I connected a cheap Grid Tie Inverter directly to my 24v Off Grid System. Will it last 10 minutes?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 เม.ย. 2022
- I was thinking of a cheap way to use the energy in my 24v Off Grid system battery....then it came to me!! Why not buy the cheapest Grid Tie inverter on Amazon and use it to dump the extra energy in my battery while pushing the electricity back into my house!! Great Idea!
So instead of using the Grid Tie inverter like it's designed for.. which is connecting directly to solar panels...I'm going to connect it directly to my 24v off grid system! Will it burn up?
Here is the unboxing, setup and testing of this cheap grid tie inverter.
Y&H Grid Tie Inverter:
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32amp DC circuit breaker:
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Kill a Watt energy monitor:
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BN-LINK WiFi Heavy Duty Smart Plug Outlet:
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Link to a one-stop shop for all your solar needs! shopsolarkits.com/1128
Want to learn more about me and my setup?
Link to my website: off-grid-basement.com
Diagram of my 24v Off Grid Solar Setup: off-grid-basement.com/diagram...
Diagram of a Smaller 12v Off Grid Solar Setup: off-grid-basement.com/diagram...
Solar Panels, Victron Solar charge controllers and smart shunt. Don't forget my homemade PVC solar panels stands!
off-grid-basement.com/Solar.php
Solar Generators I've reviewed!
off-grid-basement.com/SolarGe...
Off Grid Batteries and Victron Battery Balancer:
off-grid-basement.com/Batteri...
Off Grid & Grid Tie Inverters and 24v to 12v Step down reducer:
off-grid-basement.com/Parts.php
Need tools to get your Off Grid setup completed? Check out the list I use!
off-grid-basement.com/Tools.php
All Amazon links in the description are affiliate links to support the channel. I'm getting paid a small commission if you order products through these links. The doesn't make the products more expensive for you.
Thanks!
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Thanks!
#SolarPower #GridTieInverter #24v
That was fun! A few bits of info you might find useful:
1) Modern meters typically will not subtract your consumed energy from the returned energy without an agreement.
2) In many jurisdictions, without a grid-tie agreement you will be charged for any power you return to the grid. If you send 1kWh into the grid you would be billed for "consuming" 1kWh. It's crazy.
3) I used that exact same grid-tie inverter for about a year before it failed. On opening it the otherwise fine design was short changed by the maker using way too small wire from the banana plugs to the board. Those wires had melted in two. I was able to repair it with some work and correctly sized wire.
4) Often the most energy use in a house is water heating. It takes a crazy amount of energy to heat water. 8kWh to heat up 40 gallons from 50F to 130 F
5) A very simple way to use excess solar power is to install a second water heater in front of your existing one, (which could be gas or electric). Use excess solar to heat water in this pre water heater. The pre-heated water is used as makeup water for your existing water heater. Any heat in the source water to your original water heater directly reduces how much energy (gas or electric) is needed to reach the temperature setpoint of your existing heater.
6) The pre-water heater extends your hot water capacity.
7) The pre-water heater provides a backup for failed heating of the original water heater preventing the need for the future emergency water heater replacement you'll eventually get.
8) You can use a standard inverter to run one heating element of the pre-water heater.
9) A simple voltage triggered relay that you set a voltage to turn on and set a different voltage to turn off would be used to turn on/off the pre heater inverter.
10) Alternatively, you use your big inverter and then a relay to control the pre-water heater load dump.
Thank you for all the great information!
Great video. Thanks for pushing the limits. That is what diy is really all about.
Thanks for the compliment! I really want to see what this thing can. Now I'm running it for about 10+ hours a day. Still working!
I went through three of that exact unit. All of them failed in a few months. I gave up on them, and spent another 25% for units with a pot that adjusts the output power. The pot has a switch at the full CCW end, and when turned to full CCW the unit is configured to use with a solar panel. Turn the pot just a bit CW past the switch point, and the inverter goes into battery mode. At this near full CCW point the unit draws just a few amps from the 24 volt battery. Turn it full CW, and the "600 watt" microinverter pushes 450 watts out to the grid. This is correct per the data sheet.
