[KElkhorn]

I finally got through to a Sunrun technical expert yesterday afternoon. He mentioned that they have done a few of these, and that they do indeed have several working. He mentioned that one of the issues they run into with the home back-up is the bluetooth connection between the truck and the CSP, if they have an obstruction or interference sometimes it doesn't work correctly.
It also seems like Sunrun was planning on just selling hardware to us folks outside of Sunrun states, but Ford has since asked them to help support us as well, which is challenging as they then have no control over hardware/wiring/etc. and need to put processes in place to manage this. They did also mention that in Q1 2023 the Sunrun "Parter" network would be expanding significantly, which is partnering with local install companies. For those of you considering this system, you might keep an eye out for who the local partners are as they come up, might be a win-win to get the system while letting your local installer deal with getting it up and going.

 

[larry.thompson]

No one has reported a successful install of the Home Integration System, at least none that I have seen online, and I have been searching the forums, YouTube and the usual EV media. I hope I am wrong, but it feels like they rushed this to market without proper testing.
My daily commute is less than 10 miles per day, but I am purchasing a Lariat Extended Range specifically for the home backup system feature. I already purchased the HIS system from Sunrun, just waiting on the truck which was scheduled for production 12/19, so I figure around February. I'm hoping for some positive news on the HIS equipment between now and then, otherwise I feel like I'm throwing good money after bad.

 

[FTR86]

You guys getting SunRun to install it, or DYI, are lucky. SunRun doesn't service Wisconsin, and all I am hearing from their Wisconsin partner is a giant wall of silence about getting mine installed. I think they just want to wait until they do the solar install in the Spring, but that leaves me just charging outside off a RV 50 amp plug. And cold batteries don't charge very well.

 

[ChasingCoral]

No one has reported a successful install of the Home Integration System, at least none that I have seen online, and I have been searching the forums, YouTube and the usual EV media. I hope I am wrong, but it feels like they rushed this to market without proper testing.

Their short video shows that they got it working

 

[larry.thompson]

You clearly didn't watch the video as she has extension cords running all over the house from the truck bed. Watch from 1:30 where she says she installed the Home Integration System but its not working properly, and causing issues with the truck. Sunrun and Ford are aware of it and are trying to fix it.
Tom M. from "State of Charge" is installing at his house and is supposed to come out with a detailed video showing the whole process. That has been several months and still no video, so I suspect he is having issues with it also.
Kelkhorn on this forum seems to be making progress, but still not completed and tested.
Overall the HIS system has been out for the past 6-9 months and still no reports of a successful install, which is concerning. Sure people have powered a few lights using extension cords, but that is the "pro power on board." I'm talking about the HIS system which is the inverter, transfer switch and battery connected directly to your panel box.
Here is the video of what is is supposed to be. I just don't know of any customers who have successfully installed and tested, regardless of their installer.

 

[THEsocalledfan]

So let me get this straight.....

They marketed this as intelligent backup power being a feature you could install, preferably through Sunrun. Yet, not even Sunrun can get it to work?

I've not followed closely.

 

[BertJ]

Well, 9.6 KW of household current is 40 amps (9600/240=40).

That is not very much.

How ‘much’ is, is relative. However, there is no outlet on the truck where you can actually draw 40 amps, only 30, which is ~7kw. Presumably, you could also draw from some of the other outlets concurrently which in some instances may be nice, but if I’m powering my house it would have been nice to have access to that 40 amps from one outlet. Hope Fordmoco is listening.

 

[KElkhorn]

It works!
Or at least it did this afternoon.
I finally got my net meter today, so I am allowed to leave things up and online now.
I ran home this afternoon to try it out.
With power on, house drawing ~600 Watts, PV Producing ~7400 Watts, and truck plugged into charger, I killed my main breaker at my meter panel. (The power readings seem to only poll every minute or so, which leads to them never quite matching)

Everything in house went dark, but then it came up on truck power

Turned truck to accessory mode, navigated to Intelligent power screen, and saw this:

Curiously, when I tried this the other day and had issues, solar was powering the house throughout just fine. Today it was only producing around 48 watts, while it had been producing 7500 previously. It did cloud up a bit, but should have still been north of 2500. I have been working with Sunrun/Delta to try to get the rapid shutdown to work correctly, I'm wondering if they didn't remote into this system and adjust something.

