Lightning to Power House??

[BobKenyon]

I'm building a super efficient house with solar. I want the truck to power the house at night. Is this possible? I know I can set it up to power the house if grid goes down. I want to pull from truck even if grid is up. Goal is to never pull from grid if possible. Any feedback would be most appreciated!

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[Maxx]

I'm building a super efficient house with solar. I want the truck to power the house at night. Is this possible? I know I can set it up to power the house if grid goes down. I want to pull from truck even if grid is up. Goal is to never pull from grid if possible. Any feedback would be most appreciated!

Vacation house? Or permanent residence? If it is permanent, there is a lot of plugging and unplugging every day. May be better to just get a powerwall.

If it is a vacation home, you could switch back and forth but without any permanent storage, if you want to take Lightning out at night, your Ice-Cream could melt.

 

[BobKenyon]

This is my permanent house. Yes, I will have several powerwalls as well. When (if) the power walls are depleted, I want to then pull from the truck. And all seamlessly. That's my dream. I'm considering the Lightning 7 powerwalls on wheels. That's how I'm justifying buying a vehicle that costs more than my first house.. Trying to never pull from grid...

 

[duncanmaio]

Tesla is offereing an option with the Cybertruck that includes the Gateway that they supply with the Powerwall setup - but even that will only supply 48 amps of AC power from the truck to the house. Which is really like one and a half really big Powerwalls, not seven Powerwalls (which each can supply 30 amps).

Edit: Saw a Cybertruck in the wild this weekend (Chester, VT). Drove home and cancelled my reservation.

I don't think there is currently a way, without the Ford/Sunrun setup, to tap the DC power and tie it to the house feed, but I imagine that is mostly a software limitation (and the right inverter choice). I can see an inverter with a generator input that might recharge the Powerwalls, but that is way outside my understanding of such things.

 

[Fastnf]

Is it possible yes.

Is it simple absolutely not.

Would you have to make compromises definitely.

The easiest way to do it would be using a marine transfers switch (ul listed) with critical load panel. Marine transfer switches have an on-off-on switch, grid-off- lighting, and can transfer hot and neutral wires. Set the system up to run off of the power wall and solar during the day for non critical loads. Set up the transfer switch to run off of either the power wall or the lightning for critical loads. Set the back up to self consumption to minimize grid usage. When the truck is home set the transfer switch to the truck. When the truck is away set the transfer switch to the power wall. Plug the Lightnings charger into the non-critical load panel and set the timer to charge during the day while the sun is out.

If you want to take full advantage of the the Lightnings 9.6 kw you will need two critical load panels. One for the for 120 volt using the front inverter and one for 240 volt using the rear inverter. If you are fine with just 7.2 kw just use the a single critical loads panel and the rear inverter.

I have a small high efficiently home with an Enphase battery back up. This is how I am intending to incorporate the lightning into the system to minimize grid use

 

[BobKenyon]

I'm fine with purchasing the Ford/Sunrun Home Integration System. The glitch is that is seems to kick in only when the grid fails. I want it to power house when grid is on. Trying to avoid pulling from grid - ever - if possible. ??? Can truck power house with grid on ?????? Maybe I need to unplug from grid to make it work.. ;-)

 

[TaxmanHog]

I'm fine with purchasing the Ford/Sunrun Home Integration System. The glitch is that is seems to kick in only when the grid fails. I want it to power house when grid is on. Trying to avoid pulling from grid - ever - if possible. ??? Can truck power house with grid on ?????? Maybe I need to unplug from grid to make it work.. ;-)

Switch off your main breaker when you want to run from the Lightning is the simplest.

BTW, Welcome to the forum, spend some time reading the various threads about the HIS, it's been a struggle for several members to get it operating properly.

 

[hturnerfamily]

the issue is HOW to 'tell' it when to supply from the Truck's battery... when the utility goes out, yes, the HIS system will provide for that, but, otherwise, you would have to have some other 'mechanical/manual' method to do it, otherwise, and have that method ALSO disconnect from the grid... if the truck's battery reaches it's 'low' level you set, for ProPower output, you'd also have no way to 'automatically' restore power...

