Current Connected turnkey Micro-grid

[Ahb1989]

So, I wasn’t sure what I was going to call this thread, what sub forum to specifically post it to, or if Dexter already started one but if he has I haven’t seen it.

This started with a few phone calls to “CC” asking pointed questions about the SOK exterior rated battery box. I was asking sizes, bus bar capacity and wall thickness of the product walls, was it built strong enough to hang an inverter from etc etc. Ultimately I was transferred to Dexter who thought that this might be a cool offering from Current Connected. I fully Intended to assemble this myself, figure out the unintended consequences and try and salvage the parts if I built a disaster but Dexter offered to do some part searching and assembling for a wonderful price and I jumped on it.

 

[Ahb1989]

I received shipping confirmation last Thursday, and it arrived today at my work's shop. It was very well crated but I would be lying if I didn't admit that I was so excited to get it open that I forgot to take a picture. Once I got it mostly de-crated I researched how to wake up the batteries and power on the system. I grabbed a saw from the shop and plugged it in and got excited, but unfortunately it didn't work.

I only had about 1 hour of daylight left and wanted to get this loaded up and transported to my off-grid property so I trucked it and the forklift there. Thinking I would go through the inverter and settings and figure out how to set it to off-grid properly. By pure luck and chance I plugged my camper into the unit and turned it on and the camper started working after power-up. I had totally overlooked the 20 amp GFCI and once it was reset of course it worked just fine, Dexter and his team put out a product that was assembled to spec, transported a whole country away, and worked correctly and immediately out of the box. I will start on PV soon but it's quite cool hearing my heat pump turn on a mile from the nearest power line and with no generator noise.

My understanding is that this will be a semi-custom product offering for a turn-key experience, i.e. a replacement for the fit work needed to transfer a house to solar, or off-grid. This could also be used to power campers, houses, etc via battery only. I see a future where one of these could be moved to a job site instead of a diesel generator. I think the sky is the limit, just imagine the possibilities for a power box that could just be dropped off and turned on.

 

[Adam De Lay]

That’s an awesome unit! So what’s your use case? I see a camper and a shop in your photos. Are you building a house?

 

[Ahb1989]

That’s an awesome unit! So what’s your use case? I see a camper and a shop in your photos. Are you building a house?

That shop is what I work from (camper repair). This unit will power an off grid camper for now and ultimately run our home when I get around to building it.

We are going to be selling our main house and getting back to basics a bit.

 

[Adam De Lay]

That shop is what I work from (camper repair). This unit will power an off grid camper for now and ultimately run our home when I get around to building it.

We are going to be selling our main house and getting back to basics a bit.

So do you already have solar in place that you’ll use to recharge the SOKs?

 

[Ahb1989]

It was important to me to have a movable, easy to use system that I can power my camper now, the house or at least most of it later, and upgradable when needed and this checks all of these and more.

I can’t wait to be able to upgrade to the mounted heat pump that’s being made for this box in the near future for battery temp control.

 

[Ahb1989]

So do you already have solar in place that you’ll use to recharge the SOKs?

Kinda I have them sitting on a pallet. They will be in place in a couple days.

The camper has its own solar system for the onboard batteries only but I have no split phase capability on it internally to recharge this system. I will ultimately slide in a chargeverter in the new chassis so I can use a small generator when needed and likely install a interlock on the camper so it’s onboard diesel generator can be used to run two chargers via its 120 volt 8k output.

Ultimately I will get a dedicated generator and it will sit on a pad by this SOK system but I’m going to juggle for a few until the house sales and I’m out there more.

 

[Adam De Lay]

Awesome! Make sure you keep us in the loop of how things go!

 

[Brucey]

SOK 12-Slot Outdoor Insulated Battery Rack | Current Connected

This new SOK 12-slot rack has built-in slots for heaters and/or AC units, allowing for easy control of the temperature inside the rack. With a sturdy design, it is easy to attach inverters on the outside for easier installation. Specifications: Outdoor rated enclosure (NEMA 4) that holds up...

www.currentconnected.com

 

[Ahb1989]

SOK 12-Slot Outdoor Insulated Battery Rack | Current Connected

This new SOK 12-slot rack has built-in slots for heaters and/or AC units, allowing for easy control of the temperature inside the rack. With a sturdy design, it is easy to attach inverters on the outside for easier installation. Specifications: Outdoor rated enclosure (NEMA 4) that holds up...

www.currentconnected.com

Yes, this is the base cabinet used for the system.

 

[Brucey]

Yes, this is the base cabinet used for the system.

