mountkay
Member
Hello!!
I live completely off-grid. I have 6.8KW of solar and a 30KWH battery bank. As is common with off-grid living, I have way too much electricity in the summer and not enough in the winter.
I chose the Outlander GT because I can dump solar into the car when I have too much electric. And in the winter I can use it as a trickle charger to charge my battery bank in the winter.
Last year I used approximately 12gallons of gas in my generator. The 1500w inverter in the GT allows me to get electricity when i need it easily, no hauling out the generator, and no loud and dirty exhaust.
I dont need the onboard Inverter in the GT to be able to handle the loads of my house, my big house inverters can do that. I just run the GT to trickle electric into my battery bank, via an EG4 Chargeverter that converts the 120v AC of the car into 48V DC for the battery bank.
Ill upload some photos of my setup in a moment.
In all my time living off-grid (8 years in a camper, now 2 years in a house) i have found inverters to be very robust and not a common failing point in the system. So im expecting that I can run the GT inverter as much as I want without issue, but im wondering if there is anything im overlooking.
Right now I run the GT in Charge mode when I come back from work so I have energy in the battery to dump into my house. But I have also went some days where I just left the GT on and charging the house. It seems to fire up the ICE for about 2min every 15-20min. Those times are a very very rough estimate, I have not timed the cycles at all.
Im creating this thread as a sort of place where I can document my experience for myself and others.
I dont have any specific questions, but if anyone has experience running the GT inverter for extended periods of time and using it regularly as opposed to just occasional use, I would like to hear your experience.
I suppose one question would be: What are the major differences between the two ways I can charge my battery bank?
Let the GT sit at low battery and cycle the ICE on and off as needed VS run the GT in Charge mode for 15min and get battery to above 50% and let it drain from there?
Its my feeling that letting the ICE cycle as needed will be more efficient, but slightly worse for the battery.
I live completely off-grid. I have 6.8KW of solar and a 30KWH battery bank. As is common with off-grid living, I have way too much electricity in the summer and not enough in the winter.
I chose the Outlander GT because I can dump solar into the car when I have too much electric. And in the winter I can use it as a trickle charger to charge my battery bank in the winter.
Last year I used approximately 12gallons of gas in my generator. The 1500w inverter in the GT allows me to get electricity when i need it easily, no hauling out the generator, and no loud and dirty exhaust.
I dont need the onboard Inverter in the GT to be able to handle the loads of my house, my big house inverters can do that. I just run the GT to trickle electric into my battery bank, via an EG4 Chargeverter that converts the 120v AC of the car into 48V DC for the battery bank.
Ill upload some photos of my setup in a moment.
In all my time living off-grid (8 years in a camper, now 2 years in a house) i have found inverters to be very robust and not a common failing point in the system. So im expecting that I can run the GT inverter as much as I want without issue, but im wondering if there is anything im overlooking.
Right now I run the GT in Charge mode when I come back from work so I have energy in the battery to dump into my house. But I have also went some days where I just left the GT on and charging the house. It seems to fire up the ICE for about 2min every 15-20min. Those times are a very very rough estimate, I have not timed the cycles at all.
Im creating this thread as a sort of place where I can document my experience for myself and others.
I dont have any specific questions, but if anyone has experience running the GT inverter for extended periods of time and using it regularly as opposed to just occasional use, I would like to hear your experience.
I suppose one question would be: What are the major differences between the two ways I can charge my battery bank?
Let the GT sit at low battery and cycle the ICE on and off as needed VS run the GT in Charge mode for 15min and get battery to above 50% and let it drain from there?
Its my feeling that letting the ICE cycle as needed will be more efficient, but slightly worse for the battery.
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