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Can I connect a single outlet in my house to solar?

solar_trees

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I have an outlet (powering a refrigerator and cell phone booster) in my home that shares a wall with my garage that seems like it would be very easy to connect to a solar inverter if I had one in my garage. Is this something that can be done safely? If so, what's the best way to do it? Does having easy access to the outlet help at all or is this something that needs to be run through my home's fuse box.
 
I have an outlet (powering a refrigerator and cell phone booster) in my home that shares a wall with my garage that seems like it would be very easy to connect to a solar inverter if I had one in my garage. Is this something that can be done safely? If so, what's the best way to do it? Does having easy access to the outlet help at all or is this something that needs to be run through my home's fuse box.

The safest thing to do is hire an electrician.
The next safest thing to do is get proficient and do it yourself.

You need to safely disconnect the outlet from the existing electrical system and then safely connect it to your new system.
Of course the devil is in the details.

I guess that something like this would be a good start.
Allows you to easily switch one outlet between the grid and your home-brew setup.
 
How can dangerous crap like this be on the market? I can assure you it is not UL/CSA approved as stated on Amazon.

All it is doing is taking over a 120 vac branch feed circuit breaker, in case of video to furnace, to back feed generator into panel. It is a close cousin to a male to male suicide cord between dryer outlet and generator.

Without manually also flipping off main panel grid input breaker the generator will be back feeding the neighborhood. He says nothing about this and in fact says all you have to do is flip the switch on their green box.

No mention it is only 120vac with backfeed to only L1 or L2 side of panel breakers. He doesn't seem to know the ground bus bar in the panel is the long bus bar on the right side.

If grid is active and green box switch is flipped to 'generator' then the generator input AC male prongs on green box outlet will be live with grid power.
 
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How can dangerous crap like this be on the market? I can assure you it is not UL/CSA approved as stated on Amazon.

All it is doing is taking over a 120 vac branch feed circuit breaker, in case of video to furnace, to back feed generator into panel.
It doesn't energize the panel.
It just powers isolates and powers one circuit.

This video at this time stamp shows the internals.
Its just a double pole switch, inlet and breaker.
The double pole switch makes the inputs mutually exclusive.
 
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It doesn't energize the panel.
It just powers isolates and powers one circuit.
Very deceptive advertising. You have to go to 'frequently asked questions' to get info. Even there is says "circuits".

"
IS THE EZ GENERATOR SWITCH FOR THE ENTIRE HOUSE OR DO I NEED ONE FOR EACH CIRCUIT?
No, the switch is for individual circuits that the consumer feels are essential during a power failure. This is the most economical way to energize “just what you need”. A “whole house” transfer switch of the manual style would cost approximately $900 for the product alone not inclusive of installation and additional parts needed to make the transfer complete.
 
How can dangerous crap like this be on the market? I can assure you it is not UL/CSA approved as stated on Amazon.

All it is doing is taking over a 120 vac branch feed circuit breaker, in case of video to furnace, to back feed generator into panel. It is a close cousin to a male to male suicide cord between dryer outlet and generator.

Without manually also flipping off main panel grid input breaker the generator will be back feeding the neighborhood. He says nothing about this and in fact says all you have to do is flip the switch on their green box.

No mention it is only 120vac with backfeed to only L1 or L2 side of panel breakers. He doesn't seem to know the ground bus bar in the panel is the long bus bar on the right side.

If grid is active and green box switch is flipped to 'generator' then the generator input AC male prongs on green box outlet will be live with grid power.
That switch prevents back feed from the generator to the main panel and is UL listed for this use. In residential construction, we are not required to isolate the ground and common in the panel and every panel I have been inside of, has common and ground wires going to both of the common buss bars.
It is absolutely a requirement to isolate the ground on a boat installation or you will have huge problems with stray current corrosion.
 
I have an outlet (powering a refrigerator and cell phone booster) in my home that shares a wall with my garage that seems like it would be very easy to connect to a solar inverter if I had one in my garage. Is this something that can be done safely? If so, what's the best way to do it? Does having easy access to the outlet help at all or is this something that needs to be run through my home's fuse box.
Yes it can be done but not using the existing house outlet. Depending on if you want a in wall outlet or surface mount will change the components but the idea is simply create a dedicated outlet from your inverter. You unplug the appliance from the home outlet and plug it into the inverter supplied outlet.

