I purchased an inexpensive 100 Watt 12V Solar kit. Can only produce about half a kwh per day at most. I bought a 105 amp hour Flooded Lead Acid deep discharge marine battery from a local battery store, and a 3,000 Watt 12V Pure Sine Wave Inverter from Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0792LW2H7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1.
I have a Model S and a Fiat 500e. Each has a dedicated 50 amp circuit I charge with normally.
Why am I doing this? In part for fun, to see if I can get it to work. Also, in the event of a prolonged power outage I’d have a way to charge my cars at least a little. Solar panels and batteries aren’t super expensive. So if I can get it to work, it’s pretty easy to add batteries or panels to the setup.
Goal: If I can get it to work, I can expand my battery setup to maybe 400ah. A single 100 watt panel might take a week or so to charge those batteries. Then I can trickle charge about 3 or 4 kwh into one of my EVs. The real value of the setup is it's a source of emergency power for the cars and household items.
Live in Houston. Those of you in California might not understand, but loss of power for several days if not weeks is a real possibility with hurricanes and such. We have a gas car too, but if there’s widespread power outages you might not be able to get gas.
I’m hoping someone out there has some experience with a similar setup. Searching this forum and the internet didn’t yield me a lot of info with regard to EVs. I found a post somewhere about a guy in Australia who charges his Mitsubishi iMiev off grid. And someone who posted a review on Amazon (for a power inverter) who has an off grid setup at home and charges a Chevy Volt.
Where I am now: The basic solar setup is pretty simple, but I’m pretty sure my problem is either with the Inverter or the Battery Setup. For now I just have the lone 12v 105 ah Flooded battery. Trickle charging would pull about 1.4 kw from the battery. It’s certainly not efficient to pull that much from a 105ah battery but I thought it could work. 1400 kw is only half of the Inverter capacity of 3,000 (6,000 surge). The Inverter powers on fine and shows an output over 120v and shows that the Battery Voltage is above 13. When I plugin my Tesla Mobile Connector (From a 2015 Tesla. I also have a 2017 Mobile Connector which I haven’t tried.) I get 4 flashing red lights. So perhaps some kind of grounding issue. When I plug in the EVSE that came with my Fiat the first 3 lights turn Green and the 4th light turns red. I didn’t proceed to plug either into the vehicles. Also, the Model S let's me set the Charging Amps as low as 5, so in theory I can charge it without stressing the Inverter or Batteries too much.
My Next Steps: The Inverter has 2 AC outlets and a Terminal Box for “Higher Power” appliances. It’s possible the AC outlet doesn’t supply enough Amps, so it might help if I hookup an external AC outlet to the Terminal Box on the Inverter. I’ll try that over the next few days. Also, it’s likely that a 105ah battery just can’t supply enough voltage, and the EVSEs can test for that and flash red. So I can also procure more batteries and see if the EVSEs like that better.
Now it’s possible that EVSEs just don’t like this source of power. Maybe it would also work better if I used a 24 Volt Battery/Inverter setup so the Inverter doesn’t have to draw so many Amps? Does the Inverter need to be Grounded a certain way? Is there a certain type of Inverter that EVSEs like? Maybe there is some kind of cheap Chinese made EVSE that is less picky about power source I can use just for emergencies but not on a regular basis? Does someone know if there is a certain battery bank size I need to make the setup work? My plan was to stick with Sealed Lead Acid batteries going forward. Lithium Iron Phosphate is a bit too expensive.
But there has to be a way. Many people have battery backup systems like Tesla Powerwall that should work. The power doesn’t have to be tied to the Grid. Any insights would be appreciated. If there is any interest I’ll keep you posted on my progress, or lack thereof. Thanks!
I have a Model S and a Fiat 500e. Each has a dedicated 50 amp circuit I charge with normally.
Why am I doing this? In part for fun, to see if I can get it to work. Also, in the event of a prolonged power outage I’d have a way to charge my cars at least a little. Solar panels and batteries aren’t super expensive. So if I can get it to work, it’s pretty easy to add batteries or panels to the setup.
Goal: If I can get it to work, I can expand my battery setup to maybe 400ah. A single 100 watt panel might take a week or so to charge those batteries. Then I can trickle charge about 3 or 4 kwh into one of my EVs. The real value of the setup is it's a source of emergency power for the cars and household items.
Live in Houston. Those of you in California might not understand, but loss of power for several days if not weeks is a real possibility with hurricanes and such. We have a gas car too, but if there’s widespread power outages you might not be able to get gas.
I’m hoping someone out there has some experience with a similar setup. Searching this forum and the internet didn’t yield me a lot of info with regard to EVs. I found a post somewhere about a guy in Australia who charges his Mitsubishi iMiev off grid. And someone who posted a review on Amazon (for a power inverter) who has an off grid setup at home and charges a Chevy Volt.
Where I am now: The basic solar setup is pretty simple, but I’m pretty sure my problem is either with the Inverter or the Battery Setup. For now I just have the lone 12v 105 ah Flooded battery. Trickle charging would pull about 1.4 kw from the battery. It’s certainly not efficient to pull that much from a 105ah battery but I thought it could work. 1400 kw is only half of the Inverter capacity of 3,000 (6,000 surge). The Inverter powers on fine and shows an output over 120v and shows that the Battery Voltage is above 13. When I plugin my Tesla Mobile Connector (From a 2015 Tesla. I also have a 2017 Mobile Connector which I haven’t tried.) I get 4 flashing red lights. So perhaps some kind of grounding issue. When I plug in the EVSE that came with my Fiat the first 3 lights turn Green and the 4th light turns red. I didn’t proceed to plug either into the vehicles. Also, the Model S let's me set the Charging Amps as low as 5, so in theory I can charge it without stressing the Inverter or Batteries too much.
My Next Steps: The Inverter has 2 AC outlets and a Terminal Box for “Higher Power” appliances. It’s possible the AC outlet doesn’t supply enough Amps, so it might help if I hookup an external AC outlet to the Terminal Box on the Inverter. I’ll try that over the next few days. Also, it’s likely that a 105ah battery just can’t supply enough voltage, and the EVSEs can test for that and flash red. So I can also procure more batteries and see if the EVSEs like that better.
Now it’s possible that EVSEs just don’t like this source of power. Maybe it would also work better if I used a 24 Volt Battery/Inverter setup so the Inverter doesn’t have to draw so many Amps? Does the Inverter need to be Grounded a certain way? Is there a certain type of Inverter that EVSEs like? Maybe there is some kind of cheap Chinese made EVSE that is less picky about power source I can use just for emergencies but not on a regular basis? Does someone know if there is a certain battery bank size I need to make the setup work? My plan was to stick with Sealed Lead Acid batteries going forward. Lithium Iron Phosphate is a bit too expensive.
But there has to be a way. Many people have battery backup systems like Tesla Powerwall that should work. The power doesn’t have to be tied to the Grid. Any insights would be appreciated. If there is any interest I’ll keep you posted on my progress, or lack thereof. Thanks!