Ruby vs Fern (A Winter Storm Tale of Survival w/ Pro Power Onboard)

[The Weatherman]

Final Entry (We hope.)
——————
Power just came back on 2:28pm cst.
Ruby had power to spare after 3 1/2 days of running things.

So based on my experience (for our use case) we could easily get 4-4 1/2 days of comfort on the PPOB with enough to left over to get the nearest DCFC if additional days were required.

Bottom line all is good and we are ready for the next big one.

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That might sound a little too dramatic, but this is hopefully a once in a lifetime experience.

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I am writing from Southern Kentucky on January 28th, 2026. We are currently in our fourth day without power following Winter Storm Fern, one of the worst snow and ice storms in the U.S. in over two decades.

Fortunately, we had ample warning and were well-prepared. I had both my F-150 Lightning and my wife’s Kia EV6 fully charged. I also managed to install an interlock and generator plug on the house just as the snow began to accumulate. When the power failed at 11:45 a.m. on January 25th, I successfully switched the house over to the Lightning.

To conserve energy, we have closed off unused upstairs areas and shut down the electric water heater. Since our furnace and range are gas-powered, they require very little electricity to operate, allowing our other appliances to function normally.

As of this morning, the truck is at a 50% state of charge. This should last until tomorrow or Friday. At that point, I will either drive 20 miles to a DC fast charger or use a borrowed generator to recharge. I am leaning toward the fast charger given how long it would take to recharge using the mobile EVSE.

I will provide further updates as the situation develops.



________________________________

Previous update from Sunday January 25, 2026 (copied from other thread)

Update:
It’s now 10:00am 1/26/2026 cst and we are approaching 24hrs without power. It’s 10 degrees outside and 70 degrees in the house thanks to my Lightning ER w/pro power.

With the current load we are pulling it looks like we will use about 15% every 24hrs. So we should be good for 5-51/2 days with enough left to go recharge and return if necessary.

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Update:
Power dropped at 11:45pm cst 1/25/2026 today and has been out since.

Looking at the providers outage map it may be a while before we see it restored. 1-3 days would be my guess.

The truck is running everything we need and only drawing between 450-900w. Thank GOD we just replaced our aging package heating system with a new more modern and efficient unit last month.

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Well here we go. The snow came and went and the sleet and freezing rain has moved in.

power has fluctuated a few times this morning and my go at any time now.

Not to worry the Lightning is wired and ready to stand in.

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[PA Lightning]

Sounds like you have things under control.

Do you have city water or are you on a well.

 

[WXman]

Closer to Lexington, we've been iced and snowed in but our power has stayed on and we are thankful for that (because that usually isn't the case). My Lightning has stayed in the garage hooked up to the charger. I wanted it to stay at 100% in the event that power does go out and I need to use it to power my house. For trips to town I've been using my Jeep.

So far, so good. If the power stays on we'll be fine. Utility bill next month will be $600 but that's how it goes I guess. I did see that the counties through middle TN and into southern KY that had the most power outages aligned perfectly with where we had forecasted the highest ice accretion. So as you said, at least there was great advance warning.

We're all ready for spring!

 

[02Reaper]

Looks like at the rate you are using power you could get by charging the truck with a small inverter generator on the 120 circuit mobile charger and be good. That is if the truck will charge at the same time as it’s using pro power onboard.

 

[Zprime29]

Too soon to mention I took the kids swimming at the neighborhood pool this past Sunday? We're upper 60's to low 70's for the next 10 days. I guess that's why we get "snowbirds"

@02Reaper Yes, you can charge while using PPOB. I tested this while using PPOB to charge my home batteries while plugged into a FCSP. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that my EG4 6000xp has direct pass through while on Generator power (plugged directly into the bed outlet). I wired a 6-20r cord to the load output and it charged the wife's XC90 without using the batteries. Now I just need to get circuits moved from the main panel to the subpanel, which will be powered by the 6000xp.

@The Weatherman Hope you and your family are doing well and that power comes back soon. I read even Waffle House was closing down all over the place from that storm. Thanks for the updates!