I understand it's a 'dream', and we all have them, for sure, but everything working in 'concert' is the real issue... you are dealing with several different 'people' to handle things 'together', at the same time, to make this happen... it's like in the late 80's asking your TandyTRS80 to 'read' your Microsoft disk 'automatically'... they 'look' the same, yes, but the Hardware and Software aren't necessarily 'in agreement'!

 

[BobKenyon]

Switch off your main breaker when you want to run from the Lightning is the simplest.

BTW, Welcome to the forum, spend some time reading the various threads about the HIS, it's been a struggle for several members to get it operating properly.

Brilliant! Flip main breaker!! Thanks!

 

[Steven Walsh]

I have the ford home energy backup system and it is only there if the grid goes down and to charge my truck. I also have 12.8 kW of P/v. I wondered about all that too but at the end of the day my utility (Xcel) has net metering which means my p/v runs the meter backwards watt for watt and at night the meter runs forward as usual. so in effect the grid is one big battery! I also think the efficiency of converting as to dc to ac uses more energy than the net meter/grid “battery.” I will be looking into night charging rates so then there is a bigger incentive to “sell” watts during the day from my p/v system and “buy” watts at a lower rate at night. Also our coming smart grid will soon be able to also automatically pull power from the truck into the grid to help clip peak grid demands. In that event they may offer even higher refund rates than you pay so I am really looking forward to that since my truck sits at home most of the day anyway (I work from home

interested to hear what smarter people than me say about my explanation. Always learning!

 

[hturnerfamily]

right, for those of us privileged and lucky enough to have a Utility with VERY LOW overnight 'Time of Use' rate plans will not be in any position to use the truck's battery during the night - that would put CHARGING the LIGHTNING during the day, where rates are sometimes 10 times as much ...

Solar owners have some options, but also some confusing situations when it comes to 'using' that Solar: you either want to use it during SUNLIGHT hours, daytime, or use it to STORE power into batteries, during the day, to use overnight.

 

[Henry Ford]

My issue with the Ford HIS system is the proprietary nature of it. It only works with Lightning, it presumably won't work with the next generation Ford EV truck because that will have a NACS charge port, which leaves you with a system reliant on a relatively low volume vehicle for relevance. I'm sure there are use cases for it but they are very narrow.

The problem with any other system is the manual labor required to use the ProPower. That would get old fast.

My 2¢. Sorry if I'm being a bummer. I'd love to see an off-grid solution work.

 

[DennisM1]

I'm building a super efficient house with solar. I want the truck to power the house at night. Is this possible? I know I can set it up to power the house if grid goes down. I want to pull from truck even if grid is up. Goal is to never pull from grid if possible. Any feedback would be most appreciated!

We have solar with PoweWall and the Ford/SunRun home integration system. The Tesla PowerWall system has a backup panel with limited circuits. Because we have an older heat pump it won’t power that on. I understand you can now get soft start heat pumps that could work at startup. The Tesla system is seamless but the Ford/SunRun system takes several minutes to kick on. You can charge the truck off of solar during the day and then manually switch off your main breaker and the Ford system kicks in. However, the Ford system has been very unreliable for many of us because the Bluetooth connection between the truck and Ford Charge Station Pro is quite tenuous. Ford tells me it has assigned an engineering team to develop a fix for this but estimate they are still 3 months out on it. I have had my Ford SunRun system in place for over a year and Ford has been very slow to step up on this.

 

[RickLightning]

Brilliant! Flip main breaker!! Thanks!

No.

Breakers are not off/on switches. Eventually you will need to replace it. @Maquis I am confident would agree.

I am not an electrician, nor have I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night. But this method won't work for the long term.

Further, cutting power to everything, and then kicking it back on, is not conducive to modern electronics. Ideally, the power would transition seamlessly.

 

[v2h8484]

Brilliant! Flip main breaker!! Thanks!

You also need to make sure the solar system is isolated from the truck power.

The simplest setup for you is probably to put in a transfer switch between the grid/solar and power from the truck ProPower outlet. The setup will also allow you to manually switch over to ProPower anytime you want it.

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