My First Off-Grid Day

[SparWeb]

It was very stormy last night, and sure enough, the power went out just after 11 PM.  Too late to do anything about it last night, but this morning I woke up with still no power and the roads were awful.  Since I wasn't going in to work, I figured I'd make myself more comfortable!

My wind turbine and battery shed are pretty far from the house.  They're really only supposed to run power to the barn and be for "playing around".  Not set up as a house back up, and almost 200 feet away, to boot.

I spent the morning making two patch cords, and ran them from the inverter outlet in the battery shed all the way to the house, and plugged them into the kitchen outlet.  This back-fed the circuit in the kitchen, powered the breaker panel, and I could selectively turn on things as I needed them.  The furnace and the refrigerator couldn't run at the same time, so I got the house heated up first, then

[SparWeb]

-uh, clicked when I was half-done.  Haven't got the hang of the picture uploads yet.  I might be breaking a few rules as I figure this out by trial and error....

Anyway, once this was plugged in I fed the furnace until it was done, then gave the refrigerator a chance to run, and when it was done I could run the computer for a while.  Then it was lunch time, and the microwave was pretty sad, limping along.  Anyway, we were the only ones with power and my neighbour came over for supper and it was lots of fun.
The grid came back on at 9PM, and since it was windy all day, the batteries were still pretty full.

I had to be careful with all these wires.  There were some live prongs waving about at times so this isn't something to be doing on a regular basis.

Long cords also have lots of resistance, the resistance causes voltage drop when the demand for current is high, so the appliances that take the most current were dropping the volts down below 100V, even though the inverter was still kicking it out just fine.  This isn't a good way to operate normally, but it does prove that my inverter is capable of powering the house, if only I buried a line sufficiently large for the majority of loads.  I couldn't run the well pump, nor the kitchen stove (both requiring 220V) so the buried line to the inverter idea isn't perfect without a step-up transformer in the deal, too.

[ghurd]

Very Cool!

About time to bury a wire, isn't it?   
G-

[Bruce S]

SparWeb;
 Nice to be the ONE with lights and coffee isn't it

By back feeding the power from the plugin did you have any problems with feeding the mains back to the poles?

Congrats!!
Bruce S

 

[SparWeb]

   Yup, had the barn flood-lights turned on overnight, just to make the point!

I had the main service panel breaker off, very deliberately.  Not only did I not want to accidentally power something else, I also didn't want the inverter to blow up when the grid came back on! 

I know I was back-feeding a breaker, which isn't quite kosher.  In my defense, the inverter is circuit protected - twice.  The first is the 35A output breaker on the inverter's AC Out bus, the next is the 15A breaker in my inverter AC distribution panel.  The runs of extension cords are somewhat current-limited, and the voltage drop was so bad that maybe even if there was a short or something, the long thin wire resistance would keep the current from spiking before those breakers tripped.  On the house side, the "input" breaker was back-fed, but with the main panel powered by that, each of the branch circuits still worked normally, including their own circuit breakers. 

The major safety issue when doing this kind of stunt is the LIVE prongs on plugs.  I shut down the inverter before moving any wires, so that they wouldn't zap me if I handled the wrong thing.

[Bruce S]

SparWeb;
 Thanks for the detailed explanation. I was more worried someone would read your post and think it would be okay to just plug in and go.
Then when the power would flash flood the RE circuit, OR WORSE, have a lineman get a tingle...

There is something to be said about being able to walk out with a hot cup of coffee  when everyone else is in the dark. AND flood lights :-) that's just icing on the cake

THAT"S a Kodak moment 

Yeah, that live prong thing would make me think twice too. Good going to the safety...!!!

Bruce S

[wooferhound]

You could get a 220 volt inverter to power your other stuff . .. .

[SparWeb]

You could get a 220 volt inverter to power your other stuff ...

Yup, but a 220V inverter big enough to start my well pump (1/2HP) would be a doozie.  Cost becomes a factor again.  Better to get another SW4024 and stack them.  Then again, why not a new XW4024?  As long as I'm not in a rush to get an undertaking like this done, I can wait for opportunities to arise that keep the costs down.  Have a big c/b panel I got for free that I can use as a sub-panel, have my eyes open for unused 2:1 transformers, scrounged several hundreds of feet of #2 gaugue wires, and so on.