Any electricians in the house?

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.......And then there is this idiocy......... Two 120V plugs in outlets on opposite legs to provide 240V. Now I have DONE this for a very brief "emergency" situation, but it was brief temporary, it was CAREFULLY done and monitored, and immediately disconnected after the test was done.

I CERTAINLY WOULD NOT put this crap out on YouTube as "something to do"

 
If you want to have power from solar when the grid goes down, you can not have backflow into the grid. This can electrocute the power company technician. New microinverters like the Enphase IQ8 will do that. It gives you the option to have some power when the grid is down and allows you to have battery backup. Looking at solar now and have been doing research.
 
chlngr1970 said:
I currently have two service panels fed by my meter base. One feeds the shop with a grid tied 18.6 KW Solar array, the other feeds the house. Both have a 200A Panel.

First, I'd like to install a portable generator input plug that will be able to allow the solar array to continue to produce when there is a power outage. This is to keep the us enjoying power while they fix whatever caused the outage.

Scond, I'd like to install a battery array to allow me to store some of that power, if the grid goes down. Is it possible to store solar generated power form panels that have micro inverters on the panel?

TIA!

j
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well when u powr up thr generator turn off the power from the grid . u might want to put in s wind turbine or too for those windy days woith out any rsun . then what size batteries r u useing for yur power storage ? & what siz of inverter r u planing on useing? its alll important things to consider when going of grid
 
67Dart273 said:
Well it ain't quite that simple. Required BY LAW to have the switching system interlocked so that emergency power and grid power CAN NOT be accidently interconnected
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Correct. You would need a Transfer Switch. I have Transfer Switch experience with RV's. The difference is as stated RV transfer switches are the same Amp capacity as the Shore line (power in). Something different would be needed to use a smaller generator than one with 200 Amp main panel.

Not an electrician, just a regular guy.
 
Feasible, I have a gridtie system, and also regularly backfeed using a generator when my local utility goes down - but never both at the same time. I take great care to isolate from the utility mains AND my solar system before I do it (I'm a retired EE with some common sense)

Where do you think the excess power from your solar system is going to go if you're isolated from the main and using your generator at the same time to sync it ?????

Better read this article:
https://www.payperwatt.com/post/can-grid-tied-inverter-operate-in-parallel-with-diesel-generator
 
Theo said:
Feasible, I have a gridtie system, and also regularly backfeed using a generator when my local utility goes down - but never both at the same time. I take great care to isolate from the utility mains AND my solar system before I do it (I'm a retired EE with some common sense)

Where do you think the excess power from your solar system is going to go if you're isolated from the main and using your generator at the same time to sync it ?????

Better read this article:
https://www.payperwatt.com/post/can-grid-tied-inverter-operate-in-parallel-with-diesel-generator
Click to expand...

Nice !

IMHO, batteries are the key to solar. Many power companies are going to Time Of Use billing. So they will be paying less for power fed back to grid when it’s less needed (during middle of day when everyone has peak solar) .

Then you can save the power in your battery and use it at night to charge your car(s). When the rate is higher. Or sell it back to utility at a higher $ rate.
 
20 years in military and 18 years with GTE doing UN-interruptible power supply systems for Telephone exchanges. Commercial power goes to an inverter/rectifier that converts line AC to 54 Volts DC. This charges a HUGE battery bank. When commercial power drops the whole telephone exchange goes on battery in milliseconds. Then the huge 12 cylinder Turbo Cummings Generator fires up (Super size Telephone exchange). When the Gen gets warmed up, it auto switches the system off battery, again in milliseconds and the gen runs the inverter/rectifier to power the switch and charge the batteries.
At no time is commercial/battery/Generator touching each other, 100% isolated.

I have installed and maintained up to 5 racks of batteries like this below. That is 48 Volts (nominal) DC. About 1,500 pounds of Copper Buss bar.
48 V DC Battery back up.jpg
 
^^Telco^^ LOL, I think it was Newport, WA, when I worked for the Motorola outfit. The jail/ SO/ 911 dispatch was somewhat complete, and we were up there tying up some loose ends and yanking out abandoned cables, "Several" little "things."

One was the 911 director showed up at some point and said something that amounted to she was unhappy with the time we were spending, why can't we just cut those cables and pull them out. There "just happened" to be a vacuum cleaner against the far wall, and an extension cord. I tried to explain to her that "all those cables" (potentially) were just like that vacuum/ extension cord. Some of them were still connected to something at the other end.
===============================
At some point I was pulling cable out of the overhead runs. Up on a ladder with my head up above the ceiling tile, dropped ceiling. Here shows up a piece of coax, connected to a UHF (450mhz) two way radio that someone had cut. IT WAS SPLICED WITH WIRE NUTS
================================
In the course of chasing down the old cables, It "just happened" a local telco guy was there that day, so he and I teamed up to run some of this down. It turns out, example, that in the several-times remodeled building, one phone terminal was in a CLOSET.. I'd never found it except he knew it was there. Moved a bunch of junk, mop buckets, and here's a metal box

