Lightning to Power House??

[richl025]

Brilliant! Flip main breaker!! Thanks!

Just a thought - breakers are not designed for frequent switching. Might be smarter to install a cutoff switch _ahead_ of the breaker, not sure how much that would cost you though - since it might involve shutting off power "at the pole" to install.

Definitely worth talking to a real electrician about...

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[Maquis]

The number of operations a breaker can withstand will vary depending on the load it’s making and breaking. If it’s carrying no current, it could last 100,000 cycles. If carrying full rated load, maybe only a few hundred to 1000. Tripping (or closing) a breaker into a bolted fault may destroy it in that one cycle

 

[Newton]

A clean way to do it (which requires an electrician and work with your utility) would be to have a panel in front of your current panel. Your current panel becomes a subpanel. The new panel has a breaker for your house and a breaker for your solar charger. Leave the house breaker off unless you need utility power, and set up the solar charger to only recharge the batteries when their state of charge is at whatever cut-off you decide upon.

You can then set up the truck on your current (now sub-) panel and coordinate with your solar system so that it switches to the truck at a particular state of charge. This fortunately is the type of stuff that Sunrun does so I would imagine that their equipment could handle the coordination.

 

[cdherman]

First off --- this is not the forum for DIY Solar and battery backup discussions. Try www.diysolarforum.com

Keep in mind that you will hear from THIS forum again and again about code solutions. And they are very limiting. Except perhaps you are not in a jurisdiction where all that applies?

You want solar? You want batteries? You want the Lighting to be your backup when your batteries attached to the solar system are depleted?

You need a Hybrid or "all in one" inverter. You need a single or set of lithium batteries attached to said inverter. Hybrid inverters can be programed to use grid power versus battery power. And lots of other features. You need to read up on that. And not here.

Here's my last teaser about a Hybrid inverter -- they have generator inputs for off grid applications. Or situations where the grid is down. The Lighting can be a "generator". You can tell the right hybrid inverter even what capacity your generator (your 7.2 kwh Lighting) has, so it will not overload it.

All this I have spent countless hours reading about. I have not done it. There is one or two people who have plugged the Lightning into a hybrid inverter and got it to work. They are on here, but may or may not wish to risk posting just HOW that works.

Nuff Said.....

 

[Danface]

You shoudl be able to program something with Home Assitant and a Raspberry PI. Of course, now YOU own the solution and any fixes that come along.

I seems to me that you you will need automated switching so these may be helpful:

https://www.eaton.com/us/en-us/cata.../energy-management-circuit-breaker.html#tab-2

https://leviton.com/products/residential/load-centers/the-leviton-smart-load-center


https://www.span.io/panel

 

[BobKenyon]

Thank you for the many responses. I think I may have done a poor job explaining what I'm looking to do.

I will purchase: Lightening, solar system, couple power walls, sunrun/ford Home Integration System (HIS)

I understand with the HIS, the truck will power the house if the grid goes down.

My dream is that on a sunny day:
solar powers house
then charges power walls
then charges lightning
then returns power to the grid

At night
powerwalls power house until depleted
truck then powers house
regretably pull from grid if powerwalls and truck are depleted.

With all this seamless. Yah?

 

[v2h8484]

If seamless means fully automated then it's doubtful. Also, not sure what the expectation is for such setup in terms of vendor support, but it would not be surprising if neither Ford/SunRun or Tesla would provide support if things don't work.

 

[BobKenyon]

If seamless means fully automated then it's doubtful. Also, not sure what the expectation is for such setup in terms of vendor support, but it would not be surprising if neither Ford/SunRun or Tesla would provide support if things don't work.

I'm hoping to find an electrician who could orchestrate and support. Perhaps I should take off my rose colored glasses...

 

[deltacap]

Thank you for the many responses. I think I may have done a poor job explaining what I'm looking to do.

I will purchase: Lightening, solar system, couple power walls, sunrun/ford Home Integration System (HIS)

I understand with the HIS, the truck will power the house if the grid goes down.

My dream is that on a sunny day:
solar powers house
then charges power walls
then charges lightning
then returns power to the grid

At night
powerwalls power house until depleted
truck then powers house
regretably pull from grid if powerwalls and truck are depleted.

With all this seamless. Yah?

The problem is the proprietary signaling required for the truck to output HVDC. Ford has crippled a potentially very useful feature for reasons that are not clear.

 

[Maquis]

The problem is the proprietary signaling required for the truck to output HVDC. Ford has crippled a potentially very useful feature for reasons that are not clear.