In any case, successful test of truck powering my house.

 

[larry.thompson]

Yes that is the jest of it. Ford says they tested it but to date, I have not seen or heard of any successful customer installs.

1. You have to purchase the Home Integration System (HIS) hardware through Sunrun. They distribute through AEE Express. Its $3,995 plus $300-400 shipping.
2. Sunrun is the "preferred installer" but they don't operate in all states. Most forum posts say their CS is hit or miss, but they wont install if you have solar from another provider, and generally aren't interested in quoting installation unless your adding solar from them.
3. Sunrun wont provide the charger unless they do the installation. Ford includes it with the truck (ER versions) but Sunrun has to ship it to you afterwards, and they wont do it until its marked as sold in their system.
4. Plan to spend $5-10k in electrical work to your home to get this installed.

Tom's video below is amazing, he is supposed to be installing at his house and will do another video on the process, but its been 10 months so I am thinking he has issues also.

 

[THEsocalledfan]

Yes that is the jest of it. Ford says they tested it but to date, I have not seen or heard of any successful customer installs.

Well, looks like our favorite Bobcat fan may have just pulled it off. That's nuts that the official installer can't do it, but a very motivated Montanan can. LOL

 

[larry.thompson]

That's awesome Kelkhorn! Please keep us posted, I'm curious to see how well it works in the evening when you have no solar coming in. What was the transfer time before power kicks in from the truck? I heard 5-10 seconds but the Ford guy said 45 seconds.
Also, I noticed from your photo, truck battery looked to be about 70% and it showed 1day, 3 hours remaining. If your house is only pulling 600w, one day sounds extremely low. My fridge alone will pull 600w when its running, shouldn't it be a lot more?
Appreciate your efforts, your paving the way for the rest of us!

 

[KElkhorn]

That's awesome Kelkhorn! Please keep us posted, I'm curious to see how well it works in the evening when you have no solar coming in. What was the transfer time before power kicks in from the truck? I heard 5-10 seconds but the Ford guy said 45 seconds.
Also, I noticed from your photo, truck battery looked to be about 70% and it showed 1day, 3 hours remaining. If your house is only pulling 600w, one day sounds extremely low. My fridge alone will pull 600w when its running, shouldn't it be a lot more?
Appreciate your efforts, your paving the way for the rest of us!

Will do, althought it wasn't pulling solar for that calculation. I would note that when it kicked on it read 17 hours, and was drawing 2100 watts, and worked it's way back down from there. You are correct that I was at 68% battery, and have it set to stop at 50 miles range, which is probably currently around 25%. That should give me around 55 kWh to use, which at the 600 watts should give me more like 4 days. Similar to the "Guess-O-Meter", I'm more inclined to trust my math than it's estimate. When I was trying it the other day and it wasn't transferring, it started at 21 days.

I will continue to play with it as I have time.

 

[KElkhorn]

Well, looks like our favorite Bobcat fan may have just pulled it off. That's nuts that the official installer can't do it, but a very motivated Montanan can. LOL

Never underestimate a motivated Montanan. To be fair I did have some help from Sunrun over the phone.

 

[KElkhorn]

Yes that is the jest of it. Ford says they tested it but to date, I have not seen or heard of any successful customer installs.

1. You have to purchase the Home Integration System (HIS) hardware through Sunrun. They distribute through AEE Express. Its $3,995 plus $300-400 shipping.
2. Sunrun is the "preferred installer" but they don't operate in all states. Most forum posts say their CS is hit or miss, but they wont install if you have solar from another provider, and generally aren't interested in quoting installation unless your adding solar from them.
3. Sunrun wont provide the charger unless they do the installation. Ford includes it with the truck (ER versions) but Sunrun has to ship it to you afterwards, and they wont do it until its marked as sold in their system.
4. Plan to spend $5-10k in electrical work to your home to get this installed.

Tom's video below is amazing, he is supposed to be installing at his house and will do another video on the process, but its been 10 months so I am thinking he has issues also.