==================================

He and I ended up in the phone room, which, due to remodel, was surrounded by "the jail." We are back there chasing stuff and the room goes dark. AND we CANNOT GET OUT because the electric locks are controlled from dispatch, which was communicated via intercom, and neither of them now worked. No cell coverage there in the late 90's. Fortunately I had my trusty mini-mag--the only lighting between us. He found an outside line, called dispatch, and got someone to come back with keys and let us out

Turns out they were testing the emergency generator, HERE IS THE DEAL

Of all the expensive equipment, remodel, engineers, architects, etc, IT TURNS OUT that the lamp over the pool table and the kitchen coffee pot were both on the uninterruptible power supply (Bank of batteries the size of two coke machines) and of course the genset. BUT THE ELECTRIC jail locks AND THE BUILDING INTERCOM had not been wired into the transfer
 
So far as UPS transfer, there are a couple schools of thought. Some UPS's run the load at all times, with incoming power just powering the UPS and keeping the batteries charged

Some however, must switch (like a genset) from shore power to the UPS and so far as I know, all are supposed to do this seamlessly. In other words the thing is "'synced" with line power, and when it switches, you should not "feel" a thing.
 
When we put the system in down at Othello, WA in the new city hall, it turns out the ENTIRE county 911 dispatch room had been left "out of the loop" with the brand new UPS. I have no idea WTF they were thinking.
 
67Dart273 said:
When we put the system in down at Othello, WA in the new city hall, it turns out the ENTIRE county 911 dispatch room had been left "out of the loop" with the brand new UPS. I have no idea WTF they were thinking.
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Some of the stuff I was involved with at Othello. The radio site is up on what they call "RADAR hill" an old USAF site. That is where I damn near got mugged by 3 wetbacks one night. If not for a piece of pipe from one of the antenna mounts, I just might have

Black boxes are then new Motorola Centralink 911 trunk/ business switch/ other features which Motorola had bought from someone called SRX

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67Dart273 said:
Well it ain't quite that simple. Required BY LAW to have the switching system interlocked so that emergency power and grid power CAN NOT be accidently interconnected
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Yep, I wired up a Gen, no solar involved, there is an Interlock, I had to drill the panel a Lil, BUT, I liked it! The way You CANNOT switch till the main is OFF is cool... Great Deal
 
67Dart273 said:
Some of the stuff I was involved with at Othello. The radio site is up on what they call "RADAR hill" an old USAF site. That is where I damn near got mugged by 3 wetbacks one night. If not for a piece of pipe from one of the antenna mounts, I just might have

Black boxes are then new Motorola Centralink 911 trunk/ business switch/ other features which Motorola had bought from someone called SRX

View attachment 1715867217

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Funny they allowed wire ties on that back board. All my work was 'Laced'. Still have my needles and lots of waxed string in BLACK and WHITE. AT&T 110 and not M50 66 blocks is a good thing. I also still have a C5 chip smasher for 110.

There were MANY calls to the engineers when we were wiring up the distribution cables to the UPS. Like "Are you sure that the T1 and T-3 racks are not wired in to the UPS side? "
 
But back to what the OP is wanting an answer for....

He needs to have a transfer switch for each sub panel.
He needs to have an Auto Paralleling Switch between the Genset and the batteries Inverter and charger.

The Solar Array sends its 50 Volts DC, to the inverter and the inverter sends power to keep the batteries charged. The inverter will also send Solar and battery power to the Paralleing switch in a POWER OUTAGE as 120 VDC or 240 VDC. It will match the phase of the Genset so some Inverter power will feed with the Genset power.

This is a huge project and to do a Round Robin system is not for novices. It needs some engineering and knowledge of codes

In my quick Jpeg, I left out Grounding/Earth. Everything needs to be grounded and bonded per CODE.
UPS.jpg
 
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Dave_J said:
But back to what the OP is wanting an answer for....

He needs to have a transfer switch for each sub panel.
He needs to have an Auto Paralleling Switch between the Genset and the batteries Inverter and charger.

The Solar Array sends its 50 Volts DC, to the inverter and the inverter sends power to keep the batteries charged. The inverter will also send Solar and battery power to the Paralleing switch in a POWER OUTAGE as 120 VDC or 240 VDC. It will match the phase of the Genset so some Inverter power will feed with the Genset power.

This is a huge project and to do a Round Robin system is not for novices. It needs some engineering and knowledge of codes

In my quick Jpeg, I left out Grounding/Earth. Everything needs to be grounded and bonded per CODE.
View attachment 1715867291
Click to expand...

Now that makes more sense.
 
