Clarity, Soul and Solar

Discussion in 'Clarity' started by LegoZ, May 8, 2020.

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  1. LegoZ

    LegoZ Active Member

    A quick recap of "My Electrified Garage":
    Back in February 2018 we were a 2 hybrid household with a 2013 Optima Hybrid and a 2017 Kia Niro EX. This was also the month I signed the contract for my 10.1KWDC Solar PV system. Within a week of signing the contract we went out and traded my wife's Optima Hybrid for my '18 Base Clarity PHEV. The Clarity immediately took over for our 2017 Kia Niro EX as the road trip car, and was the go to car for trips locally. By the time 2019 rolled around we noticed was that my wife was still needing to use her Niro to drop my son off at school that was about a 1.5 mile round trip so I started looking for a full EV to replace the Niro with. We looked at new Nissan Leaf's, and used BMW i3's, both of these cars had mirrors that were too low and blocked my view of the road ahead. We managed to find a used Leaf at CarMax and I went to look at it so see if it also had the same issue, which it did, and on the way out we saw a Kia Soul, Blue with a White top that I talked my wife into test driving. She quickly fell in love with it's quirky cuteness, so we went home and I started looking. One thing she missed from her Optima and did not like in my Clarity was lack of panoramic roof, with that in mind I started searching, on MyEV.com of all places and found out that the Soul EV, did in fact, come with an optional panoramic roof. Unfortunately the cars we found were far and not the color we really wanted. After about a month we stumbled onto the Soul we purchased at a dealer in Houston, TX. We obtained all of the information over phone and email confirmed interest and planned out all aspects of the purchase contingent on test drive and my inspection of the car. We drove down the Niro and traded it on the Soul the next morning. We did decide to still ship the car home so we drove back in a rental. Early that next week the car arrived at home. Since delivery last year we have had a few snags, about a week in the panoramic roof had a tilt lever fail, when we took it to the dealer we confirmed that could work on it they told us they couldn't touch an EV model when we went to drop it off. Believe me my wife was given a hard time over the now broken must have feature :D. We ended up getting it fixed down at Southwest Kia in Dallas. Fast forward to 4/29/2020, I was having a rough day and took the Kia out to get away and had low charge to start ~28mi. After some spirited driving I managed to drop the battery below 20% and received the Low Battery light (low fuel equiv) I started to head back to my house but when I got down to 14miles of range left and 16% the car Illuminated the Power down light (turtle light) and the Ready light started flashing. The car then refused to respond to the accelerator at all and rolled to a stop. after thinking a while I shut off the car and turned it back on and was able to do this about 4 time and limp it to a blink charger that was less than a mile away. I then was able to get it home. It went to the dealer this week and they found that cell 87 had failed (SOH was still 98.5%) and the battery will be getting replaced. This will be the second HV battery the car will had had and it's less than 40k life, it has also had a new steering rack, On-Board Charger, AC compressor and i think something else. There are also a few electrical ghosts I need to have them look at when they have it, the fun part of the Sun and Fun package (that gave the pano roof) had LED speaker lights and the switch has a short in it so they will turn on when the switch is in the off position. We still love it though but likely won't keep it after the EV warranty expires.

    2018 Honda Clarity PHEV
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    2016 Kia Soul EV+
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    10.1kw dc SunPower Solar
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    Attached Files:

    Last edited: May 8, 2020
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  3. The Gadgeteer

    The Gadgeteer Active Member

    What is that bulky grey adapter on the Clarity charging cord?
     
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  4. ^^^ Same question re the charger plug in.
     
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  5. LegoZ

    LegoZ Active Member

    It’s a JuicePlug, by eMotorWerks, it adds additional functionality to any EVSE very similar to what the JuiceBox have.

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  6. The Gadgeteer

    The Gadgeteer Active Member

    How much $?
     
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  8. LegoZ

    LegoZ Active Member

    Well here’s the rub, it’s like trying to find a catch a unicorn. These were only rolled out via a kickstarter and as far as I know there where no other production runs.
    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/emw/juiceplug-a-universal-smart-ev-charging-adapter
    https://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/23/new-emotorwerks-juiceplug-device-will-convert-dumb-level-2-chargers-into-smart-ones/

    eMotorWerks had scrubbed it’s site of its existence, I hat to look for months before I finally found one used on eBay if I remember correctly.
     
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  9. Mark W

    Mark W Active Member

    CT
    Interesting. Never heard of that thing.
     
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  10. Mowcowbell

    Mowcowbell Well-Known Member

    Too bad they didn't market the JuicePlug. I've never heard of it either, looks interesting.
     
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  11. LegoZ

    LegoZ Active Member

    I agree but this is something that is a sub-market of a sub-market so I think they were not able to do it in a cost effective manner. They were also piloting a smart 120v EVSE that never made it to market. :(
     
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  13. NoJacketRequired

    NoJacketRequired New Member

    Thanks for sharing this experience with us.

