Not sure where to ask this, but we are looking into building a small cabin for our permanent living space.

We are looking for an inverter/generator that we can hook up batteries and future solar panels to and it also be connected to the grid while we are setting everything up/building.

Does anybody have any experience and want to give me suggestions on the type of equipment to do this?

The types of generators I’m seeing ATM output AC power (have their own inverter) and I’m not sure how I would use something like this in the system.

Something like this schematic shows an inverter that can take both AC and DC power, but I’m not finding anything that seems to fit that bill.

I would imagine we want to spend the most on the inverter to future-proof our needs, and a good enough generator to supply the surge/max-wattage of the inverter if the power of our city goes out (or at least enough to run a fridge and/or power tools while we are building)

Edit: Something in the 5000-8000W range would be enough for our needs. If you have any battery-bank suggestions (I can only find a max of 100Ah batteries) that would be great too.

  • Chronicon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    you could just have a big AC transfer switch that you throw or cable you plug to switch to generator or grid power. If you’re trying to build this from easy off the shelf components that’s going to be easier than trying to use the same inverter for both generator operation and solar, IMO.

    3-way transfer switches seem to be uncommon, so probably expensive. I found this industrial one: https://www.psicontrolsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Salient-MTSTB-Brochure.pdf . Just wire one input to grid, one input to generator, one input to inverter.

    other, maybe easier, but less elegant way to do it is probably to feed the house from a big 50 amp RV style plug-in, and then just have a cable coming from each that you can swap between. If you’re gonna do that you probably want breakers on both sides of the connection, at least for the solar setup and definitely grid inputs (generator you can just shut off I suppose).

    Whatever you do its important to design it such that you physically can’t connect two different AC sources to each other. You only ever want to be on one at a time. That’s why you can’t just use 3 plain old breakers (you could accidentally throw them in the wrong order and blow things up), that’s what transfer switches are for, but that’s not the only way to accomplish it.

    this product line from bluetti is basically exactly what you’re asking for and handles most of what you want for sure (not 100% sure about generator but you could add a transfer switch before or after the bluetti even if it has no special provision for it), and I assume there are probably similar products from cheaper off-brands, or you can always DIY a similar system with a bunch more effort: https://www.bluettipower.com/pages/ep800. Starts at like $6k but that’s for almost 10kWh of storage and 7.6kW inverter with automatic failover, and it would probably qualify for a 30% tax incentive