Can you plug a power station into a wall to help power your home?

So, I love solar stuff and watch a lot of YouTube content about it. I was watching one video where a guy had a Y&H branded microinverter that he plugged 4 solar panels into and then plugged that into an outdoor electric outlet. It could put around 1000w back into the house.
This seems pretty dangerous to me, but it worked for this guy. I have googled this and haven't been able to come up with a good answer.
This is not something I am going to do, but more of a theoretical question. I have an Anker 535 that I use for camping with a portable 100w solar panel. At home I have two 100w panels that I have mounted outside and I power a few things in my bedroom with. Amazon sells a short male to male cord which would enable me to plug it into my house. It puts out regular sine wave 110 (120? I dunno) power
What would happen if I did this?
I'm super curious as to the how and why and I'm not an electrical engineer.
Thanks fellas

They call that cord a "suicide cord" for a reason...

No, you certainly cannot connect a power station to feed your home along with the grid.
The reason it worked for that guy is because he used a microinverter that syncs to the grid.
Portable power stations do not sync with the grid. They are simply not designed for that.
The consequences of doing so are immediate damage to appliances and the power station.

However, if you had a proper generator input with interlocking transfer switch, you could power your home with the portable power station. But your Anker is limited to 500w discharge, so not really capable of powering a home (barely enough for critical loads).
If you had something more powerful, then a generator input might be useful during a power outage.

There are 2 broad categories of inverters: Grid-Tied and Off-Grid.
Microinverters are designed to sync with the grid and inject power directly into the 'system'.
Off-grid on the on the other hand are stand alone devices that don't interact with other sources of power. The exception being that some off-grid inverters of the same brand and model number can be 'stacked' or run in tandom to increase output.

NewJersey said:

I was watching one video where a guy had a Y&H branded microinverter that he plugged 4 solar panels into and then plugged that into an outdoor electric outlet. It could put around 1000w back into the house.

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This is a grid-tied inverter and is designed to work that way.

NewJersey said:

Amazon sells a short male to male cord which would enable me to plug it into my house. It puts out regular sine wave 110 (120? I dunno) power
What would happen if I did this?

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Bad idea.
This is a very dangerous situation.
Don't do it.

timselectric said:

Really fucking Bad idea.
This is an extremely dangerous situation. Like Egon bad... like every molecule in your body flying apart at the speed of light in a puff of blue smoke.
Don't you dare fucking do it.

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Dear Mr. @timselectric,

I feel you have failed to express the significance the situation adequately. I have revised the quoted text accordingly.

Regards,

Papa Smurf

Thanks guys. I didn't realize "syncing with the grid" was a thing

This sort of thing exists but you probably won't see it in the USA

Maybe plug the Anker 535 into a socket, and your fridge into the Anker.
Might shorten the life of the Anker, so might not be worth it.

Grid Tie Micro Inverter 10.8V30V DC to AC Solar Microinverter Inverter (GMI-180L-AC110V) https://a.co/d/i5DBGdN

So this wired to a male plug and plugged into any outlet in the house?
The panels just sit outside anyways.
I appreciate the responses btw

NewJersey said:

Grid Tie Micro Inverter 10.8V30V DC to AC Solar Microinverter Inverter (GMI-180L-AC110V) https://a.co/d/i5DBGdN

So this wired to a male plug and plugged into any outlet in the house?
The panels just sit outside anyways.
I appreciate the responses btw

Click to expand...

Basically yes, but doing so violates some codes and regulations I suppose.

Your really not supposed to inject power through sockets, rather have a proper connection in your mains distribution panel.

One thing these kind of microinverters violate is what's called "branch rules".
Have a look at this document by Legion Solar, who sells "plug and play" grid tie systems.

The microinverter small PV "balcony" plug-in systems are quite popular in parts of Europe.

They may however not be legal in your jurisdiction, they certainly are not legal here in Australia nor in many countries and I would be surprised if they are legal in the US. Any generation source operating in parallel with the grid here must be certified and approval given by the local electricity supply authority.

