Powerwallers in U.S. - How do you deal with permitting?

JaCrispy

JaCrispy

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I'm in the very, very beginning stages of my whole powerwall journey. Currently, I'm only thinking about finding laptop batteries, extracting cells and SAFELY testing. I had a thought about end game and permitting. Has anyone got their DIY Powerwalls permitted? Ultimately I'd like to connect them to panels to charge and pretty much cut the line to the local electric company (which is around 35c a kw/h, or roughly 3 times the national average). Do you see any problems with doing a DIY setup and getting it legallyapproved? I'm thinking of putting the cells in UL listed boxes to make them look official, for what it's worth.I'm assuming thatan electrician would have to come out and do the final connection from the panels to the batteries since it was required to tap the panels into the local electrical company feed.

I'm a total newb to this whole field and amthinking about all the legal ways to do this.
 
You'll probably pay alot more to get approval from the state and be forced alot of unnecessary fees if you try to grid tie. Going off grid will save you alot of money if you think you can do it. You'll definitely need to get a licensed sparky to finalize all the 120v lines and breakers. I'm sure you'll be able to do it
 
I would go through the process of getting the grid tie installed and permitted etc, but don't mention anything about batteries at all... Just solar and grid. Then they inspect everything, you pass, they leave, then you hookup your batteries and no one's the wiser
 
Also, to note, depending on where you live, there are places that are starting to try to evict, fine, jail people for are not "connected to the facilities". So, part of that you might want to keep on the down-low. There's been several news reports show up on youtube lately in my lists, and they've mostly all been recent in the past few months.

Now, most of these are people who live within the "city limits" or at least in the rural parts of the outskirts. They own several acres. So it really depends on where you live.

Just something to think about.
 
So far I haven't seen anyone where they "must" use power. So, you could just turn off your mains breaker and then just use your own power. I pay a connection charge of $20; but that'd be worth it to keep them off my back if it came down to it.
Then if you must use power, just plug a 65w light bulb into the mains; or some type of load resistor.
 
Wow, so there are actually areas where you CAN'T disconnect from the grid? Pretty amazing. With the local power company having an absolute monopoly, I'm surprised that isn't a policy here (that I know of). My panels are already connected to the grid and have been approved and permitted for several years now. Looks like permit wise, the hard part is done. The problem is that in my area, the maximum output from solar to the utility has been reached, so no more adding panels. They've made an exception for those that are willing to shell out big money, but I sure don't plan on doing that.
 
I have a generator that I use for power outages. The problem is the thing is super loud and I can't sleep at night if it's running. My plan is to build a trailer mounted powerwall that I can charge with The generator. Then the generator can be shut off and the house can run off the powerwall in the night.
For all of the solar purists out there, the last time my power went out, it was in late December at night during an ice storm. That's when I bought my generator.

Once I get the powerwall backup running, I will then focus on solar power. Hopefully next year.
I hope by that time there is a viable grid tie / off hybrid grid capable architecture that supports module level monitoring with direct grid tie.

I am planning on getting a 48v inverter. I may buy a packaged system like a powerwall if there is a compelling way to use the solar during an outage.

Once I get permitting with the main equipment I am going to find a way to tie in my diy equipment to greatly expand the capability.

I figure the maximum power output I need for normal living is about 15 kw, but I may be able to get by with 10kw or even 5 kw if I find a non electrical way to heat water and manage the loads in my home.

In an outage, I can get by with way less power. Run the fridge, freezer, sump pump, charge the cell phone, run the computer. Run the fan on the fireplace.
 
I believe that it depends on the battery deployment. You would not be required to get a permit for a whole house gas generator would you? I personally do not think that a permit makes my system safe, it is the sparky the electrician who does. I also believe that your battery backup system should not be on the grid. I am researching this topic since I am in the permitting process for a solar deployment. I asked the company if I could deploy my own battery backup solution and their response was "you can but not connected to our system". I have been researching the AC Coupling method and believe I will deploy a MagnaSine inverter. Basically you will be deploying a whole house UPS and if you have a grid-tie system, it should have a cutoff switch outside the home in the event firemen need to cut electric. Also if they cut the electric to your home, your grid-tie system should not be pumping electric out of your home. The AC Coupling should effectively convert your home into a micro-grid. I will be anxiuos to hear anything that you have to add to this topic.