1.Inverter with shipping was $4132.63 for me.
2. Per Sunrun, they are working to get partners in most states. I was able to put my system design/drawings together, but I spent a lot of time doing research. Hopefully some of their partners will improve the overall reputation/implementation.
3. Ford Charge Station Pro
4. I spent much more than was needed based on what I wanted to accomplish, which included installing a full 10 kW PV system. This is incredibly variable based on your existing electrical infrastructure. If your existing service/meter is near where you want to install this inverter/charge station pro, I would think you could do it for closer to $2000, especially if you are willing to de-rate the charge station pro. I have mine set to 50 Amp max right now, even though it's wired to a 100 Amp breaker, which is plenty for most overnight charge sessions.
If I take away the solar specific components, I'm around $4500 doing some of the work myself, which includes running 120' of 4/0 SE cable in conduit across my house. That wire alone was $1200 and the conduit was another $450 for that run, if my meter was on that side of the house I'd have been quite a bit less.

 

[R.I.P.]

It works!
Or at least it did this afternoon.
I finally got my net meter today, so I am allowed to leave things up and online now.
I ran home this afternoon to try it out.
With power on, house drawing ~600 Watts, PV Producing ~7400 Watts, and truck plugged into charger, I killed my main breaker at my meter panel. (The power readings seem to only poll every minute or so, which leads to them never quite matching)
View attachment 5445

Everything in house went dark, but then it came up on truck power
View attachment 5446
Turned truck to accessory mode, navigated to Intelligent power screen, and saw this:
View attachment 5447
Curiously, when I tried this the other day and had issues, solar was powering the house throughout just fine. Today it was only producing around 48 watts, while it had been producing 7500 previously. It did cloud up a bit, but should have still been north of 2500. I have been working with Sunrun/Delta to try to get the rapid shutdown to work correctly, I'm wondering if they didn't remote into this system and adjust something.

In any case, successful test of truck powering my house.

Looking at your readouts, it looks like it may have prioritized drawing from the truck rather than from the panels, throttling the panels back. That certainly is not a good design, I hope you get that fixed.

 

[KElkhorn]

Looking at your readouts, it looks like it may have prioritized drawing from the truck rather than from the panels, throttling the panels back. That certainly is not a good design, I hope you get that fixed.

Which is opposite from when I tested the other day, when power to my house didn't even flicker and continued to run on solar without drawing from the truck. At least it shut down today, and then booted back up. Every time the inverter loses DC power, it runs through a series of tests prior to allowing PV generation, during which point it was producing 48W.

There is also an issue with rapid shutdown. Typically with a PV system, you would kill the rapid shutdown AC disconnect, and expect DC conductors to be less than 30 volts within 30 seconds per NEC 690. This is somewhat counterintuitive to what we want to have happen with this back-up system, which would be to transfer and restore power, and then potentially use PV. From my conversations with Sunrun, I don't know that this was thought all the way through. There are terminals labeled "RSD" within the inverter, but no jumper or jumper wire to remove in order to install a mushroom switch for emergency shutdown. This really isn't an issue without the PV component.

Maybe this weekend when I have some time I'll run on the truck for a few hours just to see what happens, or if things settle out. Was just happy to have the thing work today.

 

[ChasingCoral]

Tom's video below is amazing, he is supposed to be installing at his house and will do another video on the process, but its been 10 months so I am thinking he has issues also.

Tom’s been giving updates on Inside EVs almost every week. Much of that time was waiting for the power company heavy-up his feed and doing a complete makeover of his garage (he has a video of this major project). IIRC they didn’t start on the Home Integration System until around this month.

 

[larry.thompson]

Came across this video on YouTube. Could be a great resource for those not using Sunrun. Kid seems like he knows his stuff, hopefully he puts together a series of install videos like he says he will.

 

[KElkhorn]

 

[terik2005]

Would it be easier to just use the pro onboard power in the bed rated for 30 amps? Seems like a lot of extra expenses for an additional 10 amps. Just using it as a backfeeder to an NEMA 14-50. And manually turn off the main. Even install a safety transfer switch as a precaution. All that will give you similar results and only cost $200.