One of the selling points of the Kia EV9 is that it supports "Vehicle to Load" or "V2L". I didn't know exactly what this meant when I read about it on the website, but I knew for a long time in Japan that EV chargers could flow electricity both ways, and you could store power from the grid in your car and use it when needed. I figured V2L was something like that finally coming to America. There's even a system advertised on the Kia site that does this automatically, just plug in to charge and the system will power your house when the lights go out, etc.
The catch is that system costs a lot, as far as I could tell, around $10,000. So I thought I'd try to learn more about V2L and see if there are other options.
As it turns out, there's a few terms surrounding the ability to use the battery in a car for things other than turning the wheels. While not all companies stick to the same definitions, it mostly breaks down like this:
* Vehicle-to-load uses on-board inverters to power external AC devices
* Vehicle-to-home or Vehicle-to-grid use external inverters and draw DC power from the vehicle
As you might guess, V2H and V2G are capable of delivering more power, because the invert isn't limited to something that reasonably fits inside the car. In the case of the Kia EV9, V2L is limited to 30 amps, and the adapters I've found so far that connect to the charging port are only good for 20 amps.
I clearly need to do more research on the capabilities of the NACS port on the EV9, because any product that claims to power a house from the EV9 is going to need more than 20 amps. That said, 20 amps isn't bad for emergency standby, and with almost 100KWh on tap, that's a few days worth of standby power at 20A.
So on the car side a ~$100 adapter turns the EV9 into a 100KWh Bluetti.
This makes the house side fairly simple: it's no different than connecting any other generator. To do this right means using a transfer switch, or possibly a "lock out" on the circuit breaker panel to ensure no backfeeding the grid when powering the panel from the car. With 20A avaliable I'm not going to power the whole house, but that's probably enough to keep the refrigerator & deep freeze cool, along with powering a few lights and keeping phones charged.
What I really wish I could do is run the heat pump, but aside from needing more than 20 amps, it also needs 240 volts.
One thought I've had is to "buffer" the 20 amp V2L supply with something like the Bluetti Apex 300. The Apex 300 can provide 240VAC at up to 50 amps, and while it's built-in battery can't do that for long, it might be enough to absorb the initial draw of big devices like the heat-pump even if it's being charged by a 20A supply from the car.
This is an interesting design, because it would allow me to use the EV9's battery without resorting to anything too exotic, and in the event that I don't want to use the car's battery (or the car is elsewhere), I can easily fall-back to another generator (a solar generator, gas generator, etc.) outside the house to keep the Apex 300 inside topped-up. Additionally, the Apex's battery can be expanded, allowing both more runtime and more "shock absorption". The Apex itself can of course take power from solar as well so it could become the foundation of a longer-term project to add some solar capacity to the house.
The total power available at the panel is still limited by the capacity of the Apex 300, but 50A at 240VAC is plenty for stand-by, and even a good goal for the long run (bear in mind there are still homes here with a 60A service...).
Before I commit to running a generator circuit I want to do some more research to see if I can find a 30 amp V2L adapter for the EV9. The cars documentation indicates that it can provide 30 amps, so my guess as to why the adapters I've found do not is simply to keep the outlet something compatible with most appliances instead of the more unusual 30 amp receptacles.
Jason J. Gullickson, 2026