saturnschildren
Well-known member
- First Name
- Glen
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2022
- Threads
- 2
- Messages
- 76
- Reaction score
- 142
- Location
- Peterborough, Ontario
- Vehicles
- Lightning Lariat XR, 2008 Ridgeline, 1953 Unimog
- Thread starter
- #1
I live in southern Ontario in an off-grid house I built ~20 years ago. I have 5kW of solar panels on the roof feeding into a 48VDC lead acid battery bank. For about 8 months of the year I produce a surplus of electricity which I cannot store (when the batteries are full they're full). Since I am not attached to the grid, and attaching to the grid is impractical and expensive as I'm ~1km from the nearest pole, I wanted an EV so that during the 8 months that I have a surplus I could send the surplus to my vehicle. When the Lightning was announced it was a dream come true. I traded in my 2019 Honda Ridgeline on a 2022 Lightning Lariat ER.
This fall we sorted out the cables, grounds, and inverter settings to connect the truck to the house so that we can use Pro Power On-board to charge the house from the truck instead of the Honda 6500i gas genset that I normally use. Thankfully both the truck and the gas genset use the same 240V twist lock plug type so I can use the same wire for both.
You might notice from the screenshots that the house is only drawing 2.4kw from the truck. This is a limitation of how the Outback inverter connects to the truck and we're talking to Outback about how we can bring that number up. I'm not really concerned though since I don't especially care if I charge the house quickly or slowly. If for some reason I need to pick up the pace I can fall back to my gas genset which can charge at 5kw.
The house battery bank is actually smaller in capacity than the truck battery bank and I have the Pro Power cut off set at 150km (a big cushion for me). My partner has a house in the city where I installed my Ford Pro charger. So on nights when we sleep there I charge the truck off her house and effectively drive the electrons 30km to my house and feed them into my batteries.
This fall we sorted out the cables, grounds, and inverter settings to connect the truck to the house so that we can use Pro Power On-board to charge the house from the truck instead of the Honda 6500i gas genset that I normally use. Thankfully both the truck and the gas genset use the same 240V twist lock plug type so I can use the same wire for both.
You might notice from the screenshots that the house is only drawing 2.4kw from the truck. This is a limitation of how the Outback inverter connects to the truck and we're talking to Outback about how we can bring that number up. I'm not really concerned though since I don't especially care if I charge the house quickly or slowly. If for some reason I need to pick up the pace I can fall back to my gas genset which can charge at 5kw.
The house battery bank is actually smaller in capacity than the truck battery bank and I have the Pro Power cut off set at 150km (a big cushion for me). My partner has a house in the city where I installed my Ford Pro charger. So on nights when we sleep there I charge the truck off her house and effectively drive the electrons 30km to my house and feed them into my batteries.
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