Real-World Home Power Backup Options Using F-150 Lightning

[RickLightning]

We were trying to avoid the "nice" neighbor helping out, in a storm, and they forget about the ground wire being undone. It's MY Lightning, so I will always be the one hooking it up. The adapter and cord will be with MY truck. His house has a 50amp generator port, so leaving him the 30amp 50' cord I bought does him no good.

That way, no one gets hurt accidently. If I take the truck out of town, and he gets someone's generator, they are good to go.

We will be testing tomorrow morning, then I will bring it home, cut off the prong cleanly, and see how tight it holds together.

For a velcro strap, I was thinking that 2 circles of velcro on each side, with a piece of velcro pulled tight across them, and repeat that 180 degrees on the other side of the connection.

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[21st Century Truck]

I made a short 30-amp wire whip, 18 inches, and put male and female twist-lock plugs on either end. This whip goes between the Lightning 30 amp 240V receptacle and a normal 50 foot generator cord. I cut and liquid-rubber sealed the whip's ground wire on one end. This way, no one can make a mistake with my house's generator receptacle or with the 50 foot generator cord if ever using a generator here in the future... the short whip is the only non-standard link.

 

[flyct]

I made a short 30-amp wire whip, 18 inches, and put male and female twist-lock plugs on either end. This whip goes between the Lightning 30 amp 240V receptacle and a normal 50 foot generator cord. I cut and liquid-rubber sealed the whip's ground wire on one end. This way, no one can make a mistake with my house's generator receptacle or with the 50 foot generator cord if ever using a generator here in the future... the short whip is the only non-standard link.

Good solution. You could aways use a 3-wire 10-3 SOOW cord to male make the whip. that way no additional wire to terminate and seal off. You can buy it by the foot for about $3/foot at Home Depot. I used this cable to make my custom 30 amp long cable which I keep in my truck. My Generator Inlet is wired per code as is my Intrlock Bypass kit.

 

[RickLightning]

So the box.was unable to easily access the wires, so we just cut the ground terminal off the adapter plug. Worked great, even handled his central AC without blowing the truck breaker which surprised us.

 

[Redémarrage]

We have a Solar PV system with 30kWh of associated storage. When grid connected it self consumes to, at most, 65% overnight, soaks up "clipped" solar during the day and draws back up to 90% from the grid, before repeating.

My tentative plan is to run a 30A inlet from near the Lightning to the batteries and install a battery charger in parallel to the existing solar. In an extended power outage we'd simply hook the truck into the charger side of the battery bank. That allows the house batteries to recharge at a constant 5kWh, while handling significantly hiker spikes and retaining the existing load shedding.

 

[Space Flash]

Quick question: has anyone tried using a neutral-ground bonding plug on one of the regular 120v bed outlets to address the Lightning's "floating neutral"/GFCI issue to use the 240v 30a outlet with a manual transfer switch/sub-panel? Would a bonding plug (that manually connects the neutral and ground pins together) on a separate outlet, satisfy the truck's safety logic and the transfer switch requirements?

https://www.powerwatchdog.com/shop/...mwe0r7omQn936v1lveKWTpoAA16dlXYAhTGsnzV-l9fJY

Welcome any feedback from the experts. TIA!

 

[25StarWhiteLightning]

Quick question: has anyone tried using a neutral-ground bonding plug on one of the regular 120v bed outlets to address the Lightning's "floating neutral"/GFCI issue to use the 240v 30a outlet with a manual transfer switch/sub-panel? Would a bonding plug (that manually connects the neutral and ground pins together) on a separate outlet, satisfy the truck's safety logic and the transfer switch requirements?

https://www.powerwatchdog.com/shop/...mwe0r7omQn936v1lveKWTpoAA16dlXYAhTGsnzV-l9fJY

Welcome any feedback from the experts. TIA!

No the Lightning has a bonded neutral ground and your house has a bonded neutral ground. You want to lift (clip) the ground on the plug going into your 240V 30a outlet so it will work. This would not help you.

 

[Space Flash]

No the Lightning has a bonded neutral ground and your house has a bonded neutral ground. You want to lift (clip) the ground on the plug going into your 240V 30a outlet so it will work. This would not help you.

Makes sense. Our previous EV had a V2L feature so we already had a transfer switch and it worked great for outages. However it was limited to 120v/15a @1.9 kW and we wanted to take advantage of Ford's PPOB 240v/30a 7.2kW outlet to power some additional circuits so we had to start over. Still working through this with our electrician. He's installed a Generac 6852 manual transfer switch and wired the 10 circuits we settled on as a sub-panel with an inlet box.

When we connected it to the Lightning we experienced the GFCI fault. I had already ordered the recommended Generlink Ford Vehicle Connector (non-conductive ground) rather than having the him spend more time ($$) to try and resolve things. He said that he thought that using the adapter would work and didn't see a safety issue. Adapter will be here Wednesday so hopefully that'll be it.

EDIT: Wanted to clarify that it appears the Lightning's GFCI issue in our case is apparently due to there being a shared neutral somewhere in our home that's part of one of the circuits being used in the transfer switch. Otherwise it's wired correctly and should work fine without the adapter (per @carys98's post where he has the same setup).

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