Off-Grid Living with 2020 GT

[mountkay]

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.

 

[Jedinsky]

letting it cycle would actually be a tiny bit better for battery lifespan, but terrible for the engine, and i'd expect fuel efficiency to be terrible too.

batteries love short small cycles, engines don't, especially in cold weather.

depending on your financial situation it might be worth looking into getting an electrician to set up a way for you to charge your 30kwh battery bank directly from the engine or traction battery.

 

[gagnona]

G'day mate!

We live off-grid as well and use the car's inverter to power ourselves.
I prefer to "charge" the car and let the battery feed us without cycling the ICE.
Cars break down upon starting and shutting off the engine.
Why not use it's batteries and avoid the start-stop as much as possible?

I understand the "no loud generators" option this GT has given us.
Gas consumption is also better with the car as opposed to re-filling the generators.

In winter, we always end up somewhere else and wait for the warm temperatures to come back.

Now, if the GT could chop wood, we wouldn't even leave out home.

 

[mountkay]

letting it cycle would actually be a tiny bit better for battery lifespan, but terrible for the engine, and i'd expect fuel efficiency to be terrible too.

batteries love short small cycles, engines don't, especially in cold weather.

Thanks! @gagnona mentioned the same thing so I will try to run the car longer in Charge mode and refrain from letting the engine cycle

it might be worth looking into getting an electrician to set up a way for you to charge your 30kwh battery bank directly from the engine or traction battery.

Im really not sure this would be feasible at all.. do you know of anyone thats done something similar?
This would require special hardware to convert the High Voltage Outlander battery to either 48V DC or 120V AC.
Working with off the shelf off-grid stuff can be easy because there are already many products for specific DC voltages (12v, 24v 48v) and for 120v AC. Im not even sure what voltage range the Outlander battery operates at, and I think this would be well out of the scope of any normal electrician as well as off-grid solar electricians.

 

[mountkay]

I prefer to "charge" the car and let the battery feed us without cycling the ICE.
Cars break down upon starting and shutting off the engine.
Why not use it's batteries and avoid the start-stop as much as possible?

I will try to use the Charge mode as much as possible now and not let the engine cycle on and off.

@Jedinsky mentioned the same thing... I guess my thinking was that it would be alright because the Outlander already seems to turn the engine on and off a lot while driving. Like when coasting down a hill, or in many other situations. But I understand the engine is warm at that point and hasnt been sitting in the cold for ~20min.

I also thought that Mitsubishi would maybe have some protection in place for the short cycling of the engine while running the inverter, because they seem to have protections in place for the engine, like running the engine for 5 minutes after it first starts to eliminate water vapor (at least that is my understanding as to why the engine will continue to run for some time after it first fires up, even if it only need the engines power for a moment).

Thank you both for your responses