I very much suspect it’s related to the legally-required battery warranty. If someone were to use the battery intensively for something like power rate arbitrage, the battery capacity could easily fall below the warranty threshold long before 8 years/100,000 miles.

 

[BobKenyon]

I have the ford home energy backup system and it is only there if the grid goes down and to charge my truck. I also have 12.8 kW of P/v. I wondered about all that too but at the end of the day my utility (Xcel) has net metering which means my p/v runs the meter backwards watt for watt and at night the meter runs forward as usual. so in effect the grid is one big battery! I also think the efficiency of converting as to dc to ac uses more energy than the net meter/grid “battery.” I will be looking into night charging rates so then there is a bigger incentive to “sell” watts during the day from my p/v system and “buy” watts at a lower rate at night. Also our coming smart grid will soon be able to also automatically pull power from the truck into the grid to help clip peak grid demands. In that event they may offer even higher refund rates than you pay so I am really looking forward to that since my truck sits at home most of the day anyway (I work from home

interested to hear what smarter people than me say about my explanation. Always learning!

I finally spoke to an electrician. As written, the truck can produce 9kW or 9600watts. He divided 9600/240 to get 40amps. As he explained it, the truck can power a 40 amp circuit (or the sume thereof) and no more. My present house has a 200amp service so the truck could power 20% of the house - NOT the whole house. I feel the Sunrun site is misleading as it says it will power your house. Yes, some lights and a coffee pot but... wish I had understood this months ago..

 

[TaxmanHog]

I finally spoke to an electrician. As written, the truck can produce 9kW or 9600watts. He divided 9600/240 to get 40amps. As he explained it, the truck can power a 40 amp circuit (or the sume thereof) and no more. My present house has a 200amp service so the truck could power 20% of the house - NOT the whole house. I feel the Sunrun site is misleading as it says it will power your house. Yes, some lights and a coffee pot but... wish I had understood this months ago..

The HIS system, runs off the 300-400v DC feeder from the truck the HIS inverter is limited to the maximum current flow 30-40 amps, it definitely can't support your houses continues max load if you have a lot of high energy appliances

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The Pro Power On Board [PPOB]

The power available is split into two sources because there are two inverters.

One inverter is providing power to Frunk / Cabin generates 2400 watts 20 amps at 120 volts

The second inverter is providing power to the bed outlets, it generates 7200 watts, 30 amps at 240 volts or limited to the excess available energy less what the 20 amps at 120 volt outlets might provide, so the sum of the 240 or 120 outlets can not exceed 7200 watts.

 

[Steven Walsh]

I finally spoke to an electrician. As written, the truck can produce 9kW or 9600watts. He divided 9600/240 to get 40amps. As he explained it, the truck can power a 40 amp circuit (or the sume thereof) and no more. My present house has a 200amp service so the truck could power 20% of the house - NOT the whole house. I feel the Sunrun site is misleading as it says it will power your house. Yes, some lights and a coffee pot but... wish I had understood this months ago..

They installed a 50 amp sub-panel and a moved our critical loads to it for the backup source. But our (new) house is so efficient that in once we move over to a smart panel with priority load shedding technology we will be able to have all circuits backed up. Because we have an air source heat pump and super high efficiency everything we rarely draw much more than our electric dryer. That makes a huge difference. And all our motorized appliances have soft start so there are no huge peak load spikes at startup. That also makes a huge difference.

 

[v2h8484]

My present house has a 200amp service so the truck could power 20% of the house - NOT the whole house. I feel the Sunrun site is misleading as it says it will power your house. Yes, some lights and a coffee pot but... wish I had understood this months ago..

200A service capacity doesn't mean much. Your actual consumption is likely much lower. Typical home base usage is <5A. You should take an inventory of the load requirements in your house for a more meaningful analysis. Also, it's typical to limit usage of large loads in some way when on backup power. 9.6kW can run large loads (e.g. electric dryer/oven, central A/C w/soft start, etc.) but probably not at the same time.

 

[GDN]

200A service capacity doesn't mean much. Your actual consumption is likely much lower. Typical home base usage is <5A. You should take an inventory of the load requirements in your house for a more meaningful analysis. Also, it's typical to limit usage of large loads in some way when on backup power. 9.6kW can run large loads (e.g. electric dryer/oven, central A/C w/soft start, etc.) but probably not at the same time.

To add to that - I also have a 200 amp panel, but if you add up all of the individual breakers,- I have 740 amps of breakers.

However, the very first time I plugged my house into the truck, outside of the 240 appliances - Oven, AC, Pool, Clothes dryer, I turned on everything else in my house and was able to run it on the 7.6 coming from the truck.

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