require GFCIs in the usual places back then. I built another house in 2007 and by that time AFCIs were required in bedrooms.

The code does seem to get a bit better over time.

Honestly, the fact that every consumer hardware store sells racks upon racks of 50+ ft 16-gauge extension cord is obscene. I upgraded my 60 ft lawnmower cable to 12-gauge for safety reasons and was shocked to discover my lawnmower wasn't just safer but also visibly more powerful, which I didn't think was possible.

Folks, spring for one or two good 50+ ft extension cords. You don't need a lot of them and the cheap ones are bad for your equipment and your safety.

  > wasn't just safer but also visibly more powerful

All that energy that used to go into heating up the extension cord, are now getting to your tool.

I personally argued with the guy who installed my EV charging station, because I wanted thicker wire and was willing to pay for it. I don't want wires heating up, I don't care if it's code compliant it is energy wasted that could go into my EV. And the thicker wire is not much more expensive nor difficult to work with.

>Honestly, the fact that every consumer hardware store sells racks upon racks of 50+ ft 16-gauge extension cord is obscene.

I can't help but face-palm at this sort of hand wringing. It might not be "right" but it works.

If the 16ga cords regularly melted people wouldn't buy them in those lengths, they wouldn't fly off the shelves, they'd get stocked in lower volume and you'd see less of them on the shelves.

The fact that they don't melt themselves even when used with fairly substantial appliances (large-ish homeowner sized table saws and compressors, all manner of portable power tools) is a testament to how conservative the official recommendations are.

>and was shocked to discover my lawnmower wasn't just safer but also visibly more powerful, which I didn't think was possible.

Voltage drop

For lots of things it's fine, yes, but for tools I would not try it. My brother (a contractor) had two compressors die from undersized extension cords before learning about properly sizing them. More resistance --> lower voltage --> motor spins slower --> pulls more current --> compressor electronics die.

I'll grant you a contractor's usage of any tool is much higher than a typical homeowner's, there's still no reason not to get the beefier cord. Buy once, cry once.

I just mean it's really silly you can go to a Canadian Tire and there'll be a 10-amp 82 foot extension cords for sale right next to the 12 amp corded lawnmowers, and if you want to satisfy the spec you'll have to search all over the store for contractor-grade hardware.

Good introductory video on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_q-xnYRugQ

True. I was exaggerating a little. I'd never use a $20 16 gauge Harbor Freight extension cord for anything important, especially if it's over 2 meters long.

It was a great point, though. And, my pedantry aside, having your car - which bring all the benefits of an EV - be a decent electrical backup system and replace a standalone inverter generator (at least $1k, and you'd have to buy appropriate extension cords, anyway) or a whole-home standby (at least $15k) is an exciting prospect and great solution for a really large number of US households.

I think this is a actually a key selling point of this car: people are buying this specifically because they can run their house using it.

Your assumption is that your battery is going to suffer enormously. That's probably not the case. Batteries do relatively well if you don't stress them with enormous loads. Relative to driving the vehicle, powering your house is a very light load. Ten days is quite long. You won't be driving that long on a single charge for 100kwh battery.

And it would of course be highly unusual to be running your house for extended periods of time; at least not unintentionally. And even then it would not be worse than simply driving the car to the maximum range. You might want to drive to a supercharger after a few days. If they are still functioning of course. And if things get that bad, most petrol stations will also have issues powering their pumps.

But if that somehow is a regular thing in your life, invest in some solar panels instead of a generator. That should cut down on the running cost for that truck as well.

> A nine kilowatt electric generator costs under a thousand dollars. What kind of idiot is going to shell out six grand just to drain his truck battery for the same purpose?

The kind of idiot that wants to generate income through arbitrage by storing energy in his EV when prices are low and selling it back to the grid during peak hours when prices are high?

Don't forget the kind of person buying this kind of vehicle today also probably has a multiple car garage.

That kind of idiot would hopefully also not do the math on how many cycles electric vehicle batteries can take and thus how much such a battery pack depreciates per cycle. In all but the most extreme grids, the amount of depreciation is vastly larger than the amount of money you could possibly hope to gain by arbitraging electricity prices. There is a reason that true large-scale storage is so far almost exclusively the domain of pumped hydro, which has a much longer life in terms of cycles than batteries.

(Before anyone brings up the Tesla battery in Australia, that is an edge case where the grid needed more capacity for grid stabilisation. Almost anywhere where you would find one of the electric pickups from the article would also have a stable enough grid that you cannot replicate that with the car battery.)

Cycling a battery from 75% to 25% and back puts very little wear on the battery. A battery might have a 3000 cycle lifetime, but that's a 100% -> 0% -> 100% cycle.

3000 cycles is already 10 years at just under 1 cycle per day. Adding an order of magnitude more cycles by cycling between 75% and 25% gets you a century. Something else is going to die first.

Lithium Ion batteries degrade very little with low C mid range charge cycles. The time/temperature/SoC degredation is greater. Hence why you don't want to leave a battery sitting at 100%.

Someone else linked this battery earlier: https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-lifepower4-lithium-battery-48...

