Ford truck with SK On battery powers house during blizzard

A Ford F-150 Lightning truck is shown being used to power a house. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

SK On batteries recently garnered sudden attention online after the owner of a Ford electric truck in Canada managed to tap the car battery to use as an alternative source of electricity during a power outage caused by an ongoing blizzard.

The user of the Ford F-150 Lightning said that the battery supplied them with power for nearly two days, in a post on Reddit on Dec. 27, as the person went 44 hours without power in southern Ontario.

“We don't have it wired to our panel, but the two cords with splitters ran our fridges, freezers and our WiFi, select lights and TV for close to two full days,” the user going by RapsFanLJ said, adding that the battery was only down to 65 percent once the power was restored.

The bidirectional charging was possible due to the power backup system installed in the pick-truck models. The Intelligent Backup Power feature can be used to power a home in the event of a power outage.

Replies to the post testified to other users' experience deploying the function.

Another forum member under the username chillaban said that the F-150 Lightning kept their WiFi, washer and garbage disposal machine running in Lake Tahoe for three days. By the end, the battery "only drained about 20 percent."

GM is also testing its own version of the backup power system, with U.S. utility giant PG&E, to boost the appeal of their electric vehicles.

Ford’s all-electric truck, released last April, is fitted with SK On’s newest battery cell named NCM9, which stands for nickel, cobalt and manganese.

Of the three materials, the NCM9 has a higher proportion of nickel at nearly 90 percent, according to the battery maker.

The higher the nickel, the more energy the battery can hold and the better its output. High-nickel batteries, which have a sophisticated manufacturing process, are in high demand.

The cell type won prizes at the CES 2022 after being produced in SK On’s factory in Georgia.

The battery maker and Ford established a $11.4-billion joint venture called BlueOvalSK in the United States with an aim of building factories in Kentucky and Tennessee.

BlueOval recently broke ground on their two battery plants in Kentucky. The plants, which will be built on a 6.28-million-square-meter (67.6-million-square-foot) plot of land, will have an annual capacity of 86 gigawatt-hours.

When completed, the combined capacity of the three plants will be 129-gigawatt hours per year, which will be enough to supply batteries to some 1.2 million EVs. Mass production is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2025.

The truck version of the F-150 offers 11 electric outlets to offer up to 9.6 kilowatts of electricity. Ford said that at maximum capacity it could power a house for 10 days.

BY PARK EUN-JEE [park.eunjee@joongang.co.kr]