Hello everyone, just jointed the forum. I’ve owned 2 EB70s units for a few years now and have really enjoyed them.
My wife will be starting a new job soon working from home, she MUST have electricity and internet or she will have to leave home and drive 45 minutes each way to the home office which we want to avoid if at all possible. Our power is for the most part pretty reliable but we have frequent short outages that last around 30-60 seconds about once a week, and of course it takes a while for the modem/router/PC to reboot etc. which will be problematic for her, not to mention it is just an annoyance. I originally thought about trying to make something work with the two EB70s units I have, but then I wouldn’t be able to make use of them for other uses. With the recent sale and tax credit I went ahead and purchased an Apex 300 with one expansion battery.
What I want to be able to do is have at least 3 circuits being powered from the Apex at all times, these will power our internet network router, internet modem and network switch along with her PC, and my office PC as well. I have the Apex installed right next to my circuit breaker box. I thought of two possible ways to do this, I could remove the Romex wire from the breaker box for these circuits, put a standard 20amp/120v plug on the end of the Romex and then plug that directly into the front of the Apex, or I could install a small breaker box with a breaker for each circuit that would be powered from either the 30 or 50 amp outlet on the side of the Apex. Whichever method I choose I would want to also install outlet/s from my main breaker panel that I could power these circuits from if for whatever reason the Apex isn’t available.
I also have a generator that I want to be able to incorporate if we ever have an extended power outage. I would like to be able to use the 50Amp charging cord to charge the Apex directly from the generator, then use the 50 Amp outlet to power my entire breaker box. My generator is able supply about 40 amps@240v, so I know I would need to set the max charging amperage a little below this in the app. I have conduit run from outside where the generator will be that goes into the room where my breaker box and Apex are located. If anyone has suggestions on the best way to do this I would appreciate it.
I hope that is clear what I want to achieve, please let me know if I need to go into any more detail on this.
Hi josh , Im kinda new to this forum, I also have EB70s, you could use the EB70 plugged into the router and leave plugged in wall, but that fan noise will be going,
Im thinking you may need an automatic generator transfer switch installed at your fuse panel, If im thinking correctly, you would plug in the Apex 300,and turn it on, If the grid goes down , the transfer switches to generator, or your Apex 300, which ever you have plugged in at the time,
Hope im understanding correctly.
First off, If I understand what your saying, put a standard 20amp/120v plug on the end of the Romex and then plug that directly into the front of the Apex, you want to plug power into the front outlets? those are power out only, not power in. Don’t do that! I’m not super familiar with the detailed operation of the Apex 300 but along with what JimyFX said you should be able to do a similar thing with the Apex 300 without tying anything into a breaker panel. Two of the outlets on the front panel are designated for pass through power, I think its the ones on the left side. Plug in your router etc. into those outlets so you would be on pass through (grid) power, and if the power went out you should seamlessly transfer over to battery. Of course, the Apex 300 would also need to be connected to the grid with the charging cord.
So with the help of a friend I found this device, I didn’t even know they existed, but for connection the circuits I want to keep on full backup this will be ideal.
Im glad you found that setup, thats a nice unit, If you go on You Tube, Jasnoid ,he does a lot of off the grid things with bluetti and other makes of power stations. and hooking generators to house, I believe he uses the same system,
So I got everything installed over the weekend, I have 3 circuits that will be on full time backup, the first circuit will power both my son’s desk who does his schoolwork on a PC, and my wife’s desk that will have her work PC, it will also power some of the lights in our living room. The next circuit will power my office PC and office lights, the third circuit will power our internet modem along with my son’s bedroom light. I also connected our dedicated refrigerator circuit to one of the circuits, and the dedicated circuit that powers our deep freeze in the garage and our garage door openers. I will likely leave these on line power most of the time just to keep the load down on the Apex, but obviously all it takes is the flip of a switch to transfer them to backup power. I will probably transfer them to backup power if we are gone on a trip so they will keep running during outages if we aren’t home to flip the switch. I also have my network router, network switch, and my file server PC plugged directly into the front of the Apex these devices are located in the same room as the Apex and breaker panels
I also installed a 50 amp generator inlet on my breaker box using an interlock plate. This will allow me to power the entire house from the Apex if needed. Obviously I will have to monitor the loads carefully but it will be nice to have the option to do this if needed. I purchased a 6 foot RV power cord for this purpose and it worked wonderfully.
The next thing I did was installed a dedicated 240v/50amp outlet to charge the Apex.
The unused box you see in the pictures will be for another 240v/50 amp outlet that will hook to another generator inlet outside my house that I will use to connect my generator to during any extended outages, with this I can charge the APEX and use pass through power to power the entire house, or connect directly to the breaker box from the generator. I’m going to install a junction box below this outlet to feed solar power over to the Apex as well. Not sure when that will happen but I do want to add some solar panels at some point. I already have conduit running into this room to outside the house where my generator inlet will be located.
You might have noticed the small extension cord hanging out of the breaker box, this is connected to line power before my main breaker and protected by a 2 amp in-line fuse. This will allow me to plug in a very low power device such as a light or radio that will alert me when grid power has been restored.
Edit, I’d like to show you pictures but new users can only upload one picture :(