The first one I tried ran perfectly for months, so I bought 3 more. For the last year I have been using them to dump 1400 watts from 3PM to midnight every day - which completely powers my house and stops me from using any grid power at peak rates. I mounted the units vertically on a wall, and their build in cooling has been entirely adequate. BTW, 10 gauge wire is all you need for the battery connection. Each unit draws less than 20 amps, and 10 gauge wire is fine up to 30 amps.
The adjustable grid tie units I am using draw a bit less power as the battery voltage declines, and completely stop pulling from the battery when it gets down to about 23 volts. They cut themselves off before the draw the battery down to the point where its BMS would shut off.
My battery is 800 AH of 24 volt (nominal) LiFePO4, and starting from 100% full, draining them for 9 hours end up at about 48% at midnight. They'd be lower than that, but from 3-5 PM my solar panels are still producing quite a lot (in the summer) and for the first couple hours a large fraction of what the microinverters are using is coming from the panels, rather than discharging the batteries.
Because peak rates on my Northern California solar/EV/Time of use rate plan are very high in the late afternoon - early evening (~ $0.42/kWh) the payback is quite short. Power that I would have sent to the grid at off-peak rates of $0.14 per kWh is worth almost 3 times that later in the day, when the sun is gone. I calculated that each day the microinverter creates about 3.6 kWh of power that has a net value (peak rate - off peak rate) of $0.28 per kWh. That works out to almost exactly $1 per day. It takes about 4 1/2 months for the unit to pay for itself, and after that its all profit. In my case, $4 per day, or $120 per month.
Thanks for the info!
Curious about the adjustable microinverter you're talking about. Link?
Indeed ^
@@timz7548 ditto. finding a non-expensive model with this feature is critical to success.
I really like this.
there's issues in many areas with limiting peak feed in to grid. non-certified systems run the risk of exceeding feed in limits and becoming a legal liability.
obviously legislation varies by area.
I feel there's a sweet spot using certified components and features to check total feed in to grid and switching on/off these extra systems to prevent excess feed in while utilising the solar generation and battery capacity.
I worked in the electrical distribution industry for 40 years. One thing you learn quickly is leave plenty of headroom. On the networks its roughly twice the normal operating levels. At home you don't need that much but i would give a rough guide of run it at 75% or less to get the longest life.
Very rough and there are always exceptions but a good place to start.
Thanks for the info. The inverter doesn't have any settings to turn up or down the production. I honestly didn't think it would last this long, but it is still running like a champ! Thanks for the comment.
@@OffGridBasement Yes no settings because it acts in the same way as a battery in that it will produce everything it can if the load is there to use it. Think of it as a ball valve, on or off, thats it.
all you can do is reduce the load.
The network has what is in effect a limitless capacity to use so it appears to have control because you will never draw the full power it can provide.
Does the kill-a-watt show a negative power when backfeeding into the house? or a positive value as if the power was going the other way?
No. It just shows the number. It doesn't show neg or pos value.
I'm surprised it works at all. The linked grid tie inverter says in multiple places on the page, "It cannot be used with 12v/24v battery as input source.Only use the 36V battery to power the inverter". But now you have me thinking... and probably spending money! 😁
It does work. You need to have at least a 24v setup for the unit I linked to. Good luck!
i have 1 on order,,, I was thinking do I connect the solar and the Battery to the same Red Black Terminals. I was going to try battery less to start with add battery later..
That is what I did, except with a fuse and circuit breaker inline. You want to make sure to have some protections. If that inverter shorts, but will short out everything it can! Thanks for the comment 👍
Get a USB fan to cool the grid inverter. I have a few that uses 2.9w on low speed and maybe 6w in high speed mode. Also make sure all that power is used up by your home. You may get charged for power you dump on to the grid without net metering with your power company.