 

[The Weatherman]

Sounds like you have things under control.

Do you have city water or are you on a well.

County water so no pump to deal with.

 

[The Weatherman]

@02Reaper

Thanks for confirming the charging while PPOB in use.
I have been contemplating that approach. I tried the mobile charger plugged into the wife’s EV6 120 in cabinet outlet, but it faulted the charger and the Lightning. Had to restart the PPOB process. The mobile charger faulted even when not plugged into the charging port. Not sure what the issue is with the EV6’s power source, but I’m pretty sure it is the cause.

I’m going to pickup my son’s generator tomorrow when I go into town to recharge the truck. We’ll see how that goes.

 

[02Reaper]

@02Reaper

Thanks for confirming the charging while PPOB in use.
I have been contemplating that approach. I tried the mobile charger plugged into the wife’s EV6 120 in cabinet outlet, but it faulted the charger and the Lightning. Had to restart the PPOB process. The mobile charger faulted even when not plugged into the charging port. Not sure what the issue is with the EV6’s power source, but I’m pretty sure it is the cause.

I’m going to pickup my son’s generator tomorrow when I go into town to recharge the truck. We’ll see how that goes.

Hopefully you get it figured out. We was without power for 7 days after Helene and I used the truck to power the house during that time. The weather then was nice though. We just did miss this ice storm and being super cold would be a whole other animal to try to get through a power outage. I feel for everybody without power right now in these cold temps.

 

[Mal106]

Sounds like some are using a generator as a time extender rather than a range extender....

 

[chl]

Looks like at the rate you are using power you could get by charging the truck with a small inverter generator on the 120 circuit mobile charger and be good. That is if the truck will charge at the same time as it’s using pro power onboard.

NOTE: did not see the earlier reply answering this question - came in while I was typing I guess[

The truck does seem to charge while PPOB is on and being used.

When I tested my 10 emergency circuits through transfer switch connected to the PPOB, the truck was plugged into my FCSP which I had not turned off so it was still connected to utility power.

While the truck PPOB was powering the house emergency circuits (close to 1kw), it was also drawing power through the FCSP and keeping the battery at the 89% I had charged it to the day before.

I did not expect that and only noticed it because the battery 89% never went down even after a couple hours running the house circuits.

I looked at the FCSP and it was pulsing like it does when charging. When I turned off the FCSP (with the breaker) I got a Ford app message "Charger error."

The PPOB kept powering the house and the battery percentage did begin to drop.

 

[Mach Turtle]

When first testing my home backup power transfer switch, I accidentally left my AC mains powered Level 2 charging cable installed...and the PPOB tripped its breaker immediately upon power up. With the charging cable disconnected, PPOB has powered the house reliably without any trouble many times.

Therefore, some attention to grounding issues may be warranted. If you're using a small generator, you have some flexibility in how you ground it...hopefully some real electricians can explain how to connect the green and white wires in a way that's safe and potentially legal.

If they would keep themselves charged from AC mains, we could all have our own UPS trucks...

 

[I <3 My Lightning]

...I tried the mobile charger plugged into the wife’s EV6 120 in cabinet outlet, but it faulted the charger and the Lightning. Had to restart the PPOB process. The mobile charger faulted even when not plugged into the charging port. Not sure what the issue is with the EV6’s power source, but I’m pretty sure it is the cause.

I’m going to pickup my son’s generator tomorrow when I go into town to recharge the truck. We’ll see how that goes.

Glad to read you and yours are safe.

Your ev6 V2L/internal outlet is a floating neutral, hence your issue with a mobile charger, as that has a built in GFCI.

 

[The Weatherman]

Glad to read you and yours are safe.

Your ev6 V2L/internal outlet is a floating neutral, hence your issue with a mobile charger, as that has a built in GFCI.

Thanks ! And thanks for that information. It makes me feel better knowing the issue.

