Legion Solar on Kickstarter

Seems like it could be a game changer ?
Supposed to be 1.5/watt vs current google sunroof estimate of ~3.7/watt

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/plxdevices/legion-solar-4-permission-free-energy-and-storage?ref=Fundedtoday&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=51dsa.fnd.to

PLX Devices. I think this is the same company that makes gauges, etc for car aftermarket

I had a back-of-the-napkin estimate of ~$1.50/watt installed not long ago from a local outfit. Last time I kept track of solar component pricing they were ~$1/watt and inverters were ~$0.70/watt a few years ago.

A potential problem with installing on the subscriber side of the meter is that of anti-islanding - namely you need to detect whether or not the grid goes down and either shut down the inverter or isolate from the grid. This does two things - it avoids killing your system trying to power everyone and avoids energizing sections of the line that the utility expects to be un-powered when conducting repairs.

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If you believe the marketing on the kickstarter, the system uses “AI” :slight_smile: to match the household load to the panel output. No power is ever delivered in the reverse direction to the utility. Excess solar power is either not loaded on the panel by varying the inverters or diverted to charge batteries when available. To your point, I suspect their product will not get UL approval (if they try) unless they include some kind of mechanical contactor to isolate the home if the utility power fails. However this contactor breaks their marketing pitch because it is surely not something that can be installed by anyone… so much for marketing.

Their product uses microinverters, which as far as I know are a UL-approved product genre and can presumably detect grid-down conditions much like a standard whole-house grid-tie inverter.

However this not explain how the concept can then seamlessly migrate to an offgrid arrangement with a battery bank short of deploying a whole bunch of UPS-like modules into which one connects load. If these were fed by DC from the panels/micro-inverters then their DIY install concept makes somewhat more sense, albeit in a klugy way. Unless of course they mean truly offgrid, disconnecting the house from the utility feed, in which case you can just go nuts plugging into outlets and hop you’ve got enough balance, synch, and wheaties on both phases to run your 240V appliances.

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