Here's an example of them in common use in Germany:

As to a portable generation source, be it a regular fuel generator or a battery inverter system, that's been well covered above. Bad idea. If using such a source of power, it must operate as a system totally isolated from the grid.

meetyg said:

Basically yes, but doing so violates some codes and regulations I suppose.

Your really not supposed to inject power through sockets, rather have a proper connection in your mains distribution panel.

One thing these kind of microinverters violate is what's called "branch rules".
Have a look at this document by Legion Solar, who sells "plug and play" grid tie systems.

LegionSolarElectricalNotes_V1.1.pdf

drive.google.com

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I'm not sure I follow all of that, but basically you'd want to plug it in where there are the least loads?
I'm talking about 2 100w panels so this as small as is possible.

Anybody know what kind of connector plugs into the microinverter I posted for the OUT ac power? I'd like to find a cable with that end and regular socket receptacle male plug on the other end.

NewJersey said:

I'm not sure I follow all of that, but basically you'd want to plug it in where there are the least loads?
I'm talking about 2 100w panels so this as small as is possible.

Anybody know what kind of connector plugs into the microinverter I posted for the OUT ac power? I'd like to find a cable with that end and regular socket receptacle male plug on the other end.

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The problem with plugging in to a socket and injecting power, is that you are somewhat bypassing over current protection breakers, and risk damage to house wiring should an appliance short-circuit or simply take too much current.

I think an example will help explain:
Let's say you have a 20 amp breaker in your AC panel, that feeds some sockets in your house.
The 20 amp breaker is there to protect the wires going to these sockets, should an appliance take more 20 amps. The wire used should be able to handle 20 amps (maybe with some headroom) continuously.
Now let's say an appliance had a fault or short circuit and now it's pulling 30 amps.
The breaker should open and shutoff the power to that appliance, so that the wires won't overheat and possibly burn/cause a fire.

But, here comes the problem: Say you have a "plug and play' microinverter connected to any socket protected by that 20 amp breaker.
Let's also assume, for the sake of this example that you're pumping out 10 amps from the microinverter to a socket on this "branch" (protected by the 20 amp breaker).
Now with the appliance pulling 30 amps, the breaker won't sense the overcurrent, because it's only supplying 20 amps to the branch, the other 10 amps are coming from the microinverter. So now we have 30 amps flowing to the appliance, risking damage to the wires in your house.

wattmatters said:

The microinverter small PV "balcony" plug-in systems are quite popular in parts of Europe.

They may however not be legal in your jurisdiction, they certainly are not legal here in Australia nor in many countries and I would be surprised if they are legal in the US. Any generation source operating in parallel with the grid here must be certified and approval given by the local electricity supply authority.

Here's an example of them in common use in Germany:

This European country has installed over 400,000 ‘solar balconies’

This new wave of solar producers aren’t just getting cheap electricity, they’re also participating in the energy transition.

www.euronews.com

As to a portable generation source, be it a regular fuel generator or a battery inverter system, that's been well covered above. Bad idea. If using such a source of power, it must operate as a system totally isolated from the grid.

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I really don't understand how Germany allows this.
I mean it's a great idea and if every balcony had some solar, that would reduce grid usage and save the planet from lots of pollution.

But, it seems that they are counting on these systems to be fairly small, and are relying on the headroom in the household wiring.
Sounds dangerous to me...
Unless the wires used in German households are over specced, or if every socket has its own dedicated breaker. But I doubt that.

meetyg said:

I really don't understand how Germany allows this.
I mean it's a great idea and if every balcony had some solar, that would reduce grid usage and save the planet from lots of pollution.

But, it seems that they are counting on these systems to be fairly small, and are relying on the headroom in the household wiring.
Sounds dangerous to me...
Unless the wires used in German households are over specced, or if every socket has its own dedicated breaker. But I doubt that.

Click to expand...

I and others have analyzed this in various threads, from a U.S. code angle (since no Europeans showed up).

It’s explicitly prohibited by U.S. code by multiple clauses (lol) and it’s easy to mathematically show that you can exceed the official limits

EDIT: oops I missed your post above where you showed the math. Hahaha

But with the low power levels allowed (it’s probably like 20% of circuit ampacity) for backfed balcony power in Europe it’s probably within the safety margin