Overview

The objective is to supply power to the house for critical systems in the event of a power outage. We have 2.4 kW of lithium battery power and multiple inverters. Ideally, we would like to group our batteries and connect the inverter directly to the panel and select what circuits we need to power. We will be supplying only 120VAC to only 1 phase.

Inverter Connect Directly to Appliance

Here is an example of what we used initially. Just a battery and inverter independently powering our espresso machine.

Renogy Pure Since Inverter

The inverter we are using is a Renogy 3000W pure sine inverter. This inverter has ground and neutral bonded together inside the inverter. This is good when installed in a RV but won't work when tying it to your panel. 

In order to get this to work when connected to our house, we will leave the ground disconnected.

The thought here is that the ground is supplied by the house which will protect our connected devices. This however may mean that the case of our inverter has a floating ground. Not sure if this is a concern or not. In the event of shock from the case, the GFCI in the inverter should trip making things safe.

Panel Rework

We moved around some circuits in the panel to ensure all critical circuits are on the same phase.  

Connecting to the Panel

To connect our inverter to the panel, we simply connected our inverter to a receptacle which was running on the desired phase (L2 in our case). Ideally, this receptacle should not be on a circuit containing a GFCI or arc fault breaker. It will still work but if the GFCI/Arc Fault trips, you won't be able to reset the circuit.

Steps to Follow

• turn off the input cuircuit on panel! (main power)
• turn off all circuits
• connect inverter to receptacle on desired phase. (Ideally a circuit not protected by a GFCI or arc fault breaker)
• power on inverter
• turn on critical circuits on panel.