Plugging Solar Panels Directly Into An Outlet | Surprising Results

I built a home set up with a 600 watt inverter. Y&H from Walmart used a gift card from work so it was only $45. Bought 2 panels 250 watts for 8$5 for both from a solar installer. They where removed for an upgrade or expansion. It knocked $100 of my monthly summer electric bill which can get as high as $380 per month. I have them facing south and at 28 degrees of elevation. Full sun I am getting 370 watts, they are old panels and brand new ones would produce more. I am thinking of expanding with more panels but stay under my grid tie inverters 600 rating. I used a power strip with surge protection where the inverter plugs into my home and have an inline fuse on the power coming in from the panels wired in parallel. I can even install a GFI outlet for the standard one that will cut out if there was ever a power surge from the panels. I used a very small desk fan that is 5 watts to help keep the inverter cool in my garage. It never overheated and overheating is what causes electrical devices to breakdown.

Thank you for this, and YES, please keep us posted and keep testing! SPECIFICALLY: 1) Show us the unit turning off / shutting off input once mains is off. 2) Walk through what happens in a scenario where this is not in a dedicated circuit, and other appliances may be connected, and thus circumventing the circuit breaker's job to keep wiring safe (from what I understand, these units require dedicated circuits to avoid this issue).

The inspector might say it's ok, but it's up to your energy company to approve if this grid tie inverter is allowed to be connected to the energy grid. Typically the energy companies require permits in addition to the UL1741 other certifications, and external disconnects. That said, this setup should be ok, but you may have to conceal it. If you have a smart meter, these meters can detect energy returning to the grid the moment your energy consumption is below your production on any leg of your house. They will ping your energy company and you will get a threatening letter telling you to remove the equipment or face disconnection. If you have an analog meter, it's slightly easier to skirt by the rules. Your main issue is the meter reader guy seeing the meter spin backwards (although they probably don't pay attention). The second issue is your usage being negative for the month, which would be somewhat hard to do with small grid tie inverters like this. The end goal is to make your solar system to produce only enough PEAK energy to meet your IDLE house demands, but nothing more. Once you product more than you consume at any given moment, you'll run into issues. I'm debating whether to do this, so I can get the solar tax credit, though my roof isn't really oriented the right direction for sun exposure.

For the viewers. The support system shown is for his testing purpose. The conductors behind the solar panels must be protected or above 8’-0”. The cord used is not sunlight rated. In a real install, the receptacle should be at the inverters, not just some random receptacle and a cord laying across the lawn.

thank you this answered my questions about how micro inverters are installed.

I would be interesting to see if you could run 2 of these setups in parallel and with a big UPS. Then also test the power cutoff by flipping the breaker on the curcit that the extension cord is plugged into. Great video!

It still breaks code if the baseline load of the home is lower than the power generation, at least in the state of California. You need a utility contract to legally backfeed into the grid.

I would turn off the main breaker and see if it also shuts down and make sure it doesn't actually continue to output power if the grid is down.

I have two of Ecoflow Powerstreams and I must say that I really like how well it works and they don't get very hot at all!

Ingenious idea. Doing this would not have occurred to me.

I have the smaller version. I have ran it hard and hot for over 2 years now and still works

Dude that system plugged directly into an Anker battery or something similar would be awesome. Could power my garage

I've got a couple of these sorts of microinverters. Mostly for testing how bad they are. And they do work, but most of them do have major gotchas and issues. Y&H is a major brand for these sorts of things and you are right, there are likely onl two actual OEMs. * These devices are mostly not current limited. I think they are somewhat temperature limited, but at too high a temperature. If you plug in too much solar they will happily over-produce until something fries. * These devices have VERY POOR efficiencies. They market high efficiencies but the actual efficiencies are generally around 80%-85%. Very very poor. Real micro-inverters have efficiencies above 97%. And you can tell by how hot these suckers get. * These devices as sold are often mis-labeled with regards to voltage, power, and current capabilities. * A 120VAC AC output is just putting power back on one leg... only one of the HOTs coming into the house from the utility (there are two, for 240VAC) is having power returned on it. Of course, you are also limited by the household plug. But still, it is not ideal. So at least try to match what the microinverter is pushing with other household loads that are on that leg. * YOU CAN OVERLOAD A HOUSE CIRCUIT WITHOUT TRIPPING THE BREAKER. THIS CAN CAUSE A FIRE AND BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE! How? Lets say you have the circuit wiring with household plugs going from A to B to C to D to the 15A subpanel breaker. Now lets say you plug the micro-inverter into C and you are pushing 1000W. Now lets say that you turn something on at B which eats 1200W. So far so good. The breaker only sees 200W and the B-C segment has 1200W on it. But now lets say you turn something on at A which also eats 1200W. Now the breaker is only delivering 1400W to the circuit but the "B-C" segment of the wiring has 2400W running through it. Bad end. What this means is that if you do use something like this, either severely limit the amperage it pushes back to the grid (to less than 500W is my recommendation), or ensure that it is on a dedicated circuit. Normally grid-tie inverters are required to be on dedicated circuits. * These units do not track waveform deformations due to inductive loads very well. From what I can tell, they literally just push a synchronized sine wave instead of doing 4-quadrant matching, so in terms of dealing with reactive power they might be making a mess out of the waveform or they might be overheating themselves trying to work against the reactive power on the waveform without realizing it. So YMMV if you have an A/C system running. * These devices will operate with line voltages that are way out of spec. They are designed for broad compatibility across several countries. But the high-side of the range they will push the line voltage to is probably too high. * These units are NOT UL1741 or UL1741SA certified. It isn't even close. UL1741 is the certification required for grid-tie. These units will shut-down if the grid goes down, sure, but not being certified means that these units do not follow safety protocols for grid restarts (for example). Among many other issues. My conclusion is that for someone just messing around with a few hundred watts, these things do work fairly well. But don't trust them beyond that. Certainly not with the large array you connected that thing to in your example. And be damn careful not to overload whatever circuit you plug them into. Don't share a circuit with a room that someone might plug a space heater into, for example.

Just found your Channel and subscribed, great video. This is an interesting setup I've never heard of it before. Definitely want to learn more

Just got the 600w one. Need to find the right panels to fit it and I will be setting it up. Can't wait to see how it all does.

We've been running an on-grid inverter for over five years. Can use multiple panels in series or parallel, and plugs into any house mains socket. Total cost was around US$100 (+ same for each of 6 panels) ROI was less than 18 months... Providing you don't live in the US, where anything Chinese is banned or taxed beyond reach.

This would be really cool for small setups in rentals, like if you have a south facing balcony

Plug and play solar is an interesting topic. Since these will shut off during a grid outage, it follows that transfer switches are going to be an interesting topic as well. I mean whatever type will let you keep using your solar and possibly a generator and maybe also a battery during a grid outage. I'm sure there will be more of those coming out, I hope you keep an eye on that for us.

Sound to me like this would work well for an RV that is tied into the grid. I’m interested in the follow up videos!

Id like to see if heat sinks added. Would it make a diffrence?