Buttafly_kris
New Member
- Joined
- May 7, 2020
- Messages
- 9
Hi All,
I'm a newcomer to the forum and the forum is great, I'm learning a lot reading through the various posts, great material. I'll try not to be too wordy. About 3 years back I purchased a Generac 16kW propane whole house generator with ATS, it's be installed and working fine but I live in the Bahamas and we get hurricanes. Last hurricane we had knocked out power for about 2 weeks my area, the generator worked through this but we had to get the propane tank filled every 4 days or so which was a whooping $400. Eventually I started turning the generator off during the day and relying on a few UPSs I have installed, waiting until they got to about 5% battery then turning the generator back on to charge them back up and do whatever else was needed but I let the generator run all night. This obviously wasn't very efficient for me and I started to look into and research solar started watching (watched just about all) of Will Prowse's videos for solar and followed just about every diypowerwall youtuber. (I'm a tinkerer myself)
I've been looking into MPP solar a lot and their hybrid inverters, the one thing I've had difficulty finding after literally scouring the net for months, is how to wire up the whole house generator with a hybrid inverter w/battery backup and still allow for net metering. I've read in a couple different forums that the inverter can back feed to and damage the generator, I see that MPP solar have inverters that seem to allow for it, but it says it works with inverter type generators which I don't think my generator is. I wanted to know if it was possible to do it with a inverter like a MMP solar hybrid or would I need a inverter like a more expensive outback unit that has a generator input. I was trying to explore my way around AC coupling as I'm half comfortable with electric circuits from doing small stuff around my home. I quickly realized that I'm not as knowledgeable in electricity as I think I am when I'm installing AC units and changing sockets / light switches around the house.
Oh, I don't have (and was hoping not to have to use) a critical load panel, the ATS is the one that has a big "throw" that just cuts power to and from the house during the outage, that runs into a 80a fused disconnect which then runs to my main panel.
I hope someone smarter than I am can point me in the right directions...
I'm a newcomer to the forum and the forum is great, I'm learning a lot reading through the various posts, great material. I'll try not to be too wordy. About 3 years back I purchased a Generac 16kW propane whole house generator with ATS, it's be installed and working fine but I live in the Bahamas and we get hurricanes. Last hurricane we had knocked out power for about 2 weeks my area, the generator worked through this but we had to get the propane tank filled every 4 days or so which was a whooping $400. Eventually I started turning the generator off during the day and relying on a few UPSs I have installed, waiting until they got to about 5% battery then turning the generator back on to charge them back up and do whatever else was needed but I let the generator run all night. This obviously wasn't very efficient for me and I started to look into and research solar started watching (watched just about all) of Will Prowse's videos for solar and followed just about every diypowerwall youtuber. (I'm a tinkerer myself)
I've been looking into MPP solar a lot and their hybrid inverters, the one thing I've had difficulty finding after literally scouring the net for months, is how to wire up the whole house generator with a hybrid inverter w/battery backup and still allow for net metering. I've read in a couple different forums that the inverter can back feed to and damage the generator, I see that MPP solar have inverters that seem to allow for it, but it says it works with inverter type generators which I don't think my generator is. I wanted to know if it was possible to do it with a inverter like a MMP solar hybrid or would I need a inverter like a more expensive outback unit that has a generator input. I was trying to explore my way around AC coupling as I'm half comfortable with electric circuits from doing small stuff around my home. I quickly realized that I'm not as knowledgeable in electricity as I think I am when I'm installing AC units and changing sockets / light switches around the house.
Oh, I don't have (and was hoping not to have to use) a critical load panel, the ATS is the one that has a big "throw" that just cuts power to and from the house during the outage, that runs into a 80a fused disconnect which then runs to my main panel.
I hope someone smarter than I am can point me in the right directions...