*TH-cam cutoff the last 10 minutes of the previous upload I guess, so I had to re-upload it... Anyway - leave some questions down below. After watching the video I realized there were a few more things that I wanted to speak to, so I'll do a follow up video, and answer all the questions there as well!
Congrats! Hope to be pulling my power meter in a couple of months. Three off grid inverters (18kw total), 14.4 kw pv and 140kwh of storage. Still finishing up tilting ground mount arrays and last battery shipment is on the boat now. I'm up, running and tested. Just gotta get er done!
This is what I'm talking about. Finally someone who can run everything and not just the essentials. I love it bro. Can we talk about costume for this specific system including panels? Much appreciated. Stay ready.
This. This. This. Is the video I've been waiting for! Got a Taco love those videos but this is the knowledge more people need. Have 1250 on my cargo trailer camper conversion I tow with the Tacome and a 8,000 watt array at the compound.
Make sure you ad dedicated circuits to the battery back up sub panel to the main panel so those items wont drain your battery on your peak hours . It will help
Having batteries is a must if you are living in the mountains during winter when there can be days of no sunshine. I’d also recommend a wind generator that can generate power even in a white out condition.
Great topic! I genuinely appreciate the follow through and follow ups you have for your videos. Thank you for sharing and may God continue to bless you and your family! 😁♥
I love your place, the space and the solar setup! Very nicely done! I am in the process of building my system with similar gear... two NHX-12k inverters that generate 24kw in wattage along with four Ruixu Lithi2 that are each 314ah batteries. (Currently at 1 inverter and 2 batteries. I am still building this up in phases, 100% DIY). My question for you is this: Why did you only deploy 10kw in solar panels? My inverters can handle 18kw on 4 mppt's each and my plan is to build three to four 5kw arrays for each one for 30kw to 40kw in solar generation. I intend to over-panel for low light conditions in winter and weather events, so that is my logic for over-paneling. I live in the far west Houston Texas region for reference on a couple of acres. Your place looks awesome! Congrats on what you have built!!! - John
Mike, the house looks great. I’ve been working on my garage tiny house connected to the garage slow slowly getting everything off the grid myself with solar looking at different ways. All my vehicles are off the grid with solar great idea Buddy. I hope the kids and you and your wife have a fantastic Christmas ok 👌🏼🔥🤠🔥Camping Russ out
Yeah maybe I'll speak more to it in a follow up video, in the meantime, lots of info over here - empshield.com/llod, and they have a great customer service line that could answer questions better than I could.
Can you talk about what transfer switch you use and a bit more detail about how you have your system set up to switch between grid and Redoubt without back feeding to the grid. I just got a Redoubt system so genuinely curious.
Rich daddy’s boy ……. Jk 😂 Been watching the Chanel for years and I know that’s annoying to hear constantly ! People should get a life and stop hating ! great video Mike 👌🏾
Also make sure you fire seal that room If you have a battery fire they can’t put it out . Those batteries should be outside . Unless your city and fire inspector approved it for some reason
Please don't listen to this guy. If you install LFP batteries outside in a climate like this they will fail. Also, the fire risk is from NMC, not LFP. If an LFP battery 'burns' you get a little puff of smoke. NMC is the chemistry that burns out of control.
I spent $34K on 70k of battery and 44K / 220v of electricity. Solar panels n mounts usually run $1,200 - $1,500 for 4k of solar. I have 16k of solar panels
It amazes me that people don’t just heat their solar panels. My roof mounted solar panels are heated, both hydronic and electric heating pads (not together, I use hydronic on one section and electric heating pads on another section). Sounds difficult and expensive but it wasn’t, actually, it was a lot of fun. I figured, if I can use hydronic heating in my house, why can’t I apply it to my driveway and walkway. Then I thought, if I can use it to heat my floor and driveway, why can’t I just use it to heat my solar panels. So I did. Everything is run from 5 panels. Those 5 panels power the two entire electrical heating pads and hydronic hot water heating systems. To be honest, the 5 panels ended up being too much power (go figure). The only reason it works so well is because of sensors. Sensors tell the system when to turn on when to turn off, what temperature, etc. it is sooo efficient and only turns on when it snows. Every year, I pay someone to clean the panels. Every other year, I pay that same guy to clean, wax and then apply some crazy nano ceramic coating (it’s probably generic Amazon ceramic coating but it works). Four years to date, still runs beautifully with no issues or problems whatsoever. Thank goodness.