Thanks for the comment! I want to make sure to use a fan that turns on at the same time as my inverter. I'm using a remote AC switch so I want to keep using a AC powered fan. If I feel like this inverter is going to do the job I will get a smaller fan that blows to a more centralized spot. It's a small inverter and I can look at my grid power usage by the hour. I never go under 500w on grid. Thanks again!
@@OffGridBasement In my setup i use a USB fan with AC to DC power adapter (like a cellphone adapter). I plug both the adapter and gridtie to a power bar with surge protection. The power bar is turned on/off with a smart plug.
I went out and purchased a USB fan. I'm pretty sure you and I now have the EXACT same setup for the grid tie inverter! Thanks for the idea!
yeah great, gonna try and do similar. question, how are you charging your batteries in a 24volt array.
I have 3 stings of panels totaling 2.6kw of solar. They are connected to 3 separate MPPT charge controllers. All charge controllers are connected to the same bus bars that are connected to the battery. I have two 12v batteries connected in series.
I have a diagram on my website if you would like to check it out.
off-grid-basement.com
How is the inverter working after 3 months? I want to try a 1kw inverter with a 12v 300w power system, or a 28v 300w. That's only running at 30% capacity of the inverter. What do you think?
I think either of those would be fine. The inverter is still running strong! I've been running it for 10 hours on some days with no problems.
Huh... I have hybrid inverters that don't backfeed and no battery and I have a similar issue of unused power. I wonder if I could use the battery output terminals on the hybrid and backfeed the grid with one of those.
I don't think so. It would need to back feed 120vAC or 240vAC, depending on where you live. Wait! Sorry. Didn't read that correctly. Now I'm not sure!
@@OffGridBasement Yes, the idea is the hybrid inverter thinks it is charging batteries, and set to charge with excess power. That is then fed through this doohickey "upstream" of the hybrid.
Started using the 1400w mars rock years ago when they were around $150 burnt 6 threw trial and error finally i have a pair over a year and a half now and only paid $115 apc they both have their own 5" fan that burns 0.6w i never turn off and every 3 months I take them apart clean real good they get dusty in there fast also change the heat sink pad and past when needed and the biggest thing which you hit out the get go was the 2 pole circuit breaker that was the last thing i learned the hard way i had them plugged into a surge protector but we had a lightning storm and even though i have my PV array on the roof grounded i still burnt both inverters that day since then many storms no problems as old as they are they still get up to 900w somedays. I'm real interested in how this test with the battery goes I've heard they produce more at a steady rate without the fluctuation from passing clouds for a longer time. I use mine to run my bitcoin rigs during the day since the price dropped I'm looking for a more efficient way to run my system without burning a whole in my pocket. Oh even if you dont have net metering the power company hasn't said anything here in Louisiana about spinning the meter backward and they did send a crew out here to see why my bill dropped that fast i guess if they dont have to pay me for what ever i put in the grid when im not mining they dont care i have been told by the workers that we all have the new net meters thats how we can track our usage threw an online account but if we ever want to pay the $100 bucks fill out the application to see what were generating and collect on what we put in the grid then we have to get permits from the county do everything to code then get inspected, ill get a solar edge inverter before i do all that.our light bill was running around $470 a month after 10 solar panels 2 plug an play inverters and only mining bitcoin from 8am to 5pm its down to $104.
That is excellent! It's nice you don't need to worry about the net meter. I bought the small grid tie inverter just so it can cover my base usage. It works great being connected directly to the battery. There were days that I would run it for 15 hours straight. Thanks for the comment!
If i will use a solarpanel for the 600w grid tie inverter, what will be the size i need that will generate the same wattage you shown in the watt meter?
Three 200w panels connected in series would be a good start. Just make sure the open voltage of the panels all added together is lower than the voltage input range of the inverter.
How do you make sure the Grid Tie does not burn down your home wiring? Asking a since the breakers have no way to account for the Power you would be feeding an existing home circuit that’s designed only for drawing current not feeding it
I was figuring since the unit can only push about 5 amps and I had it plugged into a 15amp circuit with nothing else on the circuit I would be fine. Thanks for the comment.