    I'm curious... you have a good amount of roof space, why limit your solar installation to 10.1KW?

    Like you, I'm contemplating a much more complete transition to electric power, including rooftop PV generation, electric car and (the current project) a cold climate heat pump with resistive backup heating elements. Having the rooftop generate the juice to offset the costs of the other electrical consumers just seems to make sense to me.
     
  14. LegoZ

    LegoZ Active Member

    That was estimated to generate 131% of my usage and until 2021 it was hovering a little over 100%. In 2021 8 months after the family was home full time I lost grasp of our energy usage and it rapidly ballooned. They combined with the massive blackout in February that year my wife and I decided we were not going to be held hostage to the Texas grid and in late ‘21 I signed contract for 4 Tesla Powerwalls and 8.5kw of Tesla solar.

    Fast forward to March 1 of 2022 it was all installed! I now have a total of 18.5kw and 54 kWh of storage.

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  15. LegoZ

    LegoZ Active Member

    Here is the data on how the system is doing so far:

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  16. LegoZ

    LegoZ Active Member

    Also unfortunately in April I was involved in a car accident and our Soul EV was totaled as the result. We now have a 2022 Kia Niro EV EX Premium.
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  17. NoJacketRequired

    NoJacketRequired New Member

    So sorry to hear you lost your Soul - I do hope it was the only thing that took damage in that accident, especially not its occupants.

    I'd be very interested to learn more about the Tesla PowerWall experience. I suspect more and more people are going to get burned by grid outages so the power wall is definitely of interest. We have a fairly strict electrical code when it comes to sharing power with the grid, thus our options may be fairly limited. It would be great to be able to generate power, store power, and use power as needed AND have the ability to keep the house going in a limited fashion when the grid goes down.
     
  18. LegoZ

    LegoZ Active Member

    All people involved were fine thankfully. My wife likes to say I crushed her soul so…

    So far the setup is doing great and will help insulate me for the terrible power plans that are being offered on the Oncor service area here in Texas. I have a year left of my Goldilocks plan. Next spring is when it gets real.
     
  19. David Towle

    David Towle Well-Known Member

    It seems hard to me to justify a powerwall for outage backup. Not cheap. Better to wait and get something like a Ford Lightning pickup that promises much more capacity for your house and has its own functionality. Or maybe there will be an aftermarket solution to pull the power out of any EV.
     
  20. David Towle

    David Towle Well-Known Member

    The 10 kw solar we got in January looks to cover us 100% for 2 cars and heat pump and all the other electric stuff. We do have gas for hot water and cooking.
     
  21. LegoZ

    LegoZ Active Member

    It was for backup and self sufficiency and its all of the above type of thing and Independence isn’t free
     
  22. It certainly isn’t free. There are lower cost options that don’t compromise on quality, other than a Powerwall or any other lithium battery. Particularly for a grid-tied system.

    Is the 8.5K/Powerwall system separate from the 10K system? Does the 10K array also charge the Powerwall?

    We’ve had Rolls-Surrette L16 FLA’s as a battery back up since 2012. Last summer we upgraded our panels and components. We discussed various battery upgrades with our installer. Everything from new FLA’s to AGM’s to Lithium from Outback. I ran multiple capacity tests on the batteries and they still have more than 90% of their original capacity. We opted to just keep them for now. When the time comes to replace them, we’ll likely go with FLA’s again.

    Over the past 10 years we’ve experienced power outages from a few hours up to 8 days. Being grid-tied, we simply aren’t cycling the batteries at a frequency that warrants a conversion to lithium. I check the water every 3 months or so and run an equalization once a year. Pretty low maintenance.

    Different strokes, I suppose.
     
  23. LegoZ

    LegoZ Active Member

    My goal is the grid is my backup. Right now it's beneficial for me to sell excess to the grid, the plans that are being offered here that I am going to end up with in 2023 will cap credit for buy back of excess generation at monthly usage or buy back at real time wholesale. Example for a capped plan: In a billing cycle I pull 300 kWh from the grid and send 1000 kWh to the grid, I will receive credit for 300 kWh and only 300 kWh the rest of the remain 700 kWh was a gift from me to the grid.

    I run my powerwalls in self powered-mode and from March 1 '22 when the system went active only 5% of my overall usage has come from the grid. 47% of my usage has been pulled from my batteries which is 2460kWh in almost 3 months. The balance came directly off of the roof.

    Yes, the 8.5 is DC into the string inverter, the 10.1 is micro inverters.

    As the Powerwalls are AC they are not directly charged by the output of the solar but rather adjust their charge current to follow the production of both systems (as monitored by CT clamps on the output side of the two systems (combined)), minus the house usage. This allows for them to "charge" from the solar.

    On your system do the DC Panels pass through a charge controller, charge the batteries and then the inverter is on the battery side of things?
     

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