5kwh for $1500 with 3000 cycles is $.10/kwh. I'm oversimplifying here as the real cost is higher, but the arbitrage opportunity only has to offer ~$.20/kwh to be generally profitable with a battery like that.

Some time of use plans are already there daily. I don't think the person taking advantage of this sounds like any "kind of idiot".

How long do you suppose it's going to take to make back their investment? For it to pay off in ten years they'd have to be making fifty dollars a month from arbitrage.

People that buy $100k EVs aren’t worried about ROI.

FWIW, Ford has sold out of these for the next 2 years, so they must be doing something right.

Or very, very wrong, since it's Ford and they cannot meet demand for a truck.

Even Tesla can’t meet demand for EVs.

With all due respect, Ford has long experience in manufacturing and they are not meeting demand for the F150 Electric or the Maverick. They also had problems with the Bronco (non EV).

In Texas should electricity prices go sideways again it might take very little time.

But honestly I don't know, it's not something I've looked into. If prices become increasingly variable coupled to demand and impact of generation source at time of use, I imagine it could be quite lucrative and that might be a useful incentive to get effectively decentralized peaker plants in the form of grid-tied residential batteries caching cheap cleanly-sourced electricity.

Assuming that no more than 50% of the 100kWh battery is used, and a full use of the 50kWh every day as part of diurnal power management, that's $0.032 / kWh.

$32 / MWh wholesale is an arbitrage that could be done on many days in CAISO today. I don't particularly think that people will use that much of their battery or do so every day of course but it does show that it's not an orders of magnitude implausible scenario either.

If you use the battery for internal use (i.e. use it to run your AC during the day) you'll save more than the wholesale price difference from your utility bill (since consumer prices are higher than wholesale). A lot of this thinking assumes that you'll have the battery plugged in ready to operate all the time though, and doesn't consider accelerated depreciation on the battery (if that's a problem, I'm not sure).

An 15 mpg gasoline truck might use $100,000 in fuel over its lifetime. Buying a $40,000 electric truck pays off really quick. Selling power back to the grid is just gravy.

That is 300,000 miles at $5/gallon. I don't know what gas prices will go to, but very few trucks go that far before they are scrapped - they absolutely can go a a lot more than that, but most do not.

Yes, "might" is carrying a lot of weight in my comment. A good number of trucks do hit 300,000 miles.

Electricity isn’t free. You should include that in your comparison costs.

It also varies. It can be over 50 cents some places and under 5 cents in others. In comparison, people complain how much more gasoline costs in California compared to elsewhere, but the difference between $6 and $4 doesn't really affect my $100,000 figure all that much.

So I can do the electricity math for myself, but not for others.

Overnight in Texas it often is free in the wholesale markets.

The general public doesn’t understand lithium battery cycle life.

$6k to connect a 100kWH+ battery to their house is a drop in the bucket to the $100k they paid for the vehicle, and compared to buying the batteries outright as a home backup option.

It’s the killer app right now for EVs and homes with solar. A Tesla Powerwall is like $13k for 10kWh. You’re getting something 10x capacity at a fraction of the cost.

Here is a 5kWh powerwall type thing for $1,500: https://signaturesolar.com/shop-all/batteries/eg4-lifepower4...

Buy a nice server rack and three of the aforementioned and there's your "powerwall" for less than half the price.

That doesn't include the charger, inverter, rack, or wiring. Add another $1500-2000 for all that.

Obviously sold as the $13K Tesla Powerwall doesn't include an inverter either. They upsell you to a "Powerwall+".

Also:

> Tesla’s residential energy products will be sold as a bundle and will exclusively work with one another. This means that Tesla Powerwalls will not work with other manufacturer’s solar panels. Additionally, Tesla will not sell any of its Solar products without a Powerwall,

Are those the same solar panels that Walmart is suing Tesla for causing fires?

> What kind of idiot is going to shell out six grand just to drain his truck battery for the same purpose?

This one, I already have. I paid more than that for two Tesla powerwalls. I use them for load shifting. I charge at night when electricity is cheap and use them during the day. They already paid for themselves in savings. Oh yeah, no more power outages either.

Same, though I also was due to replace my roof from 1991 and got a solar roof. It's great having a $0 electric bill every month and we've had four outages since my system went live and my house hasn't gone out at all. It'll be a few years before it pays for itself considering the price of the roof as part of the entire system - we live in a forest and power outages are very frequent so the cost for convenience is worth it.

They already paid for themselves in savings.

How? Where do you live that electricity is that expensive during the day and arbitrage rate is that high to create a thousand dollars a year in savings? I run my AC 24 hours a day at fifteen or more degrees below outdoor ambient on a decent sized house, with appliances that are better than twenty years old, and my total yearly electricity cost is under two grand. This math doesn't work.

> Where do you live that electricity is that expensive during the day and arbitrage rate is that high to create a thousand dollars a year in savings?

I live in the US, where the federal government subsidized half the system cost (at least when I installed it) via tax credits. I save about a 100 bucks a month on electric, since I can charge my car at night at a discount, which requires a special meter enabled by the system.

