diy solar

diy solar

Building a portable all-in-one system to provide 240vac @ 30a to my house

Pancakes

New Member
Joined
Sep 24, 2021
Messages
16
Hey guys,

Big fan of the channel, and a big fan of solar and backup power in general. I got into all this after the Texas Freeze. We lost power for around 2 days in total, which was no fun at all. After that happened, I got the following to prepare for the future, but I'm looking for advice on a possible way to get power for 1+ months in the event of a natural gas outage paired with an electricity outage

What I currently have:

* 17kw Grid tie solar with Enphase Microinverters and no batteries - Now I am shielded from rising electric costs, and ready for a battery when prices come down. this is 130% of current usage. I use around 25-30kwh between solar production, so I'd need a lot of battery to go "off grid" with a grid tied system.
* 27kw Generac RG027 Liquid Cooled Natural Gas Generator with 200a ATS - If a power outage happens, I can power my entire house and live as normal
* Champion 8750/7000w Inverter Generator (With Natural Gas Kit) - If the natural gas goes out, or my main generator fails, I can still power my house for a good few days using the below 2 items. It will run my 4 Ton AC with no problems
* 30 Inlet and interlock kit on main panel
* 70 Gallons of gasoline rotated out in 5 Gallon Wavian gas cans
* Hyper Engineering SureStart on my 4 Ton central AC

* Dual zone 18,000BTU Daikin Mini Split Heat Pump in my 2 most important rooms - This has blown my mind. The energy savings are INSANE. Now if my AC fails, I'm good. If the natural gas goes out and I need some heat, I'm good, and if I'm running on the portable generator, I am drawing much less than running the 4 Ton AC. I've pretty much halved my energy use since putting these in

I personally think with all the above stuff I am shielded from most issues I will face, but I want to see how hard it would be to go one step further.

I'd love to get some kind of MPPT (Right term?) that can output 30a @ 240v that I could hook into my interlock kit in an emergency, this will have a decent amount of battery tied to it, and connections where I could lay solar panels on the ground. Then I'd also want it to have a generator input, so if I have a cloudy day with not much production, I could charge up the batteries and supply power to the house as if there was solar

I know this is all possibly, but is it reasonable? I'd love to do this just as a fun project, and one that could come in useful, but will it cost a million dollars?

If I could get something that could take a 120v input from the generator to charge batteries, but still output 240v split phase, that would be awesome as I could get a small Honda EU2000i or something else small and quiet, and just run that and let the batteries act as a buffer to let me peak at 30a 240v, while giving a slow and steady 1500w input when needed and there is no sun

What do you guys think?
 
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