I am thinking about doing something similar, but I want to add a DC speed controller on the input to make the output variable. My hope is that it would last years and not months.
Mine lasted just fine. I've always heard it's the heat that kills it. That's why I used a secondary fan. Thanks for the comment.
Great video thank you. Do you need to have a bidirectional meter in order to get credit on your electric meter?
Yes. If you want that you need to have an inverter that is approved by the power company. This one definitely is not. Thanks for the comment.
Thank you, I will do that...
@@OffGridBasement
Can I hook a micro grid inverter with hybrid inverter and use off grid
I wish I could tell you, but I'm not sure.
My question is if you turned off your grid power and turned on your off-grid inverter would your on grid inverter run and sync to it with no problem for either unit?
No. The grid tie inverter only works when it senses power from the AC side of the unit. It's called "islanding". My off grid inverter isn't connected to my main grid power so the grid tie system would never turn on if I turned off the main power grid for my house. It's all about safety. Thanks for the question!
Good day OGB. Im planning to order this next month. May i know how its holding up as per ur use? Do you use it the whole day? I read some negative reviews on Amazon saying that it dont last long.
Hi! My grid tie inverter worked great until I disconnected it for winter. The last thing I have in winter time is excess solar! If you get one I suggest getting a small 12v fan to blow on it. I believe the reason they die so fast is because the crappy fan inside stops working and the unit burns up. In the summertime I would use the unit for up to 16 hours a day. I never had a problem.
@@OffGridBasement thanks! Thats what i've been thinking. Ill wait till maybe Feb when the sun will be a little high up. Scarcity of ☀️ during winter .
So the killawatt can go both ways?
Yes, but it doesn't show negative when you are pushing back into the grid.
I have 2 complete solar power systems. One is 14 kw lifepo4, 4000 watt sungold power splitphase inverter and 150-70 victron charge controller. The other system is 24 leaf modules at 25.1 volts , powmr all in one 3000 watt inverter, 60 amp powmr charge controller. Im wanting to combine the different chemistry batteries for one system with the maximum capacity of both batteries. Ive thought of just charging one battery with the other but it seems like such a waste of power in all the conversion back and fourth. Any advice is greatly appreciated. I have learned alot from your videos. Thanks for doing what you do for our diy community.
Since they are COMPLETELY different systems and battery voltages, I think you are really going to be stuck with keeping them separate and taking the hit on losses. You might want to see about DC to DC charging to see if that could possibly work for you. I know Victron makes very nice ones of all voltages.
Try a HoyMiles Microinverter one next. They’ll last & are fairly cheap if bought from the right suppliers. Cheers.
Thanks for the info and comment.
hi.. i just thinking the same thing can i run it for 10 hours everyday you think it safe?
I've had mine for a few weeks now. Just today it ran from 5am to 7am then 12pm to 8pm. I think if you have an external fan blowing on it you will be fine. I made an update video you should check out. I use a much smaller fan that is blowing right into the unit. works well! Thanks for the comment!
So next, how do we control the load output (amps) so that we’re not going over the base consumption of the house?
I look at the average base usage for my house. Ex: middle of night, at work and no one is here, etc.. that is about 600wh. That is why I went with the small grid tie inverter. Anything bigger and would either need to program the max output or get a limiter. My power company let me see hour by hour consumption online. Hope this helps!
Can you please update if your micro inverter is still running? Did it burn up?
@@mengyewleong5028 That thing is still running! There were days I would run it for 15 hours straight. Thanks for the comment.
The grid tie inverter has a backflow shunt so it shouldn't draw energy when no power from sun, right?
The Roexby Solar grid tie inverter MPPT 700W should be marketed as having a peak output of 550 watts and a constant output of 350 watts. Even so it's efficiency is terrible. I believe it's efficiency is only about 70% at converting Solar DC to AC. Additionally, it's important to highlight that the product is highly susceptible to overheating due to it being sealed and not able to cool itself sufficiently. This raises questions about its longevity as well as posing a significant fire hazard.
