Grid tie an RV??

unyalli

Maspower (or other) plug and play grid tie inverter? With 500 watts of solar on the roof of an RV there is surplus power with the RV sitting next to the house and the batteries fully charged. I can't believe no ones thought of this but searching turns up nothing. Why wouldn't I use something like the Masspower Sun-600g and connect the RV to an exterior outlet on the house?

-Jeff

Blackcherry04

Re: Grid tie an RV??

My guess would be that the cost of equipment to produce > $.30 cents of power a day and the wear tear, also the fact it wouldn't be a legal setup, it probably would not worth it.

Cariboocoot

Re: Grid tie an RV??

Right: not legal. Similar to those horrible plug-n-play GTI installs, only the electric cost will be in the $1 per kW hour range rather than a reasonable amount.

Plus if you try to do this with a standard battery-based inverter as would typically be used in an RV it will fry due to not being able to sync with the grid power. So you spend money to change the inverter to a grid-tie hybrid. Worth it? Nope.

If you really want to make use of the RV 'surplus' power, run a dedicated line from it to something. Preferably something you use only during the day that does not exceed the power capacity of the panels so that the batteries are not being cycled (or at least not cycled much). Otherwise you'll be adding cycle time to the batteries and using up lifespan.

bill von novak

Re: Grid tie an RV??

unyalli wrote: »

Maspower (or other) plug and play grid tie inverter? With 500 watts of solar on the roof of an RV there is surplus power with the RV sitting next to the house and the batteries fully charged. I can't believe no ones thought of this but searching turns up nothing. Why wouldn't I use something like the Masspower Sun-600g and connect the RV to an exterior outlet on the house

Because 1) those inverters are typically pretty cheezy and 2) the switching between battery/grid tie is not automated, so you risk ruining your batteries by letting them discharge.

If you really want to do this get a GTFX2524 and a charge controller. That will manage your battery state-of-charge well, automate all your shore power switching, provide battery support for large loads AND feed back power when it's not needed for your RV. Still not legal but safer and more useful overall.