Yeah that sounds great honestly - if I could go back and do it all again, I might install hydronic for my driveway, then it'd make sense to do panels as well.
So 9 panels for 200 watt breaker panel with no battery 12 panel with a battery So if you have 400 wat you should have 18 panels And make sure you clean them and watch out for bird nest get the protection nets
Did you have to build your home with the plan to add this at some point, or would it be possible to add this to an existing house as is? What parts did you install yourself, vs have a crew install?
It’s a little early in the video so maybe you answered this question later, but does Colorado let your house not be grid tied? I know in some states having a completely off the grid home is illegal for whatever reason..
It's way easier to build a house with grid tie, but it is possible to disconnect. How easy it is will depend on the county, and I don't know all the rules in all the counties - but the ones I know, it is possible
This is actually one of the cheaper options, if you’re looking at this type of capability. Other than that, there are the much smaller systems from the likes of ecoflow, Anker, bluetti, etc.
You should be able to build this system for around half the cost of Grid Down. Not knocking them at all, DIY is usually always cheaper and takes a bit more time compared to a ready to go kit. It doesn't look as pretty, but its just rack mount batteries and inverters. You can stack one of each on a dolly and have portable power or do a wall of them, or rack mount them. My plan is to build a small shed to house all the batteries and inverters, bury conduit, and run it to the main house. God forbid anything happens, it won't damage the house. All that said, it obviously requires a bit of know how, but if you can wire up a car battery, you can do this.
Any financial payback period is purely a secondary benefit - the main reason I personally installed the system was for the power outtage / grid down peace of mind.
@@LastLineOfDefense I get it. And you'd need to make a lot of assumptions on costs that far out. I was thinking it might be a useful excercise for people who are a little tight and trying to justify expense. From what Ive seen of real numbers from neighbors, payback period is often beyond useful life.
What’s the total cost for this system for us plebs who don’t get sponsors to outfit our house? $50k? Damn, I was just guessing at that, but I just checked their site and it looks like I was spot on. 😂
That's insanity if it's true. The average home in the US uses around 30kWh / day. I average low 20s. Source (www.google.com/search?q=average+daily+home+energy+usage+in+the+usa)
Either I’m not following what your saying or your confused on the total output capability of this system. You said you have 4 inverters at 8000w a piece and that equates to a “360 amp hour system”? You have the capability to output 36000 watts at 240v. If you want to compare it to your 400 amp service you actually only have the capability to serve 150 of that with these inverters. Your 400 amp service is equivalent to 96kw or 12 of these inverters, not 4.
Sorry yes I misspoke. This system is capable of 360 Amp grid passthrough. When drawing power from the batteries though, each inverter can handle 14kW peak, meaning the total system can do 56kW peak. So correct, when the grid is disconnected I'd fall quite a bit short of handling max load on 400amp - though if you take 80% rule, then "max load" would technically be 320amp or 76.8kW. In reality though I haven't seen the house get above around 20kW load total - that's like well pump, an electric water heater, electric range, dryer and other things churning.
I’m sure you read this but their peak figure is rated at supplying it for 10 seconds so it won’t be a very useful spec for the next prep like an electric car 😊 If you ever disconnect from the grid fully and want to get more power efficient definitely look into a heat pump water heater and clothes dryer. I think your system is sized well enough where if you could build another ground mount array or make sure those roof top solar panels are always cleared of snow, there isn’t much need for the grid at this point. I wouldn’t worry about putting your ground mount far from the house either. The inverters look like some fairly typical rebranded Chinese inverters with a max open circuit voltage of 500v. You could build out a pretty decent sized array and not need anything larger that 2 conductor 10awg and not get into any voltage drop issues. Just run all those panels in series to get that voltage up there.
