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Anyone going fully off grid?
- Thread starter Nuclear Fusion
- Start date
zanary
Active Member
Unlikely to happen because people would just take electricity from the supercharger and run their home off of it. I can’t remember where but in the early days elon said he would not allow this.
Since the 12v battery charges off the HV Pack then you can get one of those inverters and use the 12v battery to run small appliances and let it recharge off the HV Pack.
Not ideal at all but it did work for a few of those Florida tesla owners this fall.
Robert Llewelyn's system, and possibly all the PowerWall installations in the UK, does not include an automatic transfer switch. However, all the installations I've heard of in North America do include one. That means that the North American installations allow the PowerWall and solar to continue to operate while separated from the grid while the grid is down. The PowerWall is compatible with string inverters and micro-inverters. The transfer switch included with the Tesla gateway is supposed to cut out fast enough and the PowerWall is supposed to pick up the load fast enough that it acts like an Uninterruptible Power Supply. However, people have recently been reporting problems with that aspect and have had interruptions from 1/4 second to 10 seconds when the grid drops out or the main breaker is turned off to test it.
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Thanks ... this is starting to make sense, although my reading of the link below suggests "anti-islanding" is the feature the utility wants, meaning the prevention of an area of unexpected live wires accessible to utility workers.
Can you explain UL 1471 in the context of the different AC solutions in a grid-tied environment ?
Actually, is it correct to say that a PV inverter operating when the grid is down has to mirror the situation where e.g. a fossil-fuel generator is operating during a black-out ?
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Did you have to install a sub-panel between the main breaker box and the home that can only energize part of the home during a a grid disruption ?
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Was the limited back-up based on a load calculation of how much power the battery could take and how much power the battery could deliver ?
What happens if the battery is full ? Or near full ? Does the PV generation just stop without damage to the panels ? Sorry for the dumb questions -- I just don't understand electricity.
Regarding clothes drying, I find a line to be the most inexpensive, clean, efficient, reliable, quality and time savings solution of them all. Power dryers are a con job. For me the trick turned out to be hangar use right out of the washing machine.
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Terminology is a bit confusing. The upshot is that the utility wants to know for any given wire, whether it is powered or not. If you think about it, when they are repairing downed lines, other lines are still up. For your house, you need to perform that function by isolating your house from the grid. For a micro-grid, it needs to do the same thing. For a section of the main grid, the utility needs to do the same thing.
Yes.
This is not universally necessary.
Panels can be left in the sun, unconnected to a load (i.e. your batteries or house) without harm (other than getting warm). This is NOT the case with, or example, wind. [Note: they are still producing a Voltage, so don't allow yourself to be that load!]
Absolutely.
Thank you kindly.
zanary
Active Member
For my Whole Home Backup, Tesla did install new panel which has everything in my house except for my Tesla Wall Connector. Here's the inside view of both my gateway and the new panel that Tesla installed.
Attachments
Yeah, it was load based. Yeah, in a nuclear war scenario, we'll just hang our clothes on a line.
If connected to grid, the surplus PV generation just goes to the grid. If grid is out, the Powerwall system apparently commands the PV inverters to throttle down or stop production once the battery is full. Haven't tried this yet though. In an extended outage we'll just schedule our EV's to charge during the daytime to maximize production.
suwaneedad
Member
I am in suburban Atlanta and hope to go off grid once my Tesla Roof is in place. Not sure what the cost of doing so will be yet, but if it is even close we will drop the grid connection largely in protest to the local utility's deal with the local government to not pay anywhere near a reasonable amount of money for the energy sent back to the grid by localized solar or wind. I view it as criminal, and so if there is any way for me to cut off my local utility thanks to Tesla Solar Roof, I will be doing so. And once I prove it out for a year or so, I will campaign to get neighbors and friends to do the same!
SageBrush
REJECT Fascism
Huh, then I still do not understand.
I figured the gen-tran switch routed to the sub-panel was keeping the home isolated from the grid.
arcus
Active Member
I am pretty sure that during such an event we will have bigger problem on hand than to worry about how to dry our clothesYeah, it was load based. Yeah, in a nuclear war scenario, we'll just hang our clothes on a line.
You can use the gen-tran to isolate your entire house if you like. Essentially think of it as flipping the main breaker, and then connecting your breaker box to the generator or inverter.
Thank you kindly.
Really interesting discussion here, and perfect timing. My wife and I are in the process of purchasing a piece of land in Colorado and running power to it would be about $65,000. Would anyone mind tossing out some numbers for what their entire setup (PW, PV, install) specs and costs were? I'm familiar with solar from some overlanding rigs I've built, so I'm 100% comfortable with being fully off grid. I would probably buy a generator just in case though. Thanks for any input!
There's a loaded request for ya
and probably a topic for it's own thread.Not every state/city/county allows you to build a home without being tied to the grid: https://www.globalresearch.ca/off-g...ado-county-criminalizes-self-reliance/5483169. Once that's cleared, you would estimate your consumption based on things like, size of your home, appliances, use of air conditioning, cooking, etc to give you a requirements reference. From there, you can estimate your solar PV size and ancillary equipment.
If you have them, Powerwall works with several brands of inverters, including microinverters from the likes of Enphase. Powerwall acts like a transfer switch so it continues to work - and the grid-tied inverters continue to produce - even when the grid is out. Think of Powerwall as a souped up UPS for your home.
Powerwall supports the above and it will support fully off-grid mode - but not yet. On the product FAQ page, they say as much and ask you to contact them to discuss further: Powerwall FAQs. My guess is that it is not fully cooked yet and you may have to jump through some regulatory hoops or have inverters/setup of their certified types.
JR
Thanks for the reply. A builder we have been speaking with suggested off grid, and based on a quick search, there are multiple off grid properties in the county we will be building in, but I will call just to clarify. I'm mostly curious about what people are spending to get a rough idea of what I would need to spend per watt of build out.
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