My Goal: to never pay for charging (Solar) -- my automation process

[linuxgangster]

Yeah, our electric prices used to be cheap(I guess they still are relative to some other states), but the state government got involved to fix the grid after snowmageddon shut down the whole state. Now prices are just increasing each year. That is mostly why I installed solar!

I am in Texas as well. Live near Denton. We lucked out during that storm because we have propane so no damage or anything. I know so many people who were without power and heat for multiple days. Some of them came home when everything thawed to burst pipes. A friend of mine had over 60k in damages. This is also the reason I went with solar.

Sponsored

 

[hturnerfamily]

the original post refers to 'never paying to charge'... but....

actually, you are paying an extremely high cost to 'charge', with your expensive solar investment, although I imagine what you are really saying is that you hope to never have to pay 'the man', the utility company, for charging cost.

Yes, it might feel good to not have to rely on the man, or pay a utility bill, but the reality is that you have 'paid' up-front for many, many years of power, ahead of time. That's not to say that it is necessarily 'worse', or 'better', than using a utility for power, but that you have to consider ALL the cost of solar, or batteries, or inverters, or equipment, or upkeep, in light of the whole equation.

You can also sometimes justify EV charging as 'free', since you might already have a substantial solar infrastructure, but it's still not 'free', if you are looking at it from a distance. This is similar to a business, industry, or corporation investing in 'Capital', or equipment, to run their business, or expand, etc. In the long run they are proposing to 'save' by these investments, but, the investments are not free, no matter what return they might offer in the long run. They are simply 'averaged out' over the course of time.

While I also hear of the 'free' solar power, as though it will ALWAYS continue to provide the same output 'forever'... the reality, again, is that it is not impervious to weather, hail, winds, lack of sunshine, clouds, and sometimes, over the long run, maintenance issues and requirements and upkeep, and, really, REPLACEMENT, over time. You are now the utility. You are now in 'charge' of the upkeep and maintenance and repairs. You are now managing a solar infrastructure, all on your own.

Fun, though, when you can do it.

 

[Rthol21]

Hey everyone. I am new here. Been the owner of a 2023 Ford Lightning XLT for about 2 weeks now. Bought the truck used for a ridiculous deal after trading in my 2019 Ram 1500. Anyway, I purchased this vehicle with the idea that I never have to pay for charging. This is my first EV vehicle. In September I completed a major project to run my house off of Solar and rarely pull the grid. This setup was designed to also never sell back to the grid. I am not interested in getting pennies for my solar when I can put that excess in batteries. So with that said let me show you guys what I have:

EG4 18Kpv - This is my hybrid inventer. It can accept up to 21kw in Solar
14Kw of solar - This is actually getting expaned later this year with a Pergola I am building to hold an additional 4.5Kw of solar
4 x 14.3Kwh batteries - This is for a grand total of 57.2Kwh of storage. These batteries run my house overnight and also help on cloudy or raining days
Empria EVSE - I bought this EVSE because I was already running a Empria Vue to monitor my energy usage at the house
Home Assistant - For building automation
Solar Assistant - For monitoring my Solar setup

I have only ran the solar since September but I have a really good understanding of my usage. So far on most days the batteries are at 100% by 1:00PM. If we had a cloudy or rainy day the previous day I still can get them charged from 15% to 100% unless its another cloudy day. So far since we have set this system up (Sept) we have only had to pull around 250Kwh of power from the grid which is rougly $30. So as you can see I should have plenty of extra on most days to charge my Lightning.

Over the past few days I have been coding a automation for charging my truck with excess solar. Here is how it works.

Automation first checks if the EVSE is hooked up to the truck
Automation then checks my battery state of charge. If the state of charge is greater than 99% it then turns the EVSE on and sets it to a current of 6.
Automation then checks my battery power every 2 minutes. If the number is greater then 0 it raises the current by 2. It will continue to do this until the the battery power is less than 0.
Automation will run until the battery state of charge is 95%

It took me a few days of debugging this but I seem to have it working properly which is very exciting. Now all I have to do is plug my charger in and let the automation do its thing. It will also send me messages to my phone periodically letting me know when it starts and stops. I would love to also check the truck directly and send alerts to my phone about the trucks State of charge but it seems like Ford has made this difficult. If anyone is interested in my code just shoot me a PM. Will be happy to share it

I am located in the DFW area of Texas if anyone is interested in seeing my setup.