-Bob
 
RobertBaumer said:
Also if they cut the electric to your home, your grid-tie system should not be pumping electric out of your home.
Click to expand...

That's actually what a 'real' grid-tie system does. It monitors the mains and disconnects if it doesn't sense the mains power. This works for multiple reasons as the grid-tie is not only looking at the mains for safety, but it's designed to read mains to be able to sync the output waveform to mains. If there's no mains to sync up, it shuts down.

That's why trying to use a grid-tie with 'only' batteries is virtually impossible as it needs to read main for syncing reasons.
 
Korishan said:
RobertBaumer said:
Also if they cut the electric to your home, your grid-tie system should not be pumping electric out of your home.
Click to expand...

That's actually what a 'real' grid-tie system does. It monitors the mains and disconnects if it doesn't sense the mains power. This works for multiple reasons as the grid-tie is not only looking at the mains for safety, but it's designed to read mains to be able to sync the output waveform to mains. If there's no mains to sync up, it shuts down.

That's why trying to use a grid-tie with 'only' batteries is virtually impossible as it needs to read main for syncing reasons.
Click to expand...

The problem with using a grid-tie system is that when the grid goes down, so does the power to generate solar energy. I need the system to recognize the grid has gone down, switch to a micro-grid and then come up under battery power. I believe that it typically checks the grid every 5 minutes to determine of power has been restored. Either way, the option I have been looking into allows you to continue to generate electric from PV even while the grid is down. There are two problems as I see it, problem 1 is that you need a deadman switch outside in the event firemen need to shut your pack down. The second is what do you do when your sys generating power and your batteries are full?

-Bob
 
What you want also is a transfer switch. they make them manual and auto. It's what's installed when a generator is installed. But you could use it with a battery bank as well. The transfer is relatively quickly. Might only see a dimming of the lights. Well, that is, if you don't leave it on it's default 5 seconds or what ever.

Your other option would be to get some old UPS's and repurpose them for your needs (which is what I'm goin to do). The UPS is plugged into mains and the banks are plugged into the battery ports. A UPS will switch rapidly from mains to battery and back again within milliseconds to keep everything up and running. With the right setup you can even parallel UPS's and do load balancing. IE 2 * 3000 Watt UPS in parallel would give you 6000 Watts, roughly. Or you can serialize them and get 240 (if the UPS's are only 120V output)
 
Wow, how'd you get ahold of those?!?! :)
 
Interestingly, it's quite simple. As long as the UPS's are in sync, you can connect them up as you would anything else. There are different ways to sync them up; some are software driven if the UPS is smart enough; the other is to do (what I call) piggy-back connections (explained in the video)

In parallel, well, that's pretty simple easy. Neutral with Neutral, Hot with Hot, Ground with Ground.

In Series, you have Hot-1; Neutral-1 to Hot-2, Neutral-2, and bond the Grounds. That would give you the 220-240 output.

But, you said "video", so here it is ;)


 
Korishan said:
Interestingly, it's quite simple. As long as the UPS's are in sync, you can connect them up as you would anything else. There are different ways to sync them up; some are software driven if the UPS is smart enough; the other is to do (what I call) piggy-back connections (explained in the video)

In parallel, well, that's pretty simple easy. Neutral with Neutral, Hot with Hot, Ground with Ground.

In Series, you have Hot-1; Neutral-1 to Hot-2, Neutral-2, and bond the Grounds. That would give you the 220-240 output.

But, you said "video", so here it is ;)


Click to expand...

I've watched a ton of his videos. Unfortunatelyhe hasn't made a video in a long time.
 
Yeah, I wish he had made more. I've even sent questions about some of his videos (this being one of them) and never got a response. I dunno what happened to him.
 
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