PowerShare and AC

[CyberGus]

Go for it!


But then again that only brings you closer to living like animals quicker.

Ashville is an area in which the biggest disaster is normally isolated mudslides. Widespread disaster like this wasn't ever on the drawing boards.

I got PowerShare to keep me comfortable in brief outages, not power my bunker in the apocalypse.

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[Woodrick]

I got PowerShare to keep me comfortable in brief outages, not power my bunker in the apocalypse.

Didn't Texas basically go through a winter apocalypse a few years ago?

 

[CyberGus]

Didn't Texas basically go through a winter apocalypse a few years ago?

It wasn't a literal apocalypse. I only lost power for a couple of days, and I don't usually run the AC in the winter.

 

[TheMachinewon]

mine just went active last night and I tested a failover

my AC unit is 120 LRA and everything kicked over fine. when AC went on there was a slight dim of the lights, but otherwise no issue loosing any power while running on CT.

Switched to and from the CT did drop power for a few seconds each time.

I will probably look at getting a softstart added to AC unit anyway as it will just help generally and I don't like dimming lights

Just wondering, Do you have Powerwalls ? & Solar ? with the CT.. Very curious, as I have 3 power walls and the gateway and 29kw of solar. I'm hoping that if I plug in the CT to the house it would either add power back to the batteries at night or supplement the power coming from the solar or batteries... I take delivery of CT next month.

 

[TheMachinewon]

Here is real world when our truck powered our house for 4 days after the hurricane…

- We have 2 heat pumps for AC
- Both heat pumps COULD start and run at the same time without tripping the truck. (No soft starts on either) However, several times during our outage, the truck tripped when the first AC was running and the second one started up. Probably due to other loads running.
- I ended up just running one AC to save power and avoid periodic trips.
- The truck recovered well after each trip event and would be back in within 5 seconds.

I think it’s a good idea to install soft starts to avoid this if possible.

Do you have any Power Walls ? Solar ? with your gateway.

 

[Derektsla]

Do you have any Power Walls ? Solar ? with your gateway.

no, just the gateway and the truck.

 

[Woodrick]

It wasn't a literal apocalypse. I only lost power for a couple of days, and I don't usually run the AC in the winter.

An apocalypse is in the eyes of the beholder (as well as the current moment). It was pretty close for many.

I guess that you don't have a heat pump, there are a lot of them in Texas. And you definitely didn't need the AC emergency heating strips to turn on.

Losing AC in the summer is one thing, losing heat for extended periods at well below freezing temperatures is another. (at least you can put the freezer contents outside)


All of this is a matter of a person's specific consequences. There are indeed may be a lot of people that can live for days off of an Ecoflow battery pack.
But there are a lot of people with two, maybe three large heat pumps sitting outside and depend on electricity for lots of things (like water and sump pumps).

The answer to any "Can I" is always it depends.


And timing on power outages is always a gamble. I had a friend that was in a 10 day power outage, but had a portable generator to keep things going. He knew enough to know that he needed to change the oil every few days. But still after 8 days, the generator gave up.

I know of a major cellular company in the midst of a major city, with a major hospital a few thousand feet away. They had a relatively small generator (probably 250kW) that could power the data center and part of their call center. They lost power for 10 days. Their butt cheeks stayed clenched the entire time.
After they got power back, they replaced it with a set of three, each much larger generators.

When you lose power for a few days, it can be an apocalypse. People die in these situations.

 

[CyberGus]

People die in these situations.

The specific power requirements of others does not change my use-case.

 

[TheMachinewon]

no, just the gateway and the truck.

I'm the odd man out in this. I have 3 power walls, 29k in solar, and the new Universal Ver3 charger on the side of the house, I did the install on everything, Plus a gateway is about 4 years old, I'm hoping that it's all compatible with the CT. One guy posted about a comm cable ran to the charger, My new one didn't have a comm port, just blue tooth.

 

[Crissa]

Bay area? I'm shocked you even have AC lol

We just had a week of 100F weather. o-o

-Crissa

 

[StainlessVoyager]

My Powershare is done. I have a question to those that completed theirs, did your installer combine some circuits (calculate the load) to fit the whole house in the tesla panel. Mine just moved the breakers over and I have been thinking instead of leaving a couple out he could have combined a couple 20amp breakers to fit them

 

[mongo]

My Powershare is done. I have a question to those that completed theirs, did your installer combine some circuits (calculate the load) to fit the whole house in the tesla panel. Mine just moved the breakers over and I have been thinking instead of leaving a couple out he could have combined a couple 20amp breakers to fit them

Do you mean using tandem breakers to feed two circuits from one slot?
That's possible to do. However, depending on what it feeds and local electrical code, the breaker may need to be AFCI/GFCI which are more rare

 

[REM]

I believe mine is LRA 82, but the AC is pretty old and the label is really worn so I cant be sure. I asked installer twice and he said his boss stopped by and said it would not work. I told him to just do it and Ill install softstart at the later date, but he said no and he needs to protect the system. I decided not to push it. There are total of 12 spaces and AC breaker would take 2 spaces. So I decided to pass at the moment and connect some other breakers. They were not able to finish because I could not connect the charger to the WIfi so they are coming back.

Is the unit old enough to consider replacing with a mini split system?

 

[StainlessVoyager]

Do you mean using tandem breakers to feed two circuits from one slot?
That's possible to do. However, depending on what it feeds and local electrical code, the breaker may need to be AFCI/GFCI which are more rare

Is the unit old enough to consider replacing with a mini split system?

It is old, but while it works I will keep it

 

[StainlessVoyager]

Do you mean using tandem breakers to feed two circuits from one slot?
That's possible to do. However, depending on what it feeds and local electrical code, the breaker may need to be AFCI/GFCI which are more rare

I have no more room in the tesla panel, but i have a couple 20amp breakers left. One powers just one outdoor outlet. I think he could have spliced that outlet to the other breaker

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