A dedicated house battery is not the same as using a vehicle battery.

I know a family in Canada who has frequently power outages.

It would be perfect for them.

Easy to use, easy to maintain and stabilisng their system.

They like to drive trucks like these as well.

Of course EVs might become a standard backup/stabilisation part in our ecosystem and currently everything ev is still more or less bleeding edge but why do you mind if people start investing in this type of technology over others?

Shouldn't you be happy about it?

Grid failures are usually very short. If paid well, most people would be fine to use their batteries to smooth out a 10 minute failure while backup generation is turning on.

Where I live in the Midwest, power failures are very rare. When they happen it is usually amid a major thunderstorm or snowstorm, affecting thousands of customers, with obvious obstacles to getting crews out to fix things. Power goes out... it might last 8 minutes, it might last 8 hours, it might last days.

At that moment, backup power (obtained at considerable expense) is precious. The utility may have to pay far beyond "well" to buy it.

It's not short in a hurricane zone. Weeks of no power after a strong hit is fairly common.

I worry about keeping my Tesla topped up about as much as I worried about my previous gas cars.

Six grand seems like a lot but if the price came down then I could see using the top half of the tank to shift grid power use to cheaper rated hours or use home solar later in the day.

The kind who might be out of power for more than 3 weeks due to a common natural disaster, has two cars, and wants a backup to keep the stuff in his fridge and freezer cold after the local gasoline supply is depleted. Like folks who have been hit by a major hurricane. Everyone else, who has a gasoline generator, doesn't run them 24/7 unless they've got natural gas. They run them to keep their food cold and charge their phones then shut them off.

> He cannot possibly be that ignorant. Nobody is going to be willing to not only put cycles on their battery but risk being left with a half-charged vehicle during a grid failure.

Well, that cycle part is important, as I'm still not clear on the warranty implications of actually using this vehicle's battery for stationary storage.

However, outside of that, I don't think its fair to call it ignorant. Grid emergencies are often related to excess consumption for really specific periods of time. Our local utility sends out alerts asking for reduced consumption during peak just to save them some $$$s, as spot prices can be very high for brief periods of time.

We also have TOU plans available where the peak rate is more than $.20 higher than the off peak rate. There are plenty of people that would gladly pocket that difference in exchange for burning through ~25% of a battery. And because its not an outage, but rather a cost issue during peak, they'll just load back up right after the "emergency" subsides.

I'd still really like to know what the warranty for this style of usage looks like.

> ... risk being left with a half-charged vehicle during a grid failure.

To be fair, most folks who own pickups usually own multiple vehicles as individuals, and that's not even counting the other household members.

I don't know what they're getting at with "at scale", but it seems like a good idea for "rugged individuals" with a battery-powered big truck. What else are the going to do with a pristine, washed-every-week, empty pickup truck that never carries anything and is more of a status symbol than anything else?

>He cannot possibly be that ignorant. Nobody is going to be willing to not only put cycles on their battery but risk being left with a half-charged vehicle during a grid failure.

It seems like the context was small and medium farms, where that might be more palatable since they probably have several vehicles.

You still need hardware in the house to power it from a generator, basically a switch with a safety interlock. If you just wire it up in a dumb fashon you are sending voltage back out of the house and down the street, with a wide veriety of untintended consequences possible there.

On top of the $4k you also have to figure out how to get your power provider to agree to the change. For my solar system, i was lucky enough to get one of a few seats in my state before they were all taken. I highly doubt every energy provider is even prepared for this.

> A nine kilowatt electric generator costs under a thousand dollars.

Any links you can share?

This is probably what they're referring to: https://www.harborfreight.com/9000-watt-gas-powered-portable...

It's Harbor Freight, so you get to roll the dice on whether or not it'll work when you need it to. It's also loud (like noise complaint from your neighbors loud).

Ah, I was thinking it was a reference to some 9kwh inverter ('electric generator') for under $1K, which sounded incredible...

I was going to share a link to a harbor freight 9kw generator for $869, but now I see that that is 9kw starting power and only 7.2kw continuous...

That's true of any brand tbf. My 2.2 kW Honda is rated at 1.8 kW continuous, which conveniently is 15 A @ 120 VAC.

I would be willing to use some cycles if I’m remunerated. Do you know how much electricity costs during peak times in Ercot? Dollars per kilowatt-hour. I can work from home for a day or two if I get $100…

I wouldn't want to pay that much because a stand alone battery probably costs less, but if I could pay $500 for some kit that let me use my tesla as a power source for my house at night I would be very interested. This would make sense to me as I have panels to charge it during the day, having a few KWH at night time would be pretty efficient.

The stand alone batteries are too expensive right now.

> Nobody is going to be willing to not only put cycles on their battery but risk being left with a half-charged vehicle during a grid failure.

Sure they will — especially the families that have 2-4 of these trucks, which are plentiful in areas you do not live.

>Nobody is going to be willing to not only put cycles on their battery but risk being left with a half-charged vehicle

You underestimate the optimistic zeal of LARPers, who will be smug about just having the possibility.

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