Ensure that you do not drill into any existing wires or water pipes when doing the wall pass through.
 
Very deceptive advertising. You have to go to 'frequently asked questions' to get info. Even there is says "circuits".

"
IS THE EZ GENERATOR SWITCH FOR THE ENTIRE HOUSE OR DO I NEED ONE FOR EACH CIRCUIT?
No, the switch is for individual circuits that the consumer feels are essential during a power failure. This is the most economical way to energize “just what you need”. A “whole house” transfer switch of the manual style would cost approximately $900 for the product alone not inclusive of installation and additional parts needed to make the transfer complete.
I agree with you that most people would prefer to have more than one circuit, but this switch answers the OP question. He specifically asked about a way to power just his fridge from solar.
FWIW, you do not need to use an expensive transfer switch to safely and leagally power your whole house from the generator. You can also use a Generator Lockout kit to make the connection. This is a manual system that requires you to "break" and lockout the main supply breaker before you "make" the generator supply breaker.
I installed one of these this year with full permits and L&I electrical inspector so that I can use either my 2000W portable or my 10KW MK generator to run anything in my house as long as I do not exceed the capacity of the generator. With the 10KW I can run anything I want but with the 2KW I turn off all of the essential breakers and turn off either the furnace or refrigerator breaker as needed because it will only run one of those loads at a time.
 
Make sure you get a true sine wave inverter if you do this. You likely want a battery and backup charger to do it "right."
 
Why not just get a Bluetti / Jackery / EcoFlow and use that instead? Much simpler and probably cheaper too.
 
I'm not sure why it was stated that you "can not" use existing outlet however.
Because existing outlet carries house AC.

Here's my setup going through an exterior wall that allows me to use any inverter setup outside (I presently have two to choose from). P1010004.JPGP1010005_v1.JPGP1010006.JPG

The upper outlet is the solar.
 
I'm not sure why it was stated that you "can not" use existing outlet however.
I agree. You certainly can use the same outlet but it MUST be done correctly. He will need to have a system that locks out the mains power before it will connect to the invertor so that there is no cross feed.

For someone who doesn't understand this process or know how to do it, two outlets is a simple alternative method that is completely safe.

Case in point, when I mentioned to an electrician friend of mine that I had hardwired an inverter into my boat he launched into a diatribe about all of the safety concerns and potential problems. I told him that it was a 500W invertor and the output was the two outlets on the unit and only the input was hardwired. He then said, "Never mind, as long as you used the right size wire and fuse you are good to go."
 
I agree. You certainly can use the same outlet but it MUST be done correctly. He will need to have a system that locks out the mains power before it will connect to the invertor so that there is no cross feed.

For someone who doesn't understand this process or know how to do it, two outlets is a simple alternative method that is completely safe.

Case in point, when I mentioned to an electrician friend of mine that I had hardwired an inverter into my boat he launched into a diatribe about all of the safety concerns and potential problems. I told him that it was a 500W invertor and the output was the two outlets on the unit and only the input was hardwired. He then said, "Never mind, as long as you used the right size wire and fuse you are good to go."
If just one outlet is to be setup for inverter the complexity of going to a transfer switch is a lot to deal with and existing outlet boxes rarely have the room inside to get too fancy with strange wiring arrangements.

Doing it correctly involves going back to the main panel and either wiring in a transfer switch with branch circuits such as those you see for generators or to a sub panel.
 
I simply hard wired a quality 15A 4 outlet power strip with a built-in breaker onto my 2000 w inverters output connection in my cargo conversion.
Same principal and not a wall outlet. Household use would be the same basic set up ;)
 
Why not just get a Bluetti / Jackery / EcoFlow and use that instead? Much simpler and probably cheaper too.
This is actually one thing I'm considering. Right now, I'm trying to understand which wires to put where. For example, do I put the solar generator in the garage and run a connection from the inverter through the wall of my garage into the house. Or do I instead keep the generator in the house and run the wires from the solar panels through the wall and into the house.
 
I'm not sure why it was stated that you "can not" use existing outlet however.
You need to be careful about shared neutrals and figure out your utility switch-over option... just easier to add a second outlet in most cases.
 
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