Bought a 5500 watt backup generator 30 years ago immediately after my wife learned she couldn’t shower when the power was off. First time she’d ever lived outside the city! Generator still heats the house and runs the well just fine during those few times each year we lose power for a few hours. Good enough for me.
I wondering about the chance of fire. Lithium battery can burn a house down fast so is there protection about that? I only ask because I saw a tesla burn down a whole shop. Luckily the business was closed when it happened.
These batteries are LiFePO4 and one of the benefits of that chemistry is they are much less prone to catching fire, actually almost impossible for them to do so. Different Lithium chemistry than Teslas.
We offer some of the safest batteries available with UL certification. The safety aspect of the batteries is one of the main reasons we are able to offer a 25 year warranty.
With your high frequency, transformerless inverter's 8kW rating with only a 14kW peak rating you definitely compromised. If you wanted a safe, truly reliable, long-lived, heavy-duty system, you should have installed low-frequency, transformer-based inverter chargers.
It's enough for both. Granted I'm at elevation, get a ton of sun, and have an energy efficient home. I never need to run the AC though, and my primary heat is natural gas furnace (I have a wood burning stove as well).
So 9 panels for 200 watt breaker panel with no battery 12 panel with a battery So if you have 400 wat you should have 18 panels And make sure you clean them and watch out for bird nest get the protection nets
I only run air conditioner a few days a year. Last year my average usage was 27kWh / day just running all out. So I could definitely run for 2 days if I wanted to.
*TH-cam cutoff the last 10 minutes of the previous upload I guess, so I had to re-upload it...
Anyway - leave some questions down below. After watching the video I realized there were a few more things that I wanted to speak to, so I'll do a follow up video, and answer all the questions there as well!
Oof
Follow up for sure
Where’s the wind generators?!
Congrats! Hope to be pulling my power meter in a couple of months. Three off grid inverters (18kw total), 14.4 kw pv and 140kwh of storage. Still finishing up tilting ground mount arrays and last battery shipment is on the boat now. I'm up, running and tested. Just gotta get er done!
This is what I'm talking about. Finally someone who can run everything and not just the essentials. I love it bro. Can we talk about costume for this specific system including panels? Much appreciated. Stay ready.
This. This. This. Is the video I've been waiting for! Got a Taco love those videos but this is the knowledge more people need. Have 1250 on my cargo trailer camper conversion I tow with the Tacome and a 8,000 watt array at the compound.
Very cool to have a "compound"
Make sure you ad dedicated circuits to the battery back up sub panel to the main panel so those items wont drain your battery on your peak hours . It will help
Nice set up, for the cost of the batteries makes the break even a long ways out but its nice to have a piece of mind and independence.
Having batteries is a must if you are living in the mountains during winter when there can be days of no sunshine. I’d also recommend a wind generator that can generate power even in a white out condition.
Glad to see you weren’t fooled by Bluetti hype. I was and when I bought their power station have had nothing but problems..
Good video.
Hope you're been well bro
Thank you my man
Self-sufficient power! Are you running electric heat (e.g. geothermal, radiant) or how are you dealing with grid down heat specifically?
0:33 “I will never ever run out of power.” I’m really looking forward to seeing how you’re going to handle a Carrington Event. 😂😁
The system is EMP proofed for phase 1/2/3 - but I guess we'll see!
