LasCon - Hacking a backup power solution(s) for your home, Tornado tested! v2

This is not a prepper talk, but an experience from a real Tornado event and all the things I learned from it so you can learn from it. May 23rd, 2024 an F2 Tornado hit Temple TX. that started over Morgans Point Resort, where I live before touching down off 317 behind Belton High School. I had the only working garage door opener to my neighbors surprise. When recently overhauling and remodeling a home, I added supplemental solar, a solar powered/grid powered mini-split air conditioner/heater as well as a generator port to the home.

1. DISASTER PREP
PERSONAL DR/BCP
DEALING WITH THE AFTERMATH OF THE TEMPLE TX. TORNADO
MY EXPERIENCE AND WHAT I DID TO PREPARE FOR A POWER OUTAGE
MAY 22
ND
, 2024, 6:20PM CST

2. GOAL OF THIS TALK
•Share what I have, did and improved
•Yes, this would apply to you in Central Texas
•And some hacks I did with my setup… includes some PIE.. Pi...

3. I LIVE IN THE UPPER TOP LEFT CORNER IN MORGANS
POINT RESORT AND IT WENT OVER THE TOP OF US
X

8. •Hail, wind, train going by, sheet rain, branches all over and the leaf
debris… ohh the mess

9. NO POWER WEDS 6:20PM UNTIL SAT 6PM, THEN
OFF AGAIN SUNDAY 10AM UNTIL 7PM
•The storm knocked over trees and took out power lines as well as destroyed many
power poles and transformers
•All of Temple was without power Weds evening
•We were prepared, but were we really prepared?
•Anyone tell you it sounds like a train… well it does
•We were hit with 120mph “straight line winds” and baseball-golf ball + sized hail
•We could not see across our yard with limbs, leaves, hail and sheets of rain
•Mulched debris washed out towards the front of the yard 6” thick

10. WHAT IS SUPPLEMENTAL SOLAR?
•It does not run the whole home
•I cannot put solar panels on my roof due to huge legacy oak trees with way too much shade
and the roof faces the wrong way, not south
•I already had a solar generator, which has a 3000w battery
•You would need between 12,000w-24,000w or more of solar to run a whole home
•Supplemental Solar reduces some of your utility bill
•And to have some power in the event of an outage (if you have batteries)
•But I did add a pair of solar trackers since I have land that we will cover later

11. SO… I WAS PREPARED…
•I have some supplemental solar in my office area (separate area from the house)
•I have a solar hybrid mini-split in my office area
•I have a whole house open frame standard generator (12,000watts)
•I have a solar inverter in my workshop 100% solar, no grid option, turned off grid feed
•I had 4 - 15lb propane tanks
•I have a ride on mower that holds 6.3 gallons of gas
•I have a hand pump for gas transfer from the cars…

12. SO… THE POWER IS OUT, NOW WHAT?
•I have supplemental solar:
•Bluetti AC300 3000w generator with B300 3000watt battery in the office building
•12,000btu hybrid (solar and grid) mini-split in the office building
•3000watt 24v solar MPP Solar Inverter in my workshop with 3000watts of batteries
•I have/had a DuroMax 12,000watt Dual Fuel (Gas & Propane) “standard” generator
•Generator port installed on the house by the main panel
•ICM 32amp Soft Starter on the heat pump compressor
•All the needed cables
•4 tanks of 15lb Propane for my BBQ

13. WEDS NIGHT – AFTER THE TORNADO
•Pulled out the generator to start it up on the small Propane tanks
•Discovered that this size of generator cannot run long on a 15lb propane tank
•Like 15-20 mins, so really for a power tools in the field, not backup house power
•Gave up after the 2
nd
tank and went to get a hotel in Cedar Park one hour south
•No hotels in the area, go figure

14. SO… WHAT WORKED?
•Let’s start here
•All my solar panels survived except one that was used on my workshop
•365watt panel was tossed and hail took out the backside
•Only one panel left to charge the workshop, not enough to recharge the batteries, but I had
3000 watts of battery charged up, so I had power to open the garage door, lights and plugs to
charge tool batteries
•My workshop is 100% solar, no grid, ran for the 4 days with no additional solar power
•I can run an extension cord to the house to charge it up off grid if needed, which I did when
the power came back on since I only had one 365watt panel left

15. SO… WHAT WORKED?
•The workshop is where all the stuff is stored
•Garage door runs on it, all the lights and outlets
•WiFi extender, battery chargers, camera, etc.
•The workshop working came in handy… I needed it !
•I had the only working garage door in the area with lights
•Confused my neighbors when they saw it open with lights on when everything was jet
black darkness

16. FAIL #1
•The ride-on mower gas tank was almost empty
•My 5-gallon gas can was empty
•No gas on Weds to try and run the generator
•Turns out one gas can would not have been enough
•It took 25 gallons per day to run the generator
•I only had one 5-gallon gas can
•And 6.3 gal in my ride on mower… IF full

17. SO.. WHAT WORKED?
•The office area runs 95% off the Bluetti Solar Generator
•An EG4 12,000btu mini-split running off 4-200watt solar panels
•I have an Eco-Worthy solar tracker with 2-365watt panels that charges the Bluetti when
the sun is shining
•The grid charged the Bluetti up if needed at night
•The #1 thing if you ask me - “What worked best or surprised you?”