Thank you for the comment and info. That is why I had an external fan blowing through mine whenever it was on.
Cool build, dont let it spin your meter back without net metering or your electric company will know!
Make sure your home is using more power than your pumping in or you might get a letter in the mail. Just fyi
I thought about that. I looked at my hourly grid usage over the last few weeks and it never goes under 500w / hour. Thanks for the info though!
@@OffGridBasement really enjoy the content. Thanks
I actually do something similar. The product can be used any way you can make it work. haha.
True!
Yes I run this for 24 hours.. from my battery bank.
The Grid Tie Inverter does not care if 36 volts solar or 36 volts solar..
My home in the winter with solar panels and batteries is using 18 kwh per day on Cold winter day 19 degrees with Air to Air heat pump.
Yes it can work 24/6
Yes. I did learn this small unit has no problem running an entire day with no issues. Thanks for the comment.
also the inverter has a 10.5 volt shutoff limiter.
There 600 watt small grid tie and grid tie with batteries are the future with solar panels. They will take every watt with prefect efficiency into your home. These are nice engineer inverters.
Will this drain the battery bank?
Yes and that is the point. I used it as an energy dump for those summer days when I'm getting plenty of solar and the batteries are full. It worked really well, but it was a manual process of turning the unit on and off. Thanks for the comment.
you should get a grid tied inverter with a limiter
I think if I actually make my money back on this one, I'll upgrade to the one with the limiter and adjustable settings. Thanks!
Please do I want to see a video abt it grid tie with limit!!
Use the grid inverter only when you are running heavy loads like washing machine.
Good idea! It's a pretty small inverter so I shouldn't have much problem staying under 600w.
dont really see how this is different from how the gti is meant to be set up. whether you hook it to the dc straight from pv or to your solar charged battery bank as long as the gti is plugged into the mains it will run AC into your home wireing...or am I missing something
It does the same thing. The difference is the inverter is constantly running a max no matter what the weather is. Even if it is cloudy you are getting 600w from the unit. Hope this helps.
Why is the green light not blinking?
The green light stays solid once the mppt tracking is fixed on the voltage.
The problem with them grid tie inverters is that you need a 60hertz signal for it to work.
Didn't think about that! There is no switch for that. Maybe if you get one for 230v it will be 50hz. I don't know. Thanks for the comment.
@@OffGridBasement sense I’m in the USA from what I can remember grid tie inverters need a 60hertz signal to make them work. Someone told me once. I don’t have any. I’m now looking into getting some to make a off grid system. I know inverters would be better. And I’m putting one in. I think adding a grid tie inverter to offset the balance a little.
@@DiyintheGhetto I'm in the USA as well and mine works flawlessly! I actually have another video coming out tomorrow about the grid tie inverter.
@@OffGridBasement oh nice. I need to figure out my setup soon. I run a few servers about 1100 watts I don’t want to put on the grid. My batteries should hold but need to figure how the inverter and get a new charge controller soon.
450 watts into the house, 85 watt fan and venus is saying 700 watts out of the batteries. means the efficiency is petty bad on that grid tie inverter is about 75% efficiency. GTI is about 90-95% efficient. Do you have specs on that Chinese inverter to see what they claim on their efficiency? I've had mine running for about a year and it's fine.
I believe it states to have 85% efficiency. I've switch up my fan to a much smaller usb fan that uses about 7w. So I get about 520w pushed back into the house and the venus shows I'm using about 630w. It is much better. It's been 3 months and still running strong! there are some days it runs for 10 to 12 hours without a problem. Thanks for the comments!
@@OffGridBasement 85% eh. I guess that's why those are cheap. definitely something to consider. I keep mine outside, out of direct sun/rain, without an external fan. The internal seems to be good enough even on the hot days. Maybe they have an internal overtemp automatic shutoff until it cools.