 

[chl]

When first testing my home backup power transfer switch, I accidentally left my AC mains powered Level 2 charging cable installed...and the PPOB tripped its breaker immediately upon power up. With the charging cable disconnected, PPOB has powered the house reliably without any trouble many times.

Therefore, some attention to grounding issues may be warranted. If you're using a small generator, you have some flexibility in how you ground it...hopefully some real electricians can explain how to connect the green and white wires in a way that's safe and potentially legal.

If they would keep themselves charged from AC mains, we could all have our own UPS trucks...

The tripping is a bit of a puzzle to me, not an electrician but I am an EE.

The GENERAC TS will cause the truck to throw a ground fault IF the utility power is connected when I switch to the PPOB, so I have to open the breaker to the GENERAC TS untility input when testing - in a real outage, there'd be no utility power.

Another GENRAC TS owner had the same experience and his electrician could not explain it and put in a call to the company - did not here any result to that though.

I put a voltmeter on the lines the PPOB would use if connected and switched the GENERAC TS manually (with no generator source connected has to be done manually) and I saw a voltage spike on the Hot and Neutral lines wrt to ground. That explains the what of the GFCI trip, but not the why. Everything is wired correctly.

My theory is when the solenoid is goes from utility power to generator power there is a momentary loss of power to it, and it being a reactance (coil) it produces the spike as the field collapses in the coil...just a theory.

Anyway the work around when testing is to turn off the utility power to the GENERAC TS before switching to the Lightning.

This happens to this guy at the end of the video when he switches back to utility power:



So today, I also experienced what you mentioned as well in a way.

To use up the battery power and not have the utility power passing from the FCSP EVSE through the truck to the PPOB and back to the GENERAC, I flipped the FCSP breaker off inside the house rather than going outside and unplugging it.

The result was the PPOB powered the house fine, but...the Ford app said the battery SOC was 89% and it never changed even though I was using about 1kW per hour for 3 hours.

What's going on I wondered?

I dawned on me that maybe leaving the EVSE plug in the charge port was somehow causing the truck to not update the battery SOC, like it was stuck on a CHARGE ERROR and hadn't moved on.

So I went outside and unplugged the EVSE from the charge port. Well, that unexpectedly caused the PPOB to trip and report a ground fault and shut off power to the house. Strange!

I plugged the EVSE plug back into the port, and climbed in the truck which was now OFF even though it had been on before unplugging the EVSE, so I turned it on and turned the PPOB back on.

Now the display said 77% not 89% as it had for 3 hours.

The EVSE was not powered. However, it does have a ground wire that is not disconnected when opening the breaker - that only disconnects the 2 hots, not the ground.

Multiple mysteries here:
1) why did the plug from the un-powered EVSE keep the truck from reporting the actual SOC of the battery when plugged into the port?
2) Why did then unplugging the EVSE plug from the truck turn off the PPOB and the truck as well?
3) Why does the PPOB draw power from the EVSE when powered and not from the battery?

I am going to ponder these a bit and see if I can figure out at least the GFCI tripping.

I note that when the EVSE was unpowered but still plugged in to the truck, the truck port light was on indicating the truck detected the plug even though unpowered.

I wonder if the truck was trying to connect the PPOB to the EVSE which was unpowered to draw utility power for the PPOB because it detected a plug in the port, and when I unplugged it, it somehow interpreted it as a ground fault?

I don't have access to the Ford wiring or logic, but it does not seem like a good idea to have the PPOB interconnected with the port when an unpowered EVSE plug is in it.

Anyway from now on, like you I will unplug the truck from the EVSE before using it for backup power.

 

[The Weatherman]

The thing about my situation is a different the issue you have described.

The mobile EVSE would Fault immediately upon being plugged into the EV6 without being hooked to the truck.

The first time it happened it was plugged into to the charge port of the Lightning and when I energized the V2L on the EV6 it immediately tripped and that shutdown the PPOB.

So I disconnected it from the Lightning and tried to energize it again and again it immediately tripped.

I will put it back on the wall and reattach it to the home electrical and see if acts correctly again.

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