6PakBee said:
Wow. What exactly are you trying to do? A one line drawing would be VERY helpful.
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Here is what I have in mind. The generator feeds power so the solar produces during an outage. I'm thinking if I could get a transfer switch between the meter base and the panels, that could solve the generator problem. Where would I put the battery to feed both panels?

Thanks for all the feedback.

j


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Righty Tighty said:
Why the hell are you not hiring an electrician for this?
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So far, none of them have showed up for a consultation. I got one estimate for two generator inlets and transfer switches for $1500, but no one wants to touch a backup battery array.

j
 
chlngr1970 said:
So far, none of them have showed up for a consultation. I got one estimate for two generator inlets and transfer switches for $1500, but no one wants to touch a backup battery array.

j
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Wow Man, I just did one for a friend in about 5 hours... including digging, pulling wire, and pipe, mounting boxes, and termination of connections
 
I have a Friend thats a State Licensed EC, and I know another guy... I'll ask them if I can get some info on the Batt System
 
Dave_J said:
20 years in military and 18 years with GTE doing UN-interruptible power supply systems for Telephone exchanges. Commercial power goes to an inverter/rectifier that converts line AC to 54 Volts DC. This charges a HUGE battery bank. When commercial power drops the whole telephone exchange goes on battery in milliseconds. Then the huge 12 cylinder Turbo Cummings Generator fires up (Super size Telephone exchange). When the Gen gets warmed up, it auto switches the system off battery, again in milliseconds and the gen runs the inverter/rectifier to power the switch and charge the batteries.
At no time is commercial/battery/Generator touching each other, 100% isolated.

I have installed and maintained up to 5 racks of batteries like this below. That is 48 Volts (nominal) DC. About 1,500 pounds of Copper Buss bar.
View attachment 1715867197
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I spent two and a bit years working for Marks & Spencer in their London (outskirts) Computer Centre back in the mid 1990's. We had 2 x big UPS rotating machines that ran directly from the mains supply into the premises. These machines generated 500 Volts DC and continually charged a bank of 2 Volt batteries split between two cooled rooms. Outside of the UPS room we had 5 x One-Megawatt diesel Cummins powered generators.

The idea was that if we had a sudden power failure, the flywheels on the UPS machines would take at least 10 minutes to drop below the required RPM's needed to generate sufficient voltage to charge the batteries. By the time the voltage had dropped, the batteries would already be supplying the entire building WITHOUT and noticeable difference inside the building to any of the staff. We had alarms to say we had a loss of mains supply, but apart from that, you wouldn't know it.

The generators were designed to start up and be ready to take over the job of the batteries within 2 minutes.....so we had loads of redundancy built in. The reality was, the generators were starting up within seconds of any power failure, and were generating way more than required.

Every week on a Tuesday morning we had our scheduled generator test. Because we had 5 x generators, we took it in turn and rotated so that we only used 2 on every test. We would run them for an hour or so....and the amount generated was way more than what we needed, so we sold the excess back to the National Grid. I think it was quite a hefty payback in those days. We also had 500 gallons of diesel under the carpark in special tanks, as well as another stockpile of diesel in storage, looked after by our contractor Harry. Harry was our fixer....he could organise anything we ever needed. He was like the Harrod's of outsourcers. :D

You might be thinking why all that power back-up....well, back in those days, Marks & Spencer was apparently Number 5 on the UK Terrorist Hit-list, and our computer centre being what it was....lots of precautions were taken - bomb deflector shields on all windows, IR perimeter fencing around the entire building, card access everywhere- even in & out of the roof access doors. I asked one day if that was slow down potential parachutists breaking in.....wrong question apparently. :rolleyes: It was a fun time and a fun place to work all the same.
Many happy memories there.
 
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Wow. I have never seen a solar array with an AC output. You have to have an inverter to get that. It also sounds like you want to parallel both the solar array and the standby generator. I am no expert in this but this is what I see your system looking like. I agree with what has been said, you need a consultant to help you out. I am confident that you will end up separating some of your loads out of your panels. Supporting 400 amps is going to be a challenge in a residential application. Anyhoo, this is what I THINK you are saying.
 

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6PakBee said:
Wow. I have never seen a solar array with an AC output. You have to have an inverter to get that. It also sounds like you want to parallel both the solar array and the standby generator. I am no expert in this but this is what I see your system looking like. I agree with what has been said, you need a consultant to help you out. I am confident that you will end up separating some of your loads out of your panels. Supporting 400 amps is going to be a challenge in a residential application. Anyhoo, this is what I THINK you are saying.
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Each solar panel has it's own micro inverter. I'm too lazy to look up the panel specifications at this time, LOL!

I don't need the full 400A in an emergency situation, and if we end up in a SHTF situation, I don't know I'd want to be around here anyway. I was just wondering if it would be possible to keep the solar providing power in an outage, if I can connect a generator to supply voltage. The battery backup is just one more layer of the cake.

Thanks!

j
 
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