18. DAY 2 - THURSDAY
•After spending the night in Cedar Park to get a good nights sleep, I had access to Home
Depot and Walmart down the street
•Ours in Temple was closed, the Walmart damaged too
•I picked up more gas cans, now four 5-gallon cans – my first improvement
•Bought two full size air mattresses too, had some camping gear but the air mattresses died
•I remodeled the home in 2023 and knew the previous owners were without power 4 days in
the big Snowmagedeon event of 2020, so I prepared the house for this… or I thought
•Now loaded up with gasoline cans… back to the house to get the generator going and begin
the cleanup

19. DAY 2 - THURSDAY
•Now gas in hand, it is time to get the house powered up
•Added the gas, turned the key and…. It would not start
•Scratched my head
•I noticed after trying a few times, over an hour the battery seemed low… then I recalled the chemistry
•Propane has a low ignite temp, gas a higher ignite temp, why your car won’t start on a low battery
•So I got out my battery charger… now the workshop comes into play, the Bluetti was low so didn’t try it
•I ran a pair of extension cords from the workshop solar to the battery charger and jumped the battery on the
generator. I did run the generator on propane Weds so knew it was working
•Poof, the generator started right up with a full charge on the car battery charger. It was noon at this point on
Thursday

20. FAIL #2
•Clouds and rain the prior 3 days had my Bluetti Solar Generator low on charge at 25%
•I use/set the State of Charge (SoC) at 20%, charge up during the day, drain down at night
•Try and use as little of the grid utility as I can in the office
•Didn’t think to set it to 100% before the storm >>
•This is a drawback of trying to reduce grid use
•Even though the office was not needed… yet
•It did run some things I wanted power for

21. DAY 2 - THURSDAY 12PM, POWERING UP THE
HOUSE
•Now that the generator was running, time to see what it can do
•First priority was the refrigerators; we have 2 and a freezer
•Then the lights and test the internet and get basic things running
•And then the cleanup, I needed to go on the roof and blow off a ton of leaves, get the branches off to see
how bad the roof and skylight was
•Blow leaves off the driveway to keep them from staining and grinding them in with cars
•No air conditioning in the house yet, but the office has the mini-split and working, it has solar !!!
•Spent the night in the office on an air mattress in the cool air of the mini-split and had OTA TV
•Wife stayed in Austin until I was sure everything was working

22. DAY 3 – FRIDAY, GET THE AC AND REST OF THE
THINGS POWERED UP
•10am, time to test the house AC to see if the fancy soft starter does what it says
•WOOT WOOT.. The AC powered up! generator still ran and cool air started!
•Rest of the house is working, main TV is up, internet back up
•Time to clean up outside, branches first, there were a lot
•Stress level finally going down…

23. FAIL #3
•Standard generators make less than perfect power
•UPS’ do NOT like this power source, at all !!! I have 5 of them !
•Had to unplug all my things from the UPS’ and plug them into the wall
directly, a pain for sure
•Nor does my Bluetti like the generator to charge, gave a “Frequency error”
•This is known as THD – “Total Harmonic Distortion”
•You need <5% to work with a UPS and a solar generator (perfect sine-wave)
•Or an invertor generator… more on that later

24. FAIL #4
•4pm Friday I discovered the AC was no longer working
•Powered it up and killed the generator, now no AC, 90 degrees and
90% humidity
•Turns out the soft starter seems to have died
•Wife came home around 6pm….. Oh happy joy joy… no AC
•Fortunately, the house was fairly cool running all day
•I did have a RolliCool standup 10,000btu AC

25. FRIDAY NIGHT
•RolliCool in a guest bedroom for the wife
•I slept in the office with the mini-split comfy and cool
•Everything else worked in the house
•We were able to watch TV and the internet worked
•Getting back to normal…. ISH

26. DAY 4 - SATURDAY
•More clean up in the yard
•Get the leaves off the lawn so it won’t die, they were thick
•82 – 40-gallon bags and a 15 cu/yd bin
•Totaled about 25 cu/yrds in the end of just leaf debris
•Around 6pm the power came back on
•House has AC !!!!
•Slept in my own bed finally, with cool air