Great topic! I genuinely appreciate the follow through and follow ups you have for your videos. Thank you for sharing and may God continue to bless you and your family! 😁♥
I love your place, the space and the solar setup! Very nicely done! I am in the process of building my system with similar gear... two NHX-12k inverters that generate 24kw in wattage along with four Ruixu Lithi2 that are each 314ah batteries. (Currently at 1 inverter and 2 batteries. I am still building this up in phases, 100% DIY). My question for you is this: Why did you only deploy 10kw in solar panels? My inverters can handle 18kw on 4 mppt's each and my plan is to build three to four 5kw arrays for each one for 30kw to 40kw in solar generation. I intend to over-panel for low light conditions in winter and weather events, so that is my logic for over-paneling. I live in the far west Houston Texas region for reference on a couple of acres. Your place looks awesome! Congrats on what you have built!!! - John
Mike, the house looks great. I’ve been working on my garage tiny house connected to the garage slow slowly getting everything off the grid myself with solar looking at different ways. All my vehicles are off the grid with solar great idea Buddy. I hope the kids and you and your wife have a fantastic Christmas ok 👌🏼🔥🤠🔥Camping Russ out
Can you talk more about the EMP protection? Specifically, how the other appliances in your home are protected?
Yeah maybe I'll speak more to it in a follow up video, in the meantime, lots of info over here - empshield.com/llod, and they have a great customer service line that could answer questions better than I could.
Don’t the latest EG4 batteries and inverters also provide EMP protection?
love this!! been thinking on how to go about building a system like this. thank you for sharing.
How long do all the components last? When do you need to replace to batteries, panels, etc?
Awesome system. Life goals
Great video Mike! Definitely gave me a lot to think about to do my house! Appreciate the video!
This is an awesome set up.
Can you talk about what transfer switch you use and a bit more detail about how you have your system set up to switch between grid and Redoubt without back feeding to the grid.
I just got a Redoubt system so genuinely curious.
How was the install? Was it outsourced?
You can also buy a home usage monitoring system
Awesome video Mike, I’ve been waiting/hoping for a video like this!!
Rich daddy’s boy …….
Jk 😂 Been watching the Chanel for years and I know that’s annoying to hear constantly ! People should get a life and stop hating ! great video Mike 👌🏾
Also make sure you fire seal that room
If you have a battery fire they can’t put it out . Those batteries should be outside . Unless your city and fire inspector approved it for some reason
Please don't listen to this guy. If you install LFP batteries outside in a climate like this they will fail. Also, the fire risk is from NMC, not LFP. If an LFP battery 'burns' you get a little puff of smoke. NMC is the chemistry that burns out of control.
Make sure you get an extra transfer switch they do go bad
Got the two last line flannel colors from Vertx. They're awesome. Thanks
Did they install emergency shut off buttons ?
I may have missed this in the video but what’s the cost range for this type of system?
I spent $34K on 70k of battery and 44K / 220v of electricity.
Solar panels n mounts usually run $1,200 - $1,500 for 4k of solar.
I have 16k of solar panels
It amazes me that people don’t just heat their solar panels. My roof mounted solar panels are heated, both hydronic and electric heating pads (not together, I use hydronic on one section and electric heating pads on another section). Sounds difficult and expensive but it wasn’t, actually, it was a lot of fun. I figured, if I can use hydronic heating in my house, why can’t I apply it to my driveway and walkway. Then I thought, if I can use it to heat my floor and driveway, why can’t I just use it to heat my solar panels. So I did. Everything is run from 5 panels. Those 5 panels power the two entire electrical heating pads and hydronic hot water heating systems. To be honest, the 5 panels ended up being too much power (go figure). The only reason it works so well is because of sensors. Sensors tell the system when to turn on when to turn off, what temperature, etc. it is sooo efficient and only turns on when it snows. Every year, I pay someone to clean the panels. Every other year, I pay that same guy to clean, wax and then apply some crazy nano ceramic coating (it’s probably generic Amazon ceramic coating but it works). Four years to date, still runs beautifully with no issues or problems whatsoever. Thank goodness.
Yeah that sounds great honestly - if I could go back and do it all again, I might install hydronic for my driveway, then it'd make sense to do panels as well.
Solar panels actually function better in the cold…
Could you do a mock “power outage” and just cycle the grid power off and see how it holds up for a few days?
