Any consumer implementations of vehicle-to-grid with the Kia Soul EV?

[MassDeduction]

I read about a vehicle-to-grid pilot project that used Kia Soul EVs. Was there ever a consumer implementation of that in North America? I'd accept a homemade option. Why buy a Powerwall when you can use your car for that purpose instead?

 

[IanL]

One would have to be satisfied that the benefit outweighed the cost of the wear on the battery.

 

[Tcalp]

Who would want to kill off an already crap battery design by storing / using energy for your house constantly ?

There are far cheaper battery options for power walls out there.

 

[MassDeduction]

Who would want to kill off an already crap battery design by storing / using energy for your house constantly ?

There are far cheaper battery options for power walls out there.

I wouldn't want it constantly, I'd want it in "storm watch" applications in case the power goes out. Yes, if I had solar, or money was no object, I'd go for something like a Powerwall. But if the power goes out, what a shame it would be to just live with that rather than use that big battery you have sitting in the driveway.

 

[Tcalp]

Get a propane generator, likely cheaper than any such 'power converter' type system.

 

[notfred]

I looked around a few years ago and was unimpressed with what I could find, many thousands of dollars for not much power.

What you could do instead is just get a normal 12V high power inverter to clip on to the 12V battery terminals and turn the car on so that the DCDC converter is providing the power from the high voltage battery to the 12V system. It's not nearly as efficient but it's literally about 1/10 the cost.

 

[MassDeduction]

Get a propane generator, likely cheaper than any such 'power converter' type system.

Cheaper perhaps, but not nearly as good for the environment, so therefore of little interest to me.

 

[IanL]

I looked around a few years ago and was unimpressed with what I could find, many thousands of dollars for not much power.

What you could do instead is just get a normal 12V high power inverter to clip on to the 12V battery terminals and turn the car on so that the DCDC converter is providing the power from the high voltage battery to the 12V system. It's not nearly as efficient but it's literally about 1/10 the cost.

What are the comparative powers of the high power inverter and the DCDC converter? My fear would be the DCDC converter could be overloaded.

 

[EVDee]

IIRC - You're limited to around 1kW from the 12v battery. Surge might be a bit higher, but beyond that it's too demanding. A possible good source of information would be from the Prius forums as this is something I've looked at doing myself with my Prius at the time.

Now for the OP question: in North America? Not yet.. I do recall there being a product demonstrated at CES which used the CHAdeMO connector for vehicle to house/grid, but I just can't find it at the moment.
However in Europe there's at least one energy company that includes such device in their service. What's wild is how their grid operates and how during certain periods of time you can actually get paid to take electricity!

Only question I have is: will a factory Soul EV do bidirectional, or does that require a special line of software or hardware?

 

[JejuSoul]

I read about a vehicle-to-grid pilot project that used Kia Soul EVs. Was there ever a consumer implementation of that in North America? I'd accept a homemade option. Why buy a Powerwall when you can use your car for that purpose instead?

The outcome of that study testing vehicle-to-grid on 6 Kia Soul EVs found that

Vehicle-to-grid-based energy storage has less overall flexibility compared to stationary energy storage.

My conclusion is better to buy a Powerwall as battery backup than try to use your car.

 

[EVDee]

Wallbox Quasar

If you Google that you will find the product I was talking about in my previous post. As of writing this, there doesn't seem to be any further update or purchase option available. I just remembered that a lot of YouTube channels I watch covered it at the time and I was quite impressed with it. Hopefully it's still moving ahead..

 

[ZuinigeRijder]

IIRC - You're limited to around 1kW from the 12v battery. Surge might be a bit higher, but beyond that it's too demanding. A possible good source of information would be from the Prius forums as this is something I've looked at doing myself with my Prius at the time.

Now for the OP question: in North America? Not yet.. I do recall there being a product demonstrated at CES which used the CHAdeMO connector for vehicle to house/grid, but I just can't find it at the moment.
However in Europe there's at least one energy company that includes such device in their service. What's wild is how their grid operates and how during certain periods of time you can actually get paid to take electricity!

Only question I have is: will a factory Soul EV do bidirectional, or does that require a special line of software or hardware?

Here is a video of using 1kW from the 12v battery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADqk4IjzjXs

 

[JejuSoul]

...Here is a video of using 1kW from the 12v battery...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADqk4IjzjXs

Good find. That's a useful video.
A cheap vehicle-to-home system to provide back-up power against grid blackouts seems quite feasible and cost effective.
It's low power and inefficient, but will work to keep some lights and the fridge on.

Our Soul EVs seem able to provide 1500W output power from the LDC 12V system.
See LDC strategy for charging 12v ACID Auxiliary battery.