27. DAY 5 - SUNDAY
•Got up and turned on the lights
•THE HOUSE IS POSSESSED
•Dimmers blinking
•Smart Switches clicking
•I had a short !
•Called ONCOR to come out
•They turned off the power ;-(

28. FAIL #5
•The storm shook the lines so hard and with the main lines
being aluminum with contraction and expansion, one
shorted out and arced the aluminum which makes it brittle
and broke
•ONCOR guy told me exactly what I needed, replacing just
the lug does not require an inspection or permit
•2 screws, some grease and ready for power
•Home Depot in Killeen had the 200a SIEMANS Meter box
•Replaced the lug in 15 mins
•Power off at 10am, ready to turn on by 2pm

29. DAY 5 – SUNDAY EVENING
•5pm no power yet, so rolled out the generator again for another night
•RolliCool in the living room to take the edge off the heat
•7pm ONCOR contractors came out and power restored
•Balance to the house force has been restored!

30. MY DISASTER SETUP
•Reduce grid use in one part of the house
•And for travel power in my small trailer to run an AC/DC fridge freezer
•And be more prepared for a snowmagedeon event which is what I had these things for
•Never thought it was for a Tornado

31. MY SETUP
•I have an ECO-WORTHY Solar Tracker with two 365watt
panels, now 3, the extra one from the workshop pair
•It is quite efficient tracking the sun to get the maximum sun to
charge my Bluetti to 100% by 1pm-ish
•Enough that I can add a 2
nd
battery for 6000 watts for $1300
•I can vouch for the solar tracker being 40% better than roof or
ground mount, and it survived the Tornado 120mph winds!!!
•I got a 2
nd
tracker for my workshop and 5 new 200watt bi-
facial panels, backside can charge too, so they say

32. MY SETUP
•The #2 thing if you ask me - “What worked best or
surprised you?”
•This thing survived 120mph horizontal winds and golf
ball to baseball sized hail
•Surprised so much I bought another one for my
workshop to replace the 2 panels, one that was
destroyed and one that I moved to my existing tracker
to provide more juice to the office space

33. BLUETTI AC300 3000 WATT SOLAR GENERATOR
•I love this thing, 3000 watts of battery, AC, DC wireless charging
•Runs my Living Room TV cluster for 9 hours !
•It is in my office and runs everything, 2 offices of computers,
printers and desk stuff
•Including my 12,000btu mini-split at night !!!
•I can travel with this in my little trailer with 4-100 watt panels
•Runs my DC fridge/freezer so I don’t have to haul it into the hotel
room each night as it is heavy

34. MY SETUP
•Bluetti AC300 and B300 3000watt battery
•This thing is awesome
•Can add 4 batteries for 12,000watts
•And double the setup for 24,000watts with 220v
•I now have the 30amp to 50amp adapter cable to plug it into the
house for short outages, 120v only though
•It’s quiet too
•The tracker panels charge this up in 3-4 hours with full sun

35. MY SETUP
•Solar/Grid mini-split
•12,000btu (400-600 sq ft)
•LOVE this unit, quiet and didn’t notice when it turned on while on
the generator
•And solar during the day means less drag on the generator and grid
•Keeps the two offices cool and warm
•Runs off 4-200watt panels sitting on the ground
•Another improvement I made was to add an extension cord to
plug the mini-split into the Bluetti to run at night to use the excess
battery that I have on the Bluetti, unplug from grid to use it

36. MY SETUP
•The workshop 24v MPP Solar AIO with two 1500watt batteries, one EG4-LL with
a screen and one LifePower in a 3 battery rack, room for one more
•No grid in the workshop, $150/mo. ONCOR wants to charge me, so solar is far
more cost effective
•Runs pretty much everything except big power tools, so I run an extension cord
from the house when big tools needed and to charge it up if needed, might add a
4000watt inverter for more AC out amps to power the bigger tools
•48v needed for bigger tools (Amps)
•Could add a 2
nd
MPP Solar for 220v

37. PROPANE IMPROVEMENTS
•I was told you need a minimum of 120gallon
tank to refill from a service
•5’x30”
•250 gallon is the next size up
•7’-10”x30”
•Neighbor 13,000watt generator ran for 3 days
off propane
•And you can run your BBQ

38. PROPANE IMPROVEMENTS
•I bought a 100-pound, 25-gallon tank
•It should run the generator for a full day
•I had to get all the adapters and hoses too
•My new generator has an odd size quick-
connect fitting so this took a few tries

39. GENERATOR
•With the fact that I could not charge up my Bluetti, the workshop invertor off the generator
power AND the UPS’ did not like the power fluctuation and drained down to nothing
•You have two choices to improve this
•1) get a power conditioner
•2) get better conditioning UPS’ like in data centers for servers
•3) get an Inverter generator, AC to DC back to AC that provide a perfect sine-wave power
just like the grid provides
•Costs about $1000 more than a standard open-frame generator