Why did you hook the grid tie inverter to the 3000 watt inverter? Why not hook the grid tie inverter straight to the batteries?
I really wanted to reduce the amount of wiring. I also knew I wouldn't be running a heavy load on the off grid inverter and running the grid tie at the same time. So I wouldn't need to worry about popping the fuse. Thanks for the comment!
thanks for the video but cheap or not, I don't think any electronic device is expected to run at peak power for any extended period of time, that's even in the specs, there's peak rating and continues rating, of course I believe you know that, I am just saying it to hear myself talk
That is so true. I was expecting it to burn out in a few weeks, but here we are 3 months later and this thing is still running like a champ! There are some days that I run it from 5am to 9pm!
Most electronics are designed for about 85% of maximum
Looks like efficiency is pretty low.
You're pulling 650W out of the battery and only pushing 400 watts out of it. 60% efficiency?
I think my generic china taffware/sunyima HF offfgrid inverter could give like 80%+ power conversion efficiency.
I'm thinking of getting one of those GTI as well to operate with batteries being charged with common PV-MPPT setup, difference is I want to add adjustable constant current buck converter from the battery into the GTI,
That way I plan to limit the amount of current going into the GTI but keeping it at constant voltage (MPPT inside the GTI will handle that automatically I guess 🤔).
Basically I want to be able to adjust how much current I'm allowing the GTI to push into the grid.
What do you guys think?
I want to be able to run those GTI 24/7 hence not depending on PV sun-hours only.
The efficiency is pretty bad. I like the idea of adjusting the current. Thanks for the comment and info.
All I know is my solar panels charge my batteries completely full by about 9:00 every morning I have 17 batteries all 1,000 amps 135 amp hours my solar panels always beg for more batteries my charger is always big for my batteries my inverters are always happy all I got is 12 volt though I got a couple I could run 24 volts but then I can't run my 12 volts as well and it's not hooked up to my house cuz I don't have enough power to hook it up to my house but hook it up to some things in my house as much as I can anyways and when I completely my batteries all the way it takes my solar panels 2 days to charge my batteries completely full cuz my chargers are not that great of chargers. Now I've had a better charger and not panels that are just 12 volts and some solar panels I can go to all the way up to 48 volts I would run higher voltage in my house but when I first started all I got was 12 volt solar panels cuz that's all I found but later I got solar panels can go all the way up to 48 volts with two solar panels put together what I'm doing since my 12-volt solar panels are still good as I'm going to separate them and use one for 12 volt and one for a higher voltage means I got to get more batteries just for 12 volts and I definitely have to get more votes for that 24 volts or 36 volts or 48 volts whatever I'm going to have it for but then I got to get a better inverter.
I don't see any reason not to have separate systems with different voltages. As long as they run what you want for the amount of time you want, you are good! Thanks for the comment!
I will admit to playing around with these cheap Chinese micro-inverters too. But I will also say... they are basically temperature-limited devices rather than amperage-limited. I don't know why, they could easily have made them limit amps too. But it means that connecting it up directly to a battery will cause the micro-inverter to run hotter than it really should. That is why they warn against connecting to a battery system (though some now advertise that you can, they are probably lying like they do about many other parameters for those micro-inverters).
I guarantee you that 600W micro-inverter is not designed to handle 25A+ on its input at 24V. Maybe at 36V it can (16A @ 36V). 24V is stressing its parts even with the fan.
Another problem is that an AC timer switch is not really designed to shut power off while under high loads. At least not that much power. It is slowly building up carbon from the internal arcing and at some point will become a fire hazard. In fact, neither is the micro-inverter... it is designed to see variability on the solar input, not on the power output. It can handle grid-down situations, but isn't designed for its AC output cycling daily while it is pushing 500W through it.
Be careful not to run any space heaters or other large loads on the home circuit that you are pushing the power back onto. Due to the additional power provided by the micro-inverter, you can run more loads on that home circuit than the wiring is actually able to handle, without tripping that circuit's AC circuit breaker.