Attatched is a screenshot of my current production. As you can see its been cloudy so production is down.

Very smart to do with that horrible power grid in Texas. I used to have quite a few employees in Texas at my last company and they would all experience power outages multiple times per year without fail.

We rarely have to pay to charge my Lightning platinum and my ladies Mach- E and when we do our electricity company has EV packages so you make sure to set your preferred charge time those windows and it’s a minimal impact.

Rough math told us we paid about $50/month to charge both of our EVs last year.

 

[Fortunete11er]

Thanks man, appreciate the comments in regards to Solar Power. I have not had to pay for charging my Truck since I purchased it and have had solar power on my house for 5 years or so. Current electric bill is about $8.00 a month and that is the connection fee for the grid.

If I lived in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, or maybe Florida I would have gotten batteries for my system but here I didn't see the value. At the time I would have added 10-15 grand ontop of the cost of the current system. I decided to just wait and add them when the cost comes down, currently I can get a 5.1 K battery for about 1200 dollars. Battery prices are dropping like a rock. Cost will be just the hardware since I will install them myself.

Solar in most cases will be a better value, yes you do pay up front but with incentives and of course good management like me you end up year after year with no cost to the utility company. Over time the cost is and will be less. Prices of utilities will always increase but solar will not.

If your a DIY like myself you can install a large system for about 1/3rd the cost from a company.

Systems are reliable and maintenance free, only equipment I have to worry about if at all is the inverter and even those are coming down in price and have exceptional reliability.

so far I have paid $1.35 for an hour outside of IKEA to fuel my truck in the last 4 months. WOOHOO.

 

[linuxgangster]

the original post refers to 'never paying to charge'... but....

actually, you are paying an extremely high cost to 'charge', with your expensive solar investment, although I imagine what you are really saying is that you hope to never have to pay 'the man', the utility company, for charging cost.

Yes, it might feel good to not have to rely on the man, or pay a utility bill, but the reality is that you have 'paid' up-front for many, many years of power, ahead of time. That's not to say that it is necessarily 'worse', or 'better', than using a utility for power, but that you have to consider ALL the cost of solar, or batteries, or inverters, or equipment, or upkeep, in light of the whole equation.

You can also sometimes justify EV charging as 'free', since you might already have a substantial solar infrastructure, but it's still not 'free', if you are looking at it from a distance. This is similar to a business, industry, or corporation investing in 'Capital', or equipment, to run their business, or expand, etc. In the long run they are proposing to 'save' by these investments, but, the investments are not free, no matter what return they might offer in the long run. They are simply 'averaged out' over the course of time.

While I also hear of the 'free' solar power, as though it will ALWAYS continue to provide the same output 'forever'... the reality, again, is that it is not impervious to weather, hail, winds, lack of sunshine, clouds, and sometimes, over the long run, maintenance issues and requirements and upkeep, and, really, REPLACEMENT, over time. You are now the utility. You are now in 'charge' of the upkeep and maintenance and repairs. You are now managing a solar infrastructure, all on your own.

Fun, though, when you can do it.

I think your statement is true for most people that get solar. However I did all the work myself so I got a very large system around 25k (before the tax incentive). Most installers would charge close to 100k for what I have. The batteries alone would cost me close to 50k if I went with a installer. My 4 batteries cost me roughly 12k. Each one of these are equal in storage to a Tesla Powerwall. My search just now shows that 1 powerwall is $11,900 + $3000-8000 for install. So on the low end to get the same storage I have would be $47,600 + installation.

I also did not install this on my roof so that made things way easier to do and makes this system way safer and less of a pain to maintain.

While the charging won't be free initially It will be in a short time. My high end estimate is 7 years and my low end is 5 years (Lasy year I spent $3,500 a year for electricity and roughly $2000 on gas). Thats $5,500 a year in savings. $5,500 x 5 years is $27,500. Subtract the $10 a month I pay to have the grid connected going forward.

So far my largest electric bill was $27 ($10 + $17 in usage) since I had this setup. This was October and we had alot of rain that month. I also only had 3 batteries at the time (one was on back order).

