Nissan's Leaf Could Power Your Home
What if your car could power your home? Wait, what? It's true -- Nissan is reportedly saying that their Leaf electric card can actually feed power from its battery pack back into a home, with plenty of juice to run appliances. The new project is called Leaf to Home, and it uses Li-ion batteries as emergency backup for homes. According to Nissan, this functionality would prove most useful if a home were hit by a natural disaster or power outage, and we certainly could see it going over quite well with prospective buyers.
According to the company, plans are in motion to commercialize the tech by March of 2012. If you're wondering how it works, here's what we know so far. There's a quick-charge port that links the car to a home's electricity grid, and power can also be fed the other way if the home's loaded down with solar panels.
The Leaf's batteries have a capacity of 24 kilowatt hours when fully charged, which is about what an average Japanese family uses in two days. The output from the car comes to six kilowatts, which should be plenty to power a few home appliances at the same time.
Man, if only we had this when we were young. Having the Atari go dark during a thunderstorm was the worst!
According to the company, plans are in motion to commercialize the tech by March of 2012. If you're wondering how it works, here's what we know so far. There's a quick-charge port that links the car to a home's electricity grid, and power can also be fed the other way if the home's loaded down with solar panels.
The Leaf's batteries have a capacity of 24 kilowatt hours when fully charged, which is about what an average Japanese family uses in two days. The output from the car comes to six kilowatts, which should be plenty to power a few home appliances at the same time.
Man, if only we had this when we were young. Having the Atari go dark during a thunderstorm was the worst!
