Generac 6852 Transfer Switch installed (to power my house from the Pro Power 240V plug)

[Lightning Rod]

Has anyone here ever test ran you home using your Lightning for any prolonged period of time?

I think I'm going to run our home for a full 24 hours one day next weekend with the Lightning, just to see what percentage of battery it will use while the AC will be running (it's supposed to be 88 degrees). We will run the whole house as just a normal day. I'm figuring about 10 percent per day, but we will see.

I will report my findings.

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[Runaway Tractor]

Has anyone here ever test ran you home using your Lightning for any prolonged period of time?

The longest I've needed to thus far was about 6hrs. It was really nice not having to hear the portable generator screaming the whole time!

 

[BhamDCam]

Has anyone here ever test ran you home using your Lightning for any prolonged period of time?

Longest I’ve used it was about 9 hours. Used 7%. Happened during the winter so no AC usage needed.

 

[Maquis]

Has anyone here ever test ran you home using your Lightning for any prolonged period of time?

I think I'm going to run our home for a full 24 hours one day next weekend with the Lightning, just to see what percentage of battery it will use while the AC will be running (it's supposed to be 88 degrees). We will run the whole house as just a normal day. I'm figuring about 10 percent per day, but we will see.

I will report my findings.

8 hours overnight. No AC. Freezer and 2 fridges were the main loads. 5%.

 

[K6CCC]

I could wish for that long. I fully admit that my electrical consumption is well above average - for a variety of reasons. I just looked, yesterday my total consumption for the day was 80.35 KWH and my solar generated 40.25 KWH. It's pretty hot and did not cool off overnight, so a fairly large amount of AC load.

 

[chl]

After getting it hooked up I ran on the Lightning for about 3 hours as a test.

No AC and at night so less things powered on - was not using microwave or coffee pot or toaster. Biggest current draw was probably the refrigerator.

Used under 2kW for 3 hrs, so about 6kWh or under 8% of the 80% charge on my SR 98kWh battery.

I keep hoping for an outage so I can run it for a longer time.

If we get a hurricane remnant visiting from the south, I'd probably charge up to 90% the day before it arrives just in case.

Worst/longest outage we've had here in Northern Virginia when I had a generator was a little over 3 days. It was after a derecho came through in June 2012.

Some people around here had no power for over a week.
I ran a gas generator for 9 hours at a time during the day which was about the time on one fill up of 8 gals of gasoline.

I ran a cord to my neighbor's refrigerator, a retired Army Col. - they had just gone to the PX and had a lot of food they would have lost.

One neighbor's basement flooded because their backup battery on their sump pump ran out - they were too far away (and across the street) to run a cord or I would have.

What fun!

 

[Runaway Tractor]

It was after a derecho came through in June 2012.

At the time I was a Pepco customer. Two weeks. It was hell. My friend's apartment building flooded because it got so hot in the lobby the fire sprinklers popped.

 

[chl]

At the time I was a Pepco customer. Two weeks. It was hell. My friend's apartment building flooded because it got so hot in the lobby the fire sprinklers popped.

We had a neighbor's tree fall into one of ours, a magnolia about 50 feet tall, and half of it ended up on top of my wife's backyard pottery shed. I cranked up the gas generator and used an electric chain saw to cut one side, then the other, back and forth until I could roll the rest off the roof to the back of the shed.

The tree that hit our tree:

This was part of the pile I lugged to the street for pickup:

June 2012. What fun!

 

[hokieinidaho]

This past weekend I installed a Generac 6852 transfer switch to power my house from the pro power 240V plug. The 6852 is designed for a bonded neutral generator so it works perfectly with the Lightning.

My main electrical panel is at the meter base. In the main panel there are the maximum 6 breakers feeding 3 AC units, the oven, and 2 sub-panels. There is a 125A sub-panel in my garage that supplies most of the house and a second 90A sub-panel for a finished room on the third floor. I connected the Generac switch to the garage sub-panel.

The 6852 has slots for up to 8 breakers so you can supply 8 branch circuits. You can theoretically have more if you want to use tandem breakers. Because of the bonded neutral you have to route both the hot and the neutral from the chosen circuits to the switch panel so you end up with 16 wires plus the 4 feeding the grid power to the switch. The panel is supplied with 1" conduit and it ends up pretty full.

I have gas heat, hot water, and stove so there aren't any high current essential circuits. I chose to power the refrigerator, my two gas furnaces, plus 6 branch circuits. I made sure to power the circuits for my internet equipment, the TV, all of the bathroom lights, plus the bedrooms.

My garage panel is mounted between the studs in a finished wall. The switch panel will also fit between studs but because of a door the two studs next to my panel are only 11 inches apart. I had to mount the switch on the wall and then get the wires into the wall to feed into the sub-panel. I cut out the drywall and drilled through the stud to access the sub-panel. I then put a deep 4" box with 1" flex into the sub-panel. After patching the drywall I mounted the switch above the box and ran the wiring through a right angle into the box and pulled them into the sub-panel.

To feed the grid input to the switch I installed a 50A dual pole breaker into my sub-panel and connected the two hots and neutral to the switch input and then connected the two grounds together. I also ran a separate ground wire to ground the 4" box. Then I removed each of the 8 hot leads from their breakers and labeled them. I located the associated neutrals for the 8 circuits and disconnected them from the sub-panel neutral bar. Then I connected each hot to one of the breakers in the switch panel and connected each of the neutrals to one of the neutral wires from the switch panel.

The last step was to connect the power inlet for the truck power. I ended up buying a Reliance inlet box with the L14-30 inlet connector. I mounted it below the switch and routed PVC conduit to the box. I then pulled the 4 10 gauge conductors through the conduit and terminated them on the inlet and on the generator side of the switch.

I bought a 25' extension cord to reach from the back of my truck to the back wall of my garage and turned on the pro power. I switched over to generator power and it ran with no issue. The only significant load was the refrigerator but I verified that all of the circuits were powered. Now I'm looking forward to our next power outage.

excellent info - found this after being quoted the same Generac transfer switch for my PowerBoost.

And Go Hokies!

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