Nice setup :) we have 6.4kw of solar panels and 26kw of lithium battery’s running our bus and mobile kydex shop :)
So 9 panels for 200 watt breaker panel with no battery
12 panel with a battery
So if you have 400 wat you should have 18 panels
And make sure you clean them and watch out for bird nest get the protection nets
Emp ready ❤
Did you have to build your home with the plan to add this at some point, or would it be possible to add this to an existing house as is?
What parts did you install yourself, vs have a crew install?
I'm curious about how that works with the well. Are you using a 240 volt pump? Did there need to be provisions made for that?
Maybe you could try blowing snow off your solar panel with a leaf blower.
In Las Vegas during peak usage it goes from $0.118/kWt to $0.497/kWt 😅
It’s a little early in the video so maybe you answered this question later, but does Colorado let your house not be grid tied? I know in some states having a completely off the grid home is illegal for whatever reason..
It's way easier to build a house with grid tie, but it is possible to disconnect. How easy it is will depend on the county, and I don't know all the rules in all the counties - but the ones I know, it is possible
When i hit the lottery, I definitely want you a part of my house build
Where they any other competitors you considered before picking Grid Down? Maybe some a bit easier on the pocket?
This is actually one of the cheaper options, if you’re looking at this type of capability. Other than that, there are the much smaller systems from the likes of ecoflow, Anker, bluetti, etc.
You should be able to build this system for around half the cost of Grid Down. Not knocking them at all, DIY is usually always cheaper and takes a bit more time compared to a ready to go kit. It doesn't look as pretty, but its just rack mount batteries and inverters. You can stack one of each on a dolly and have portable power or do a wall of them, or rack mount them. My plan is to build a small shed to house all the batteries and inverters, bury conduit, and run it to the main house. God forbid anything happens, it won't damage the house.
All that said, it obviously requires a bit of know how, but if you can wire up a car battery, you can do this.
Grid Down is actually one of the cheapest options on the market as we offer a 25 year warranty. Most systems only have a 10 years warranty.
Correct, DIY is almost always cheaper. I meant comparing this system to other (non DIY) systems, this system is well-priced.
@@LastLineOfDefense I don't feel too comfortable playing with any kind of electrical anything so this is def getting added to my To-Do list
Kinda a cool system, kinda
how many days redundancy is your system built for?
Total cost installed and expected payback period? Do your calcs include end of life e-waste disposal costs? (Those panels have some nasty stuff).
A problem for 30 years from now lol
Any financial payback period is purely a secondary benefit - the main reason I personally installed the system was for the power outtage / grid down peace of mind.
@@LastLineOfDefense I get it. And you'd need to make a lot of assumptions on costs that far out. I was thinking it might be a useful excercise for people who are a little tight and trying to justify expense. From what Ive seen of real numbers from neighbors, payback period is often beyond useful life.
In other words it’s really expensive. 🤣😂😅
I have 50kw battery and only a 10kw hybrid inverter and can burn through battery. You'll burn that battery bank in less than 2hrs full pull.
I'm not sure what you're running, but I've run off these for a day in "normal use" and I'd tone that back in an outage.
Never say never....
Titanic
And me here waiting for an up top roof rack for 2023+ sequoia
Did you have whole home energy monitoring system in place before installing the solar?
Hownmuch does it cost? And where are they based out of?
What’s the total cost for this system for us plebs who don’t get sponsors to outfit our house? $50k? Damn, I was just guessing at that, but I just checked their site and it looks like I was spot on. 😂
Price
Hopefully you siliconed the hell out of the mounts they will leak
Are these numbers accurate? I use 150-200 kWh/day in a regular 2400 sqft home.
That's insanity if it's true. The average home in the US uses around 30kWh / day. I average low 20s. Source (www.google.com/search?q=average+daily+home+energy+usage+in+the+usa)
Impossible, that would be about $60 a day at the prices where I live. I use about 10 kWh a day myself.
if you can secure your electrical supply then what happens in the world has much less effect on you. more preppers need to embrace this.
