How to charge a Chevy Volt?

Hello all,

I currently have a backup system for powering our house using a Chevy Volt as the power source.

http://forum.solar-electric.com/showthread.php?17809-Can-I-connect-Prosine-1800-to-home-breaker-panel-for-backup-power/page3

http://forum.solar-electric.com/showthread.php?17852-Mobile-inverter-quick-disconnect-question

(Thanks again to all who helped get my 12V Prosine 1800 set up for this, btw, both breaker panel legs can now be powered).


The nice thing about this is that with a full tank of gas and a full battery charge, I think we can probably last ~ 1 week with our current loads (~500W average per hour). I'm sure we could cut our usage in half if we had to in a serious outage situation.

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I've been thinking about how to charge the Chevy Volt off grid, and use it's battery storage capacity if we have no access to gas and the grid was down for an extended period of time.

I understand that it is probably more efficient to store more gas, rotate it over time, and use the Volt's internal generator, but I'm also wondering if the following would work:

I currently have a grid tied system:

Inverters: Xantrex STRX2500 and STRX1500 wired in parallel.

Panels:
100W AP-100
Voc 20.1V
Vmp 16.1V
Isc 7.2A
Imp 6.2A

Panels are set up as 4 in series, 5 paralleled into STRX2500 and 3 paralleled into the STRX1500.

Power consumption while Volt is charging is 1440W @ 12A AC, or 960W @ 8A AC to charge the Volt (two different charging rates available).

I was thinking I could rewire the PV's DC output into a Midnite Solar Classic 150, hook the Classic up to 2 (bear with me) fully charged 12V batteries wired in series for 24V, then plug the Chevy Volt's EVSE ("charger") into a 24V/120VAC inverter to charge the car. Since the batteries would be fully charged, all the DC output of the panels could go to power the 24V inverter and charge the Volt, and hopefully have some left over to power the house during charging. The Volt would only be charged by the PV output and not the tiny battery bank.

(I'm assuming a 12V battery bank with a 12V inverter would not give me enough power with the Classic 150 to charge the Volt).

I understand that this is an extremely small battery bank and cannot really be drawn on. I'm thinking they will just be used to buffer the charge controller's output. I also understand that this system would require some serious monitoring so that charging only occurs during strong/peak daylight hours without clouds. I'm also not concerned about matching loads to getting a full charge everyday. In this kind of situation, one would just use whatever electricity they could generate and/or store. I understand that I may not get a full charge during the day depending on previous usage.

I figure with 5 hours of usable sun, we could generate and store about ~5kWh on days with no clouds. The Volt charges and stores at a rate of about 1kW per hour.

Will this work? Any suggestions?

If this will work, what would be a reasonable quality/reasonably priced 24V inverter to use. This inverter will likely sit idle and never be used, however, it would be nice if it could be counted on if the time ever comes.