Hurricane Prep

Masterjoe

Since we are down our charge controller, my installer is clueless about the fact that this Xantrex 4024 hybrid inverter/charger will actually charge the batteries.  The batteries are being charged at the moment from grid voltage and finished doing so last night.  We have an impending hurricane which will reach central Virginia (I'm 70 miles from the coast) on Sunday evening.  I do expect the power to go out as winds are forecast to top 60mph with gusts to 70.  With that said I have a couple of questions.  What does LBCO mean exactly?  Is that when the inverter automatically shuts off and cuts power from the batteries?  Also what exactly does 2.5 days of autonomy mean?  My installer keeps telling me I would have that in this type of event but cannot explain to me what it means lol.  Given that it would depend greatly on usage (duh) since I have no working CC at the moment I cannot read from the SCP what our usage truly is at the moment.  So going by what we had before no lights and bare essentials Fridge, 2 deep freezers, water pump I would estimate usage of 200 - 250 watts per hour.  Computer and maybe a 700watt microwave heat up or perhaps a 1,000 watt electric hot plate would give me also about how many hours?  Best guestimate would be greatly appreciated as I am not trying to hurt anyone's head here lol.  Also this inverter can be set as a 3 stage float charger as well.  Is this suggested to maintain a charge on the batteries if we make it out of this hurricane ok until we get a new CC?  My installer claims the batteries will be fine just sitting there for 6 months?  Again thank you all for your continued help and expertise.

mike95490

LBCO is Low Battery Cut Off.  The inverter shuts down to prevent damage to itself and the battery from running too low of voltage.  Depending on programming, it may try a restart in 90 sec, or need manual restart from the SCP.

The XWnnNN series IS a combined inverter & charger

You can use a small genset with 240VAC output to power the AC2 input of the inverter, and it will gracefully divide the power between loads (first priority) and battery charging.  AC2 breaker settings NEED to be set via SCP
Settings I use for my system:   (2500W genset)
AC2 Breaker Size 19.5A
Generator Support Amps 13.1 
Gen Sup+ : Enabled
Battery Charge rate 15%     (beware, some settings are for single breaker, some for combined, and some are % of another #)
Battery bank size 1,000A (actually it's 800Ah, but 1000 is easy for daily adjustments as I load and unload the genset)

Just because you have a hot plate, in a blackout, I would NOT use it.   Microwaves deliver about 60% of power to the food, hotplates are about 20%

The Combox is a better control and management unit - IF you have a computer to use with it.

Have you confirmed you XW will actually start your well pump in a no-Grid situation ? (It should easily start a 1Hp motor if it has good DC power to it)

Good Luck !

Masterjoe

We were without utility power for a few hours one day and still had water, so yes it will power the well pump.  Main priority for this potential down time will be the refrigerator and freezers, and water even though we do have bottled water.  I'd rather pretend as much that we have no power at all. If it does in fact try to do the 90 second restart I'll just turn it off period.  Let's hope we don't get there and I will not allow it to get to that point anyway.  I'll just turn it off before we reach 21.

oil pan 4

Don't run a hot plate off an inverter if you can help it. Its just such a waste of PV, inverter and battery.

Replace the hot plate with a propane camping stove. A full 20lb BBQ tank of propane will last weeks if all you use it for is cooking something in a pot or pan.

I keep 2 full BBQ bottles for a 10k-15k BTU radiant heater, camp stove and gas lamp.

A full tank will run that single burner radiant heater for 3 to 4 nights. Leaned that when out old heater died its final death back in winter 2011-2012.

oil pan 4

mike95490 said:

Just because you have a hot plate, in a blackout, I would NOT use it.   Microwaves deliver about 60% of power to the food, hotplates are about 20%

Hmmm I never thought about that. If the power goes out for a while I had not even thought about making an effort to use the microwave. Here I am all ready to devolve back to cave man mode to go on heating with wood fire. I have the perfect microwave for this, my old 220 volt german microwave.

Dave Angelini

Electricity is down the list from really being in or about a hurricane, in my opinion.