ArtieKendall
New Member
TL,DR: Can I charge the basic, very cheap DIY battery-inverter setups in Will's videos with power from a wall outlet, i.e. just wire an ordinary power cord to the AC-in screws in the inverter?
Long version:
My area has enough short (usually just a few hours) power outages to be annoying, but I've never had one that lasted more than 12 hours, so I didn't want to spend $15K for a Powerwall or the like. Looking around, I found that I could get a portable power station like EcoFlow or Bluetti that would probably handle most of my problems for like $2000.
Then I looked around more and learned that I could get a 30% tax credit if I bought at least 3KWH of storage, which essentially made it almost no extra cost to get a bigger unit, like around $4K. Then I stumbled across Will's DIY Solar videos on Youtube, and I learned that it was fairly easy to build the equivalent of a power station that big for half the cost.
So I started binging on Will's videos, probably watched a couple of dozen, and I was getting excited about maybe adding solar panels in a DIY ground rack, etc. So I could have a whole solar power battery backup system bigger than any portable power station for like ten grand. Great!
Then I watched a video where Will was reviewing an inverter, and he said something like, "Of course, this can't be tied to the grid. If you want to do that, you need a Sol-Ark."
So I googled Sol-Ark, and they were like $8K alone, so not so cheap.
And then the next day we went on vacation, and now that I'm back, I can't find that video to make sure I heard him right. But even if I did, I still have the same question:
Was I completely misunderstanding all the other videos? I know it says "off-grid" right in the title of most of them, but I thought it just meant "if you want," not "absolutely not connected to grid power in any way."
To make it crystal clear, I'm not talking about net metering or any kind of shunting excess power back to the grid. All I want to do is to be able to plug the inverter into the wall and charge my batteries from the grid - just like I would do with a portable power station like Bluetti, because my location (Olympic peninsula) doesn't get enough sun to go off-grid (unless I get like 40 panels, which I don't have room for).
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Long version:
My area has enough short (usually just a few hours) power outages to be annoying, but I've never had one that lasted more than 12 hours, so I didn't want to spend $15K for a Powerwall or the like. Looking around, I found that I could get a portable power station like EcoFlow or Bluetti that would probably handle most of my problems for like $2000.
Then I looked around more and learned that I could get a 30% tax credit if I bought at least 3KWH of storage, which essentially made it almost no extra cost to get a bigger unit, like around $4K. Then I stumbled across Will's DIY Solar videos on Youtube, and I learned that it was fairly easy to build the equivalent of a power station that big for half the cost.
So I started binging on Will's videos, probably watched a couple of dozen, and I was getting excited about maybe adding solar panels in a DIY ground rack, etc. So I could have a whole solar power battery backup system bigger than any portable power station for like ten grand. Great!
Then I watched a video where Will was reviewing an inverter, and he said something like, "Of course, this can't be tied to the grid. If you want to do that, you need a Sol-Ark."
So I googled Sol-Ark, and they were like $8K alone, so not so cheap.
And then the next day we went on vacation, and now that I'm back, I can't find that video to make sure I heard him right. But even if I did, I still have the same question:
Was I completely misunderstanding all the other videos? I know it says "off-grid" right in the title of most of them, but I thought it just meant "if you want," not "absolutely not connected to grid power in any way."
To make it crystal clear, I'm not talking about net metering or any kind of shunting excess power back to the grid. All I want to do is to be able to plug the inverter into the wall and charge my batteries from the grid - just like I would do with a portable power station like Bluetti, because my location (Olympic peninsula) doesn't get enough sun to go off-grid (unless I get like 40 panels, which I don't have room for).
Any help is greatly appreciated.