Another benefit I am experiementing with right now is offsetting the heat in my house with electric. I have propane and last year spent $1200 on propane. The majority of this went into heating and the rest is hot water and cooktop. We have been running electric heaters in the house and so far it has worked out really well. Last night it got to 21f and the heater only came on one for 30 minutes because the heater in our room shutdown from a timer. $1200 doesn't seem like much for propane but here it really only gets cold a few months of the year. Two HVAC systems suck up propane like crazy.

As to your comment about maintainence I think you are underestimating modern solar setups. I am not saying there will be no maintainence but you comment on hail, rain, cloudy days, and wind is making bad assumptions.

1) Any quality solar panel sold today can withstand hail impact easily. Last year we had two inch hail and got hit hard. I have a small solar setup for my shed (2000KW) and I can't even detect where the hail impacted my panels. And I know it impacted them multiple times because I was watching it live on a remote camera

2) Bi-facial panels do excellent on cloudly days. See my graph in the screenshot. On this day we had full clouds the whole day and it rained the majority of the day. Now I didnt produce enough to charge my batteries to 100% but I did have a little bit of excess and enough the power the loads in my house (blue is load from the house and yellow is solar). The yellow spike is when the sun came out for a short period of time and that is 8kw. So when its cloudly outside (covering the sun) I still get 2-4kw.

3) Wind is not an issue unless a tornado hits my ground mount directly. I have a friend who runs a concrete business and he engineered the footings to withstand 130mph winds

4) I will say it we get a nasty storm that darkens the sky completely (which does happen a few times a year here) then this system won't produce any extra for charging. It will however still pull in 1-2kw. Basically every panel is only producing around 30-50Watts

If you or anyone else here is handy, has some good friends and knows there way around electricity I highly recommend to start researching. This investment in my opinion is well worth it. I taught myself all of this by researching and first building a smaller system for my shed.

After we hit our ROI (5-7 years)it will be free other than the $10 monthly fee to have the grid as a backup. BTW the batteries are guranteed 8000 cycles at 80% DoD. LifePo4 is awesome. All my panels have a 25 year gurantee and my inverter has a 10 year warranty.

 

[linuxgangster]

I decided to just wait and add them when the cost comes down, currently I can get a 5.1 K battery for about 1200 dollars.

Next year watch sales during black friday. I got 2 5.12k batteries for $800. Funny enough they are Lifepo4 golf cart batteries but they are 48v and work fine. I just got a victron shunt to monitor them. I have these in my shed. In total I have 15kwh for that setup. It seems kind of overkill but that shed feeds power to my greenhouse which uses the electricty for heat, lights, pumps etc. Plus the shed has a tv, honey extractor and Bottler with a 2000w heater to keep the honey at 90f when bottling.

 

[Fortunete11er]

Next year watch sales during black friday. I got 2 5.12k batteries for $800. Funny enough they are Lifepo4 golf cart batteries but they are 48v and work fine. I just got a victron shunt to monitor them. I have these in my shed. In total I have 15kwh for that setup. It seems kind of overkill but that shed feeds power to my greenhouse which uses the electricty for heat, lights, pumps etc. Plus the shed has a tv, honey extractor and Bottler with a 2000w heater to keep the honey at 90f when bottling.

Yep, I'm seeing prices down now, right now there are some rack batteries for 800.00 for 5.2 k. I do expect them to drop even more. My goal is to get around 15k also, not much need for any more. We will see, I am currently debating getting the EG4 18kPV Hybrid inverter to replace the one I have currently, on the fence only because my current inverter has no issues at all but its a Grid Tied system only and the Hybrid will allow me to charge and have power when I'm not on the grid. Still in the thinking mode.

 

[linuxgangster]

Yep, I'm seeing prices down now, right now there are some rack batteries for 800.00 for 5.2 k. I do expect them to drop even more. My goal is to get around 15k also, not much need for any more. We will see, I am currently debating getting the EG4 18kPV Hybrid inverter to replace the one I have currently, on the fence only because my current inverter has no issues at all but its a Grid Tied system only and the Hybrid will allow me to charge and have power when I'm not on the grid. Still in the thinking mode.

The 18kpv has been awesome for me. Rock solid since September. I haven't had to reboot it once. Setting it up does take a bit of learning. The settings were way different then the smaller inverter I have.