Either I’m not following what your saying or your confused on the total output capability of this system. You said you have 4 inverters at 8000w a piece and that equates to a “360 amp hour system”? You have the capability to output 36000 watts at 240v. If you want to compare it to your 400 amp service you actually only have the capability to serve 150 of that with these inverters. Your 400 amp service is equivalent to 96kw or 12 of these inverters, not 4.
Sorry yes I misspoke. This system is capable of 360 Amp grid passthrough. When drawing power from the batteries though, each inverter can handle 14kW peak, meaning the total system can do 56kW peak. So correct, when the grid is disconnected I'd fall quite a bit short of handling max load on 400amp - though if you take 80% rule, then "max load" would technically be 320amp or 76.8kW.
In reality though I haven't seen the house get above around 20kW load total - that's like well pump, an electric water heater, electric range, dryer and other things churning.
I’m sure you read this but their peak figure is rated at supplying it for 10 seconds so it won’t be a very useful spec for the next prep like an electric car 😊
If you ever disconnect from the grid fully and want to get more power efficient definitely look into a heat pump water heater and clothes dryer. I think your system is sized well enough where if you could build another ground mount array or make sure those roof top solar panels are always cleared of snow, there isn’t much need for the grid at this point. I wouldn’t worry about putting your ground mount far from the house either. The inverters look like some fairly typical rebranded Chinese inverters with a max open circuit voltage of 500v. You could build out a pretty decent sized array and not need anything larger that 2 conductor 10awg and not get into any voltage drop issues. Just run all those panels in series to get that voltage up there.
54kw is not enough to run your hse for 2 days...unless of course you are not powering everything especially air-conditioning
Would you even know you had a power outage without looking at the app?
Bought a 5500 watt backup generator 30 years ago immediately after my wife learned she couldn’t shower when the power was off. First time she’d ever lived outside the city! Generator still heats the house and runs the well just fine during those few times each year we lose power for a few hours. Good enough for me.
Slash
Dot
🙌🏻🙌🏻😎😎
What happens if the sun is darkened (Matthew 24:29; Mark 13:24; Acts 2:20; Revelation 6:12)?
First
If you ain't first, you're last!
I wondering about the chance of fire. Lithium battery can burn a house down fast so is there protection about that? I only ask because I saw a tesla burn down a whole shop. Luckily the business was closed when it happened.
These batteries are LiFePO4 and one of the benefits of that chemistry is they are much less prone to catching fire, actually almost impossible for them to do so. Different Lithium chemistry than Teslas.
We offer some of the safest batteries available with UL certification. The safety aspect of the batteries is one of the main reasons we are able to offer a 25 year warranty.
😂😂 power forever?? What? Does this guy think batteries and solar panels don't fail... A reckless comment
Wiw
With your high frequency, transformerless inverter's 8kW rating with only a 14kW peak rating you definitely compromised. If you wanted a safe, truly reliable, long-lived, heavy-duty system, you should have installed low-frequency, transformer-based inverter chargers.
This is nonsense. 10kwatts isn’t enough to run a house much less charge those batteries.
It's enough for both. Granted I'm at elevation, get a ton of sun, and have an energy efficient home. I never need to run the AC though, and my primary heat is natural gas furnace (I have a wood burning stove as well).
I think you heard him wrong. His system has 32kwh Output (360 amps pass through). Max up to 56kwh output. It’s 8-14kwh output per inverter.
So 9 panels for 200 watt breaker panel with no battery
12 panel with a battery
So if you have 400 wat you should have 18 panels
And make sure you clean them and watch out for bird nest get the protection nets
54kw is not enough to run your hse for 2 days...unless of course you are not powering everything especially air-conditioning
I only run air conditioner a few days a year. Last year my average usage was 27kWh / day just running all out. So I could definitely run for 2 days if I wanted to.