40. DIRTY POWER
•Regular generators produce dirty power
•Most electronics do NOT like this
•Your computer equipment and fancy electronics can
have issues
•It can hurt or kill them
•What you want is pure sine-wave power
•Clean power that works with everything

41. GENERATORS
•I had a DuroMax12000 watt generator, it’s
nice at $1500
•I now have an 11,000watt Inverter
generator for $2500
•They also make a 15,000watt generator
for $4500

42. SOLAR TRACKERS
•These are shockingly efficient
•They say 40% more efficient, and I can say they are
•What took all day to charge on the ground now charges by 12-1pm on a sunny day
•You can clean them easily, change/maintain panels, and no roof mount so cheaper
insurance
•Runs off 12v so just run a wire back to your solar generator or 12v fuse box along with
your solar cables to run the controller and actuators
•The tracker went flat in the storm with the wind sensor and I lost no panels !
•Holds 6 – 200watt panels or 3 – 365watt panels, or 5- 200watt bifacial panels like I use
on my workshop tracker. Size of panels matters to maximize PV input

43. MY HACKS

44. SOME FOLKS POWER THEIR TRACKER THIS WAY
•I’m a Hacker… soooo
•This won’t work for me
•Another panel ???
•A Battery ???
•Just to power it?
•Outside?
•Ya know the panels ARE power right?

45. 12V INPUT TO POWER THE TRACKER CONTROLLER
•Plug adapters
•I can switch
between the
Bluetti and the 12v
Power Supply for
when I take the
Bluetti with me

46. AND TO POWER THE WORKSHOP TRACKER
•Just use a 24v Fuse Box then a
step-down power DC converter
to 12v to power the tracker
•I also have a smart relay to power
my yard lights and other items on
a schedule

47. OF COURSE WE’VE GOT TO HAVE RASPBERRY PIE
•Raspberry Pi running the
software Solar Assistant
•If you get a powerful Pi
you can also run Home
Assistant, I use Hubitat so
an old Pi worked fine
•You can also buy the Pi
from the software
company

48. APPLICATIONS TO MONITOR IT ALL

49. GOTTA HAVE STATUS AND ALERTS
•I use a Hubitat MQTT driver to pull data from Solar Assistant back to the Hubitat
•I can then use Pushover App to send alerts to my phone or tablet
•I alert on:
•Solar in for 700, 800 or 900 watts
•Battery State of Charge (100%) FULL
•Battery State of Charge (25%) Low warning
•I use the Gmail Driver and App as well to get email alerts for tracking times thing occur

50. SOLAR TRAILER
•You can do this to a Van, SUV, Trailer or an RV
•This is so I can take my Bluetti with me and my
AC/DC Fridge-Freezer and not have to lug it
into the hotel
•Also have power for charging tools, etc.
•Power pretty much anything
•I have four 200w panels I can add by leaning
them up against the trailer for FAST changing

51. OTHER ITEMS

52. SOFT STARTER
•Mine worked for almost a year
•You can tell it is working as the house lights do not dim when the AC powers on
•I do not know why it failed, but the main reason I got it for, only lasted about 6 hours
•To run on a generator and it failed
•Was it the storm surge? Vendor says they think faulty internal component that has been upgraded in
newer versions, they gave me a new one for free!
•I also replaced the heat pump capacitor at $17 when I replaced the in warranty soft starter, just in case
the surge affected the capacitor
•Micro-Air is another brand that makes a solid good unit, costs more

53. ADDITIONAL MINI-SPLIT
CONSIDER THIS IN YOUR PLAN
•When the AC was unable to come on, not having a cool place to go was not optimal
•We could go sit in the office, I did have an air mattress setup as I slept 2 nights out there since it had power
(AC300) and AC (mini-split)
•I setup the guest TV in the office to have some place to go and relax
•But it would be nice to have a backup to the AC if it, or the soft starter was to fail again
•A 24,000btu hybrid mini-split (220v) in my Living Room/Dining/Kitchen great area would be a big improvement
•It would also allow me to close vents to the main house unit and give me a 2-zone solution
•I could combine both trackers to run the 24k btu mini-split on solar if needed.
•Or maybe install another tracker or two ;-)

54. A MANUAL
•I created a manual on how and where all the stuff is located
•How to connect and power it all up
•In case I was out of town and I needed someone to go hook it all up
•And… So I remember what is needed when the time comes
•You know… a … Playbook
•In crisis you do not remember everything
•So create a manual with pictures to make it easier to recover

55. QUESTIONS?
•You can find me on the InterWebs
•Preso may be found at:
•MalwareArchaeology.com
•Resources - Presentations
•Also, on SlideShare