Efficiency is also an issue. Many of those market high efficiency, but their actual efficiency is typically very poor... 75-85%.
So you've created a number of safety issues here. As have I, and after a few months of playing around I decided to find ways to burn off excess power usefully off my solar+battery system that did not involve trying to push it to the grid.
Thank you for the great information. I've also disconnected the grid tie and connected a 6 circuit manual transfer switch. This works much better for my needs. Thanks again.
And I thought I had a small setup but mine's not connected to the house I want to do it but I didn't do it cuz mine's too small of a set but yours is even smaller I run a 200 watt I run an 850 watt I run a 1500 watt I run a 3000 watt I run a second 3000 I run a 4000 Watt 240 vote I have 5000 watt 240 volt and a 6,000 w 120 volt. That is what I'm running for my system.
The inverter is still working great. You should do it as an energy dump to get more out of your panels.
@@OffGridBasement an energy jump I don't understand my battery is running out of power one day running more of a load than it could handle it took me two days to charge the battery mind you I have 17 batteries and when I got batteries that are older than you or I should say older than I am and I'm praying that using it better for my solar system just been using the same ones for 24 years oh I have the solar panels are it's just as old as that still give me the same Watts as if they were new but I'm using batteries my father gave me 24 years ago and he had those batteries for a long time and I just bought some more batteries but we don't have any real solar panel batteries at least not yet anyways.
Your losses are actually pretty large if you include that fan. I don't think this really makes much sense, that grid tied inverter is very inefficient, but it is better than nothing. I know you can make something better.
I switched out that big fan with a small USB fan that's plugged in to a AC USB plug. Only uses about 10w. I made another video on the mods I did. Thanks for the comment!
Show a diagram.
There is a diagram on my website. The link is in the description.
400w at 120v can kill a horse in a few seconds!!!
That is true. 120v @ 3.5amps can cause a heart attack.
Thank you for this video. I started my solar career with this inverter. I've been using the 1300w model with a 500w array for 1.5 years. I'm now looking for an emergency backup system but still want to use the inverter as the primary function when there's grid power. There's an interesting video that I think is in Tagalog with no subtitles -- th-cam.com/video/vVz-aFL4WT8/w-d-xo.html seems pretty interesting. Maybe you can provide some insight on it.
It looks like he has it set up in a way so it will charge his 25ah battery first then automatically switch over to power grid tie. He is using an over voltage protection switch to control it. Look in his description for links. Hope this helps.
Ok, sorry to say! While this seems to be a reasonable idea, this cord setup is called a dead mans cord! And is so illegal in CA it can be considered criminal!? The reason why, is if the power goes out, to your home, and a lineman is repairing damaged lines it can back-feed to the grid and kill them, and many have died from generator back-feed and solar back-feed!? If they get hurt you will probably at least loose your house? The only way possible to make this work somewhat, is to feed one circuit, in your house, and totally remove the breaker that connects to the grid! Only use non grid connected extension cords for anything off grid, has to be off grid. Or it requires permits and certification from several agencies, so no one gets injured nor dies for a few kwh of energy! Again set up an automatic transfer switch that is isolated from being able to feed-back to the grid, and you can use all your available solar generation especially with a couple more batteries?
All of this would be true if the grid tie inverter didn't have the "islanding" feature. Islanding means that the unit will shut off if it doesn't sense 120v in the AC side of the unit. Thanks for the info!
@@OffGridBasement OK, cool, in CA and some other places they require rapid automatic shutdown, if the grid goes down. I didn't think such an inexpensive inverter would have something similar, my bad, sorry!
But here they would not consider it necessarily reliable enough and everything has to be UL certified ect. So for my on grid setup, the components get quite expensive. That's why I'm breaking 1/2 of it up to RV type stuff, besides I would want the RV/boat set up anyway. And because that is totally off grid I don't have to have all the just correct approved and inspected stuff, the cost difference more than pays for my batteries!