Hey everyone!
I'm in the process of putting up a DIY 10kw solar array with an 8kw Sol-ark inverter and 20kwh of battery storage. The batteries are primarily for use of peak shaving, and our grid is reliable (99.95%). However, I would love to keep power going in the house during grid downtime and I don't want to have to rewire a lot to get a sub panel operational for critical loads.
Our whole house uses only ~500W and <4.5kw when the AC is on (AC is only on for ~5min at a time, 1-3x/hr on hot days). We have all gas appliances with exception of the dryer (which we wouldn't run during an outage anyway). Our batteries can output 120A @ 48V (5.76kw).
So the question is, if there's an outage is there any way for me to manually convert my main panel to off grid temporarily without having to reroute everything to a sub panel?
My thought is that if I turn off the main breaker to the service, I'm incapable of backfeeding to the grid. I then have a "critical feed" breaker set to go to the main panel, and manually flip that to the on position and my grid tie breaker to the off position. In theory, wouldn't that be telling the inverter that it's time for critical loads mode and the critical loads panel just happens to be my main panel?
If there's a better/more logical/automated way of doing this I'm all ears, thanks!
I'm in the process of putting up a DIY 10kw solar array with an 8kw Sol-ark inverter and 20kwh of battery storage. The batteries are primarily for use of peak shaving, and our grid is reliable (99.95%). However, I would love to keep power going in the house during grid downtime and I don't want to have to rewire a lot to get a sub panel operational for critical loads.
Our whole house uses only ~500W and <4.5kw when the AC is on (AC is only on for ~5min at a time, 1-3x/hr on hot days). We have all gas appliances with exception of the dryer (which we wouldn't run during an outage anyway). Our batteries can output 120A @ 48V (5.76kw).
So the question is, if there's an outage is there any way for me to manually convert my main panel to off grid temporarily without having to reroute everything to a sub panel?
My thought is that if I turn off the main breaker to the service, I'm incapable of backfeeding to the grid. I then have a "critical feed" breaker set to go to the main panel, and manually flip that to the on position and my grid tie breaker to the off position. In theory, wouldn't that be telling the inverter that it's time for critical loads mode and the critical loads panel just happens to be my main panel?
If there's a better/more logical/automated way of doing this I'm all ears, thanks!
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