Still reeling from the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters in March, Japan has started re-thinking the security and capacity of it’s electric grid. This has led Nissan and Mitsubishi to provide systems that allow you to power your house from your Mitsubishi i-Miev or Nissan Leaf.
According to Nissan, the Leaf’s battery pack has enough energy to power the average Japanese household for 2 days.
Since there are more than 6000 Nissan Leafs and Japan and another 4000 Mitsubishi i-Mievs, that means there are 10000 homes that could have access to electricity for their house in an emergency. This method of powering your house with the Mitsubishi i-Miev has been dubbed Vehicle to grid.
Nissan hopes to have a commercial version of their Leaf-to-home charger ready for sale in Japan next year. Mitsubishi already unveiled their system earlier this summer. The biggest part of the news is that Nissan and Mitsubishi announced that they plan to standardize such a device.
Apparently Toyota has announced a different kind of solution – one that would have an AC outlet on their 2012 Prius hybrids which would essentially turn the Prius into a generator for your house as long as you had gas in the tank.
Japanese homes use much less electricity than the average U.S. household, so don’t expect to be able to power your house from your North American Mitsubishi i.