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Hi all, I wonder if this has been answered before somewhere but I can't find it, but it relates to the spirit of this thread so I'm hopping on. Today, everything is normal and I have no desire to spend 10k on inverters and batteries and re-wiring my grid tied solar panels and voiding the warranty. But like original poster Daeyel asks above, what do we do if the power goes out, maybe for a long time, and our solar panels are useless to us on a nice sunny day? If I turn off my main breaker to not back-feed into the grid, how do I fool my system into letting my 51 solar panels generate energy into my home? I know this would take one small inverter connected to smallish battery that can service a load to maybe just a freezer or maybe one appliance at a time. But is there already a device I could buy and make a cable that feeds it into my dryer outlet? I imagine I would need something that could supply 240, 180 degrees out of phase from each other. Just for a hypothetical, totally never would use this in the real world kind of scenario. Or maybe just if an EMP knocked out the grid for a year and all bets are off, what should I have sitting in a faraday cage? When I look for pre-built battery banks they're all 120v. But then I notice that Tripp lite has a 208 rack mount system for around $1k and I wonder if anyone has any theories or experience with using one of these to trick your system into giving you power, just for a few hours per day.
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The failsafe on the solar energy systems is that they have to 'see' grid power in order to produce power. And that's where the batteries or generator I think come in as they logically take place of the grid in the system 'seeing' power. (This is probably a gross oversimplification for explaining the concept, so don't crucify me too badly.) So if you can 'fool' the system into seeing power in the same manner the grid, batteries, or a generator would without using one of those three, then I think you'd have a way to do it. Or you need to bypass this safety feature which is designed to not feed power into lines that may be being worked on, or just disconnect completely somehow and form a microgrid with no utility back up power.
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Unfortunately unless you have a specific hybrid inverter it will not work or can be "fooled" to work if the grid is down. A generator will not do it and unless you have a battery system that can be charged from the inverter your solar panels will not work.
There are some sunny boy inverters that can provide a small amount of power to an outlet if the grid is down but unless you have a continuous power supply the system will stop providing power if the sun is blocked by clouds or shaded in any way.Comment
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All standard grid-tie inverters cannot easily be tricked into operating during a grid outage so you should forget about thinking you can work around that somehow with yours. Many people before you have asked the same question and get the same answer. Grid-tie systems are simple and cheap compared to outage proof stand-alone backup systems because most people with grid-tie don't worry about power outages or by a generator if they do.Dave W. Gilbert AZ
6.63kW grid-tie ownerComment
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Thank you for your answers. What should I do after an EMP and I'm sitting under 51 useless solar panels?Comment
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I have the Enphase IQ combiner 3 and 51 panels, each with the IQ7 inverters and a 22kW Generac that runs on propane. The generator only has enough fuel to last for a few days. I'm saving up for the IQ Battery 10T but it's getting harder to save these days. I'm just wondering if there's a way to prepare until I get the 5k for the battery and whatever install costs.Comment
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If you are serious about EMP or similar situations then Enphase is probably the worst to have. With Enphase, you can lose local control and monitoring of your inverters and batteries when you lose Internet/cell data connectivity much less an EMP event.
With 51 panels, it would require many more than one 10T to fully pair with the available solar power capacity for off-grid usage. Also, one 10T only provides 3.8kW of power which is much less than your 22kW Generac. So, would a 10T meet your backup power needs? If one 10T actually meets your backup needs then you should just get a 5kW propane generator at probably 10-20% of the 10T battery cost. Your propane supply would likely last 5x longer in this case compared to your Generac.Last edited by solardreamer; 11-10-2023, 06:34 PM.Comment
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Point taken about the dosimeter. I'm not expecting to live through a full scale nuclear situation, but rather a high altitude EMP.
Also, point taken about the circuitry in the Enphase being fried. I'm not trying to have enough power to run the AC or anything big after an EMP, but I'd like to charge the radios and batteries I have stashed in a faraday cage. Maybe I'll just stash a deep cycle battery, a charge controller and an inverter in the faraday cage and climb on my roof and re-wire the panels after / if SHTF.Comment
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I think it would be far easier to have a battery or two available inside your cage than to make the panels so they can survive.
And now that I think about it, it's not just an emp, but a solar flare can do the same type of damage, so this isn't just tin foil hat territory.
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