I honestly am not an expert but I keep hearing panels and batteries are going to sky rocket this year because of tarrifs. I also heard the batteries are so cheap right now because china is dumping them before the tarrifs kick in. Not sure if this is FUD or truth. It's amazing that you can get batteries at this price and the panels are even more ridiculous. A 400 Watt Bi-facial panel can be purchased for $100. And they go even cheaper when on sale or if you buy in bulk (20+)

 

[Fortunete11er]

The 18kpv has been awesome for me. Rock solid since September. I haven't had to reboot it once. Setting it up does take a bit of learning. The settings were way different then the smaller inverter I have.

I honestly am not an expert but I keep hearing panels and batteries are going to sky rocket this year because of tarrifs. I also heard the batteries are so cheap right now because china is dumping them before the tarrifs kick in. Not sure if this is FUD or truth. It's amazing that you can get batteries at this price and the panels are even more ridiculous. A 400 Watt Bi-facial panel can be purchased for $100. And they go even cheaper when on sale or if you buy in bulk (20+)

When you upgraded to the 18 did you keep your panel micro inverters or did you have any at all?

What your hearing is a lot of propaganda, Solar Tariffs started August 1st of this year so if there was a big impact it would have happened already. When Trump takes office we will just have to wait and see, the way he lies you just don't know if he will actually increase tariffs or not so still a big question mark. But like always china will just ship through another country to bypass tariffs, we will see. I don't expect a large increase if at all, the market is moving so fast and prices dropping so much tariffs may only keep lowering prices at what we see now, not really a increase. But again who knows.

I'm gonna take a chance and wait. I can wait on batteries, just need to make up my mind on pulling the trigger on the new inverter.

 

[linuxgangster]

When you upgraded to the 18 did you keep your panel micro inverters or did you have any at all?

The big system was a new install and I don't have any micro inverters on it. My panels are on ground mounts out in the field (250ft away...ran 8 guage wires to minimize voltage drop). No trees in the area so no shading. And I have 3 PV strings and matching panels.

I do have optimizers on my smaller system because I have 2 different panels that don't match 100% so the optimizers handles that well.

 

[broncoaz]

The 18kpv has been awesome for me. Rock solid since September. I haven't had to reboot it once. Setting it up does take a bit of learning. The settings were way different then the smaller inverter I have.

I honestly am not an expert but I keep hearing panels and batteries are going to sky rocket this year because of tarrifs. I also heard the batteries are so cheap right now because china is dumping them before the tarrifs kick in. Not sure if this is FUD or truth. It's amazing that you can get batteries at this price and the panels are even more ridiculous. A 400 Watt Bi-facial panel can be purchased for $100. And they go even cheaper when on sale or if you buy in bulk (20+)

I purchased my system through a company. Due to the cost per kWh here the cost of solar when I did it a year ago was high, but the ROI is still 5.2 years for me after tax incentives. I went 14.58 kW with 36 panels, before EV’s that was almost 200% of our usage. Now that we have the Lightning and a Tesla I’ll probably come up short. Supercharging the Tesla is actually cheaper than grid power here, so as we run short I’ll likley have the wife supercharge during her weekly grocery shop. We have about 4500 miles left of free charging from buying the car that will expire in March 2026.

Reading your posts makes me consider adding a separate off grid system on my shed to play with. I have room for maybe 8 panels if I use both sides of the roof. I don’t specifically need power to the shed as it’s just for garden storage, maybe I could plug In the Lightning to use what it may have made regularly. It’s probably not cost effective, but I like to tinker with stuff.

 

[hajalie24]

I use Home Assistant too, did you get the truck connected to it? How so?

If not, how do you handle charge limits on the truck? i.e. you want to dump excess solar but you're already at your charge limit.

 

[linuxgangster]

I use Home Assistant too, did you get the truck connected to it? How so?

If not, how do you handle charge limits on the truck? i.e. you want to dump excess solar but you're already at your charge limit.

No I haven't tried yet. I did find a Integration but they say Ford made some api changes that make it difficult. Same thing goes for the Emporia Vue, then integration there is broken as well. If I get some time I may look at the OpenSource code and the Ford API and see if I can figure it out. If I do I will report back

 

[Blochead21]

Nice work. As someone with a 12kw Enphase system and eyeing batteries I am jealous. I am a DIY’er and would love to do this. I may add a second system sometime in the future to my pole barn.

 

[linuxgangster]

Well I got annoyed and researched more and I am now able to get Fordpass integrated into Home Assistant. It is experimental and could break at anytime since Ford has been making major API breaking changes lately. This should be interesting: