alternate wiring system in home

mshen11

i am setting up an off grid battery system. i dont want to be running AC extension cords from the inverter to wherever electricity is needed in the house. im wondering if the solution is to wire up an alternate system in your house - and that would be as easy as fishing wires throughout the house starting from your inverter. and at any point you want an outlet, you create one.

a few question:
* is this the right solution?
* does this require permit? i am not connecting to the grid
* once the above is set up, to get power through the system, i just have to create an AC cord with two male ends (suicide cord)?
* i can with a suicide cord plug my generator into this system?
* what happens if i plug multilpe inverters into the same single wire system - will things "play" nice? what also happens if in addition i plug my generator into the system - will generator electricity be pushed into the inverters?

any additional comments also appreciated

n3qik

Re: alternate wiring system in home

* is this the right solution?
Yes, going this way is safer. Plus this could be required by local code. Extension cords are for temporary use only

* does this require permit? i am not connecting to the grid
I would call your local inspector to see

* once the above is set up, to get power through the system, i just have to create an AC cord with two male ends (suicide cord)?
NO!!!! Have a box wired to the new system and from that box just ONE male end that plugs into the inverter

* i can with a suicide cord plug my generator into this system?
Same as above

* what happens if i plug multilpe inverters into the same single wire system - will things "play" nice? what also happens if in addition i plug my generator into the system - will generator electricity be pushed into the inverters?
Plugging in mutilble inverters/generators will end up smoking something. Can use only one and only one.

john p

Re: alternate wiring system in home

what happens if i plug multilpe inverters into the same single wire system - will things "play" nice? what also happens if in addition i plug my generator into the system - will generator electricity be pushed into the inverters?
most likely wrecked inverter /generator. blown grid fuses.. wiring damage,. the list of wonderful things justs goes on

peterako

Re: alternate wiring system in home

First talk to a local expert electrician safety is your life and others.

a simple setup can be the following one set of wiring for inverter and generator power. if you look for a inverter charger incl. a transfer switch ( most of them are having a transfer switch). you are safely switching between battery and generator power.
you can only use multiple inverters if the are made to work in master slave mode and from the same manufacture.

based on your technical level i advice strongly to seek advice local ac power is dangers but dc power from the battery is a killer . A wrongly used tool on a battery will instantly change in liquid metal in your hands or face etc.

Greetings from Greece:D

mshen11

Re: alternate wiring system in home

john p wrote: »

what happens if i plug multilpe inverters into the same single wire system - will things "play" nice? what also happens if in addition i plug my generator into the system - will generator electricity be pushed into the inverters?
most likely wrecked inverter /generator. blown grid fuses.. wiring damage,. the list of wonderful things justs goes on

so if i want a setup w/ multiple inverters at once, i would need multiple separate off grid wiring system? that is the ONLY way. there is no other solution?

mshen11

Re: alternate wiring system in home

peterako wrote: »

based on your technical level i advice strongly to seek advice local ac power is dangers but dc power from the battery is a killer . A wrongly used tool on a battery will instantly change in liquid metal in your hands or face etc.

Greetings from Greece:D

yeah. im inexperienced but not recklessly stupid. my plan was to hire an electrician to wire one path and i learn from him how to wire the others. but now it requires more research/questions.

my end goal is to have 2nd (or 3rd/4th if needed but i would like to minimize to 2nd) separate wiring system in the house - and have multiple inverters powering the systems. if i can do it in 1 thats great - but i have a feeling the inverter is not big enough, hence 3rd, 4th, etc..

halfcrazy

Re: alternate wiring system in home

unless you get into the large off grid inverters like outback or magnum you cant stack them if the little inverters ac gets mixed together its magic smoke time. Buy a decent inverter and be done with it would be my recomendation

mshen11

Re: alternate wiring system in home

here is one (of the many) problem i have: money. what ive been doing is buy small and grow. its one thing to say buy the best of everything and all at once. but if i go all in on an inverter, i wouldnt have enough to finish the rest of my system (ie - have a big nice inverter but... no panels or controllers).

perhaps there is a solution to this problem also?

BB.

Re: alternate wiring system in home

Mshen11,

Yes, you can parallel certain brands/models of inverters because they have synchronizing connections between them. One will start and run light loads and as the power requirements, a second inverter will start...

Otherwise, you can have one battery bank and Inverter A runs the house and lights. While inverter B runs the shop.

Rather than getting wrapped up in a solution--look at your requirements. The right solution may be stacked inverters (give you more 120 VAC power, or even 240 VAC power), or a single large inverter.

Xantrex makes 4-6kW Inverter/Chargers that are very efficient and even supports native 120/240 VAC 60 Hz power without an external transformer. The "XW" series is a very sophisticated system and support AC Mains, AC Generator, Grid Tied, Off Grid, and hybrid operation off a 24 or 48 volt battery bank (depending kW rating). A pretty cool piece of hardware.

-Bill

mshen11

Re: alternate wiring system in home

also one more thing to add that goes along w/ budget. because of budgeting, there is lack of full resources to buy enough panels.

the bigger inverters have larger idle draw. my friend quoted that in his setup - his big prosine on idle all day would be equivalent to energy generated by one of his panel all day.

so w/ limited panels and having a big inverter on all day... you get less power generated at the end of the day.

BB.

Re: alternate wiring system in home

Again, what are your power needs?

A suggestion would be to get a nice, small TSW inverter, that can run most of the time to power lights, radio, laptop, etc... And have a second, larger MSW inverter to run power tools, well pump, etc. that you turn on only when needed.

Or--use an inverter for the small/evening loads and a "cheap" genset that your only run to power the large loads when needed (assuming random use during the week vs 8 hour per day).

And there are "unique" solutions that can be looked at too... There is at least one person here (Tony/Icarus--if I recall correctly) that uses the old gas engine powered cloths washer--very little fuel required.

Also, when sizing gensets (or really any solar RE system)--knowing your loads (peak and average watts, number of hours) is critical to setting up a cost effective system.

You may be able to get a used 10kW genset for a few hundred dollars or (for example) a Honda eu2000i for $900.

But the Honda will run a 400 watt load for 15 hours on 1.1 gallons of fuel--while the 10kW will be sucking almost 1 gph minimum for any load less than 5,000 watts...

There can be short term work-a-rounds to design a solar RE system that meets your funding abilities... For example, a "hybrid" generator system can be very nice... Get the genset, inverter/charger, and battery bank. Run the genset in the morning to recharge the bank, pump water, run a vacuum+coffee maker+microwave--Then run off the battery bank for the rest of the day and night...

The genset is happy because you are running it near 50% load (usually fairly efficient--the Honda eu2000i is efficient down to 25% load or a bit less), and you have quiet for ~20 hours per day and "relatively" low fuel costs.

Later--you add solar panels to wean yourself off the generator during sunny weather--and eventually deeper into the winter months. And if the place if is not used for a months at a time--you can put just enough solar panels up to keep the batteries trickle charged when you are not there.

But you need to size the generator, battery bank, and inverter with respect to your power needs to ensure that everything works well together.

-Bill

mike95490

Re: alternate wiring system in home

mshen11 wrote: »

* what happens if i plug multilpe inverters into the same single wire system - will things "play" nice? what also happens if in addition i plug my generator into the system - will generator electricity be pushed into the inverters?

This generally just lets all the smoke out of everything.

Grid-interactive inverters can sync to a generator (5 minute sync cycle)
"Stackable" inverters with a "sync" data cable can be connected together.

Everything else, you get smoke

BB.

Re: alternate wiring system in home

And to add to the confusion--you can never say "never" when you include the entire world of options regarding paralleling AC power sources...

Besides some vendors (Outback, Magnum, etc.) that support paralleling AC inverters....

For example, the Honda eu3000i, eu2000i, and eu1000i (and possibly some other vendors of inverter/generators like Yamaha, etc.)--two identical eux000i models can be connected together (using a combiner/breaker) to power one larger AC load through load sharing.

Also, there is SMA's "Sunny Island System", makes a whole off grid system that supports connecting multiple inverters, chargers, battery stations, etc. together into a large distributed power network. They "share" by slightly changing the AC frequency from its 50/60Hz center point to ensure that they all properly load share.

The Honda is a low cost solution that has been used by many people (add an external fuel tank option--or build it yourself) and can be a nice off-grid system.

The SMA solution is for larger installations and probably not practical/cost effective for a home system.

-Billt

mshen11

Re: alternate wiring system in home

is prosine 3.0 stackable? how about the new prowatt sw? i wasnt able to find any info on either.

it says here the 2.0 is:
https://id412.van.ca.siteprotect.com/beacontron.com/store/product_info.php?currency=USD&cPath=11_34&products_id=175

BB.

Re: alternate wiring system in home

From the Xantrex.com website--it appears that only the Prosine 2.0 (PDF Manual) is stackable (for the 2/3 question about the pair).

Note that "stackable" in this case means that one inverter will produce 120 VAC and two inverters can be wired to produce 120/240 VAC split phase (each 120 VAC phase limited to 17 amps maximum).

Nowhere in the manual did I see that you can connect the two inverters in parallel and get 34 amps of 120 VAC.

-Bill

dwh

Re: alternate wiring system in home

mshen11 wrote: »

so if i want a setup w/ multiple inverters at once, i would need multiple separate off grid wiring system? that is the ONLY way. there is no other solution?

You can feed multiple PV panels into a charge controller.
You can feed multiple charge controllers into the battery bank.
You can use your generator to run a battery charger to feed into your battery bank.
You can tap off the battery bank with multiple inverters.

What you can NOT do is tie the *output* of those inverters together.

Unless, as Bill pointed out, they are specifically designed to be able to synchronize their output voltage and waveform with each other.


To answer your question - there *is* another solution...but it's not what I would call a *good* solution.

You can run some of your house wiring (branch circuits) to a sub-panel. You can then use a transfer switch to control what is feeding that sub-panel.

http://store.solar-electric.com/mn-xfr-50.html

Like this:

Switch in Position 1: Grid (main electrical panel) feeding sub-panel.
Switch in Position 2: Inverter feeding sub-panel.

To add a generator as well, you would either need A) a transfer switch that can handle 3 inputs, an inverter with a generator input and internal transfer switch or C) you would need to stack transfer switches. Like this:

Switch A feeds Switch B.
Switch B feeds sub-panel.

Switch A in Position 1: Grid -> Switch B
Switch A in Position 2: Generator -> Switch B

Switch B in Position 1: Input from Switch A -> sub-panel
Switch B in Position 2: Input from Inverter -> sub-panel


If you really wanted to get MacGuyver with it, you could have another transfer switch which switches between a small and a large inverter.


You would be FAR better off just installing a couple of standalone (independently wired) receptacles/circuits which are powered by their own inverters. One of our forum members, 2manytoyz has done exactly that, and documented it on his web site:

http://2manytoyz.com/gridless.html
http://2manytoyz.com/cflinverter.html

The solar section of his web site is an excellent place to start. I recommend reading it all of it.

BB.

Re: alternate wiring system in home

And, just to add even more options/confusion... You can take your stacked 120/240 VAC split phase inverters and use an autotransformer to combine the outputs into one higher current 120 VAC output (Outback PDF autotransformer manual download)t]... (not a particularly cheap way of addressing the question)

Again--defining your needs first, then looking for possible solutions will probably work better.

Looking at solutions and trying to shoehorn them into an application sort of ends up backwards (and usually expensive).

-Bill

mshen11

Re: alternate wiring system in home

yeah 2manytoyz is my inspiration (literally) who introduced me to solar. we've become good friends and hes been the source of all my crazy ideas questions

like i said before, the problem w/ me is i dont have the budget to start big... have to do everything in peicemeal