Rivian preparing in-house V2H charger

[LivingInKaos]

Yeah it seems way more useful to invest in a portable battery backup system that has dozens of other uses than invest in a proprietary V2H charger that might be a useless brick once Rivian changes to the next gen of vehicles.

The only real advantage comes into whether your power company provides you any benefits for doing so. They so want to use the vehicles for grid backup, but so many of them don't want to pay for it.

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[MacO512]

I have an Ecoflow Delta Pro 2 system - for the reasons you mention.

BUT: there is one very large caveat; something you won't learn from browsing Ecoflow's site. (I learned it from someone else on these forums, and from experience). You can indeed charge at 1440W from the Rivian, and (with my setup) you can indeed export 240V 30A to run my house. But you can't charge at 120VAC and export 240VAC at the same time! (This might be different with their new Ultra models. Maybe)

I've got just over 20kWh of Ecoflow energy (2 main units, 4 backup batteries), which will generally last about 3 days if there's a power outage. If the outage is longer than that, I generally power the house during the day, then turn everything off at night. One Ecoflow system get recharged from the Rivian overnight, while the other keeps the refrigerator going. The next night I swap 'em. It's not nearly as convenient as I had hoped, but at least I'm glad they are on wheels...

I think a guy here posted how he had a DC charger from his Rivian AC power the delta pro DC input... If you have 2x of those chargers you could do each at 700watts and then let them both charge from the Rivian 24/7 into your delta pros

 

[tjrivian]

The only real advantage comes into whether your power company provides you any benefits for doing so. They so want to use the vehicles for grid backup, but so many of them don't want to pay for it.

100% Agreed. The technical challenges of V2H/V2G are small, and can be solved very cheaply. But everyone from the grid operators, vehicle manufacturers, electronics makers, electricians, etc. have their hand out and want to extract significant profit from this new market that is aimed squarely at what they all know are relatively wealthy customers. In doing so, they insert artificial roadblocks to people adopting these technologies and make it more expensive for everyone.

 

[MacO512]

Yeah I really wouldn't want my Rivian to be part of daily grid backup. I'd rather just use the battery when I drive it and not cycle it up and down while its sitting unused in my garage.

Now a few times a year cycling on a power outage is totally fine and insignificant. But I'd need a hell of a financial incentive to have it be daily cycle power in and out just to help the grid.

Daily power cycling would make more sense for dirt cheap lifepo batteries from China. They can be easily swapped and recycled whenever they fail. That use case would be a hell of a lot cheaper than a $100k Rivian.

 

[tjrivian]

Daily power cycling would make more sense for dirt cheap lifepo batteries from China. They can be easily swapped and recycled whenever they fail. That use case would be a hell of a lot cheaper than a $100k Rivian.

If you're leasing the Rivian(which a lot of people do) then extra cycling of the battery has zero impact on you. You're going to turn the car back in in 3 years and the battery is under warranty the entire time, so if the extra cycling causes some problem then it's not yours to worry about.

 

[socaladam]

The only real advantage comes into whether your power company provides you any benefits for doing so. They so want to use the vehicles for grid backup, but so many of them don't want to pay for it.

I refuse to let my power company draw from any battery storage.

They already bled me dry of 10MW of solar generation last year and called their compensation of $224 appropriate.

F them all. I so badly want to cut them off.

 

[SANZC02]

I refuse to let my power company draw from any battery storage.

They already bled me dry of 10MW of solar generation last year and called their compensation of $224 appropriate.

F them all. I so badly want to cut them off.

You can set the battery to not export to the grid. Once my Powerwall is charged everyday my excess Solar goes to the grid but nothing from my battery.

If California succeeds in cut the NEM program from 20 years to 10 years, I will either setup my vehicles for VtoH if available or add batteries to my existing system.

 

[MacO512]

If you're leasing the Rivian(which a lot of people do) then extra cycling of the battery has zero impact on you. You're going to turn the car back in in 3 years and the battery is under warranty the entire time, so if the extra cycling causes some problem then it's not yours to worry about.

Well sure. But then for a lease does it make sense to spend $6k on the V2G bidirectional charger?

 

[SANZC02]

Well sure. But then for a lease does it make sense to spend $6k on the V2G bidirectional charger?

It would if it was not proprietary and was standards based to work with all companies supporting it.

That is the problem with existing setups, they are all proprietary currently.

 

[MacO512]

I have an Ecoflow Delta Pro 2 system - for the reasons you mention.

BUT: there is one very large caveat; something you won't learn from browsing Ecoflow's site. (I learned it from someone else on these forums, and from experience). You can indeed charge at 1440W from the Rivian, and (with my setup) you can indeed export 240V 30A to run my house. But you can't charge at 120VAC and export 240VAC at the same time! (This might be different with their new Ultra models. Maybe)

I've got just over 20kWh of Ecoflow energy (2 main units, 4 backup batteries), which will generally last about 3 days if there's a power outage. If the outage is longer than that, I generally power the house during the day, then turn everything off at night. One Ecoflow system get recharged from the Rivian overnight, while the other keeps the refrigerator going. The next night I swap 'em. It's not nearly as convenient as I had hoped, but at least I'm glad they are on wheels...

I looked into the Delta Pro Ultra some more - it appears it can charge from 120v while inverting exporting 240v+120v.

The only restriction it has is if it's charging at 240v then it can only invert at 240v, it will not power 120v loads.

 

[theonetruestripes]

[...]At a certain price point wonder if a normal generator is wiser.

Generators will have some of the same costs (if the V2H outputs DC a generator doesn’t have an inverter while the V2H would -- otherwise both need transfer switches, wiring, and maybe an interlock, and maybe some smart power shading stuff, or a secondary panel that has just the circuits you want energized...and whatever is going on with solar will need to happen in both cases).

Generators will also have a ongoing maintenance issue (run them once a week or thereabouts, and change the oil, clean the carb), plus they need to live somewhere protected from the weather, but not inside where the excuse will kill you...

A generator is also vastly cheaper, like a 8000W generator is $1000 or thereabouts.

I have one to run the heat in my house to prevent a winter freeze.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Thanks - yeah that makes sense

I wonder what V2H watts would be - I'd imagine at least 7200 watts but maybe up to 12kw.

So at 400v DC thats only 18 amps (7200w) or 30 amps (12kw). So not sure how expensive the cables would have to be. Thats less amps than the travel charger but 400v.

I'm not interested in some elaborate $7k-10k V2H charger. But if there was something closer to 1-2k that could just export to 240v 30a AC I'd seriously look at it. I don't think they really need more than 240v/30a as at 7200w a 100% charged vehicle is drained to 0% in 18 hours.

RJ said both R1 and R2 can do 20kW export on DC. I am wondering if they'll decide to release different versions of the hardware, since a lot of people won't necessarily want or need that much output.

 

[mrose]

RJ said both R1 and R2 can do 20kW export on DC. I am wondering if they'll decide to release different versions of the hardware, since a lot of people won't necessarily want or need that much output.

I believe last year RJ did state 24 kw for R1 Gen 1 and 2 and 11 kw for R2

 

[SANZC02]

I believe last year RJ did state 24 kw for R1 Gen 1 and 2 and 11 kw for R2

I thought the 11 kW on the R2 was AC out the charge port. I thought DC was the same for R1 and R2.

 

[Jonger1150]

I believe last year RJ did state 24 kw for R1 Gen 1 and 2 and 11 kw for R2

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