Source: Ballycroft Vineyard and Cellars
A Nissan Leaf will be the main source of energy for a vineyard in South Australia from next Wednesday, marking a major shift in the relationship between cars and buildings in Australia.
Ballycroft Vineyard and Cellars, located near the Sturt Highway about an hour’s drive north-east of Adelaide, is run by Joseph and Sue Evans.
After a long two and a half year wait, the Barossa locals are about to have a vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home converter installed that will allow them to use the two-way charging capability of their Nissan Leaf to power their home and business.
According to Joseph, the converter can do two things: it can charge the car at a rate of seven kilowatts an hour during the day, and then at nighttime the stored power in the EV’s 40kWh lithium battery can charge the house or put power back onto the grid.
While it won’t quite mean the vineyard can go off-grid, it should be able to become as close to self-sufficient energywise without investing in several energy stoage batteries. On top of that, the Evans’ also get a vehicle that doesn’t need them to visit the bowser and pay fluctuating fuel prices in with the deal.
We had a chance to chat to Joseph who told us a bit about why the vineyard is installing the Wallbox DC Quasar V2G (vehicle-to-grid) converter.
Joseph says he first got thinking about changing the way the vineyard uses energy after a trip over to California in 2015. With electric car technology kicking off over there, they were inspired to become the first Valley winery to put in a Tesla car charging station nearly five years ago.
But he was never interested in buying a Tesla, he says.
“I wanted a Nissan Leaf, because it has a CHAdeMO plug.” The fast-charging plug, which is only used on Nissan Leafs and Mitsubishi Outlander PHEVs, can fast charge at 50 kilowatts an hour meaning the Leaf’s 40kWh battery can charge from near empty up to full within about 50 minutes.
But the main reason Joseph wanted the Leaf is that the CHAdeMo plug also has bidirectional charging capabilities. While the CCS plug standard will down the track also offer this two-way charging, it will take a long time for that technology to be approved and then filter out to Australia.
So that’s the big reason I wanted this. I purposely purchased and listened late. Because that was half the reason because we’ll have this capability.
Having waited for the 2019 40kWh Leaf (earlier models had a smaller battery with shorter range that wouldn’t suit their needs), the vineyard now uses it to deliver wines to Adelaide in the morning. By the time they get back, there is still about 100km left on the battery after a 160km round trip.
When they get back, they plug the car in and charge it up from the solar panels on the cellar door roof.
Source: Ballycroft/Plugshare
“We probably only charge the car twice a day, once a week or twice a week,” says Joseph. “We normally drive to Adelaide in the morning, because a lot of restaurants like the wines delivered before service. And then we charge the car up during the daylight hours, which is 12pm to 5pm and easily have the car back to full charge.”
Once the V2G converter is installed, “I’m going to mainly use it as a V2H (which means vehicle to home) converter,” says Joseph.
With the air con to keep the home warm during winter, he says they use about 22kWh of energy at night.
“We’ve got two fridges, two freezers, and, you know, few hair dryers going in the mornings because I’ve got two girls. And so we use about in the wintertime 22 kilowatts, (and in) spring and autumn when we don’t have air conditioning on we use about six, seven kilowatts overnight.”
Although the three-phase charger can charge at a rate of 22kW, the Leaf’s onboard inverter allows a maximum AC charge rate of 6.6kW.
Still, the five hours of sunlight in the afternoon is enough to add up to another 30 kilowatt hours of energy to the car’s battery. There are in-built settings in the car that will make sure the battery isn’t drained overnight. If it gets low, the house switches back to pulling power from the grid.
Cost-wise, Joseph says the converter will save the vineyard $1,700 in power costs a year.
“We use about 6,279 kilowatt hours a year, which is about 17kWh on average per day,” he says.
With the Nissan Leaf setting the vineyard back around $50,000, and the converter priced at around $11,000 plus install costs, the payback time is not exactly short. But, Joseph points out, the vineyard also avoids paying for fuel costs and has less servicing costs for the Leaf.
And, in order to wean the vineyard off the grid without the V2G converter, the business would have had to spend $36,000 on batteries.
“Instead, I paid $50,000 for a car that’s got a 40kWh lithium battery on it, which is worth $40,000,” he says, adding that they are also helping take demand from the grid by not drawing energy from it during peak times, and soaking up excess solar during the day.
It’s a compelling value proposition.
Keyword: Australian winery readies to power cellar door with Nissan Leaf and V2H