The base standalone cabinet isn't too bad a price considering it's good for 12 batteries plus the climate controlled possibilities. Big advantage over the rack mount eg4 batts. Very sweet how they mounted the sol-ark and panel up for an integrated unit.

 

[Ahb1989]

The base standalone cabinet isn't too bad a price considering it's good for 12 batteries plus the climate controlled possibilities. Big advantage over the rack mount eg4 batts. Very sweet how they mounted the sol-ark and panel up for an integrated unit.

I didn’t think it was a bad price at all.

It’s effectively the price of one battery and gives the protection of the eg4 powerwall type system but with repairable batteries.

In theory you should be able to use this with any rack mount batteries but I found it nice and tidy getting it all in one location and after deciding on the SOK for parts it was a easy decision. I could have built everything into a shipping container but for 1700 bucks I think I would have a hard time building an enclosure, insulating, and making something similar for the price.

 

[Ahb1989]

I will have this sitting in its base soon and will add a few pictures. It’s still surreal just plugging something in and it working without fiddling. Of course for the diy forum I’m sure that’s half the fun, but for someone constrained on time this is the cats meow

 

[Brucey]

Are those two receptacles on the back side under the covers? 50A and 30A?

 

[Ahb1989]

Are those two receptacles on the back side under the covers? 50A and 30A?

50 amp rv plug on left. Two twin gfci plugs on the right.

The panel is a square d 200amp main feed through so one could utilize the 200 amp pass through feature of the inverter and wire an entire house completely through this system if it was desired.

 

[Gavin Stone]

I didn’t realize they added the 50 Rv plug also. I really like this. I thought the same about this being a possible job site generator.

If you ordered the plastic ground mounts Current Connected has for solar panels, all you'd need is some gravel for ballast. You could be up and running really quick.

 

[Ahb1989]

I didn’t realize they added the 50 Rv plug also. I really like this. I thought the same about this being a possible job site generator.

If you ordered the plastic ground mounts Current Connected has for solar panels, all you'd need is some gravel for ballast. You could be up and running really quick.

I agree the ballast mounts would be perfect for most job sites. Fill it with dug removal, have quick connect dc plugs for the solar that would stand up to repeated use. Have the system be a standalone battery generator, a battery solar generator, or have it preprogrammed to the existing generator they have been using as a range extender of sorts.

For minor loads the diesel generator wouldn’t even come on, heck even a range extender battery generator without solar would greatly contribute to efficiency by loading up the generator a couple times a day/week to recharge. It would likely still pay for itself in diesel savings.

I kinda like the idea that any household electrician could set and forget the entire box on the back patio. A customer could have the 200 amp meter pole fed right into this after a disconnecting means and feed right into an interior panel box. Solar could be added at anytime and the customer could benefit from time of use savings (which we don’t have) power backup without having a generac dropped off and plumbed, and be immediately completely solar if they wanted to. It could be removed from house to house if you wanted to as you grow and move.

Changes the perspective when the systems not bolted onto the house.

 

[JJJJ]

This opens up options. Very interesting concept. I suspect that if someone created a generic outdoor waterproof unit like this where it could be configured to a multitude of battery and inverter types that it could potentially have a very strong market. Especially if it had a wide base of support and could potentially be moved on wheels.

 

[Ahb1989]

@HighTechLab

Will I gain anything/can I close loop these batteries with the inverter that I bought?

 

[HighTechLab]

@HighTechLab

Will I gain anything/can I close loop these batteries with the inverter that I bought?

Not really. If you were tied into the grid then I would have a different answer, since it does help a touch when setting the time-of-use settings...but since you are off-grid it only adds complexity.

It was very well crated

That was the feedback I was hoping for. I used to work in metal fabrication building for the foodservice industry. Far too often stuff would get lazily crated and next thing you know it moves around and gets destroyed while still within the crate. Shipping this thing (as heavy as it is) was one of our concerns...man it would have been expensive if it got damaged in transit! Far more than any amount of crating wood could compensate for.

We are working out better relations / supply chain for parts on this and a few updates to the cabinet design to make building the next ones easier. We had the thought of allowing custom ordering (i.e. choose your batteries, inverter, etc) but I fear our lead times will get out of control quick. Starting out I'd rather have 2 or 3 standard models that we build first and then mark in stock.

I did post about this before it left our shop -

Fun new project with SOK 12 slot outdoor rack and Sol-Ark 15k

This was for a customer of mine - we wanted to do a trial run to see how effectively we could build a turn-key weatherproof outdoor ESS system. They only purchased 6 batteries but normally we would pre-load all 12 batteries, prewire, test and allow the BMSs to balance everything out. Also, the...

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