Good video and a very cool idea. We ended up with another option.
We have had an 11.7 kW solar array since December 2018. The original solar install was grid-tied with SolarEdge inverters The system intent was to ultimately have a battery, however the battery was not installed at the time due to shortages, and I learned much later the inverters were not set-up for battery backup.
How that relates to the thread topic is that if we wanted to stay with Solaredge inverters, they now have an inverter model with a built-in charge port.
However, we wanted batteries to power the house when the grid went down. As a result we needed to buy an inverter that could act as a whole home backup with our solar panels as the sole power source. Last year (2025) we needed to re-roof so I took that as an opportunity to modify the system building on what we learned. We still wanted to have a primarily grid-tied system that could function as a whole home backup system during a power outage.
We went with a new (during our time of research) EG4 system of (what they call) a GridBoss and a separate Flexboss21 inverter along with three 14.3 indoor (total 42.9 so far about 40 useable) kWh of batteries. We went with all the same brand due to the age of our inverters and to optimize communication between the devices. The GridBoss is an interface between the meter and the main panel, and it includes four (60A, 60A, 80A, 125A) Smartports that allow providing more power options without a service upgrade. Per the manual the Smartports can be set to provide power based on 'grid presence, time of use, battery state of charge (SOC/voltage), and PV state'. The system was installed six months ago and we have not hooked up anything to the Smartports yet. The plan is when we replace our existing hot water heater to connect the replacement(s) to Smartport(s). Also we could connect a Smartport to a Level 2 charger circuit.
We also reconfigured our solar array to optimize output and take advantage of the new roof shading pattern after some trees were trimmed back and (tangling up with our waterline and had to be) removed.
I'm still learning the EG4 system. It works but certainly has its quirks and takes a lot more management than I anticipated in an effort to optimize the system. We have not had an outage yet to really test the whole home backup. I'm waiting to get past AC and hurricane season for that. In prior years we have had 2, 5, 7, and 10 day power outages from hurricane damage to the FPL powerlines.
One feature the EG4 app has that I really like is the inverter data. It shows real-time PV production for each string, grid draw/export, and home use data in two minute intervals live, and four minute intervals in customizable data graphs.
The circuits on the main (and only) panel in our house add up to about 200A of 240V circuits and 300A of 120V circuits. Doing the math that is 84 kW total, however, the 200A service that would provide 24 kW to 48 kW of capacity. Interestingly, based on the inverter consumption data, our average base consumption is around 0.5 - 1 kW. charging an EV on L1 is around 1 kW. Most of the time we are using less than 5 kW. For maybe a few hours a day we use 5 to 10 kW. Less than an hour a day we use 10 kW - 15 kW. Scrolling back through the data charts for the last month this summer (all-electric appliances, we've been home, AC on 24/7, doing laundry, cooking on the range, charging our cars L1, etc.) our peak consumption was around 15 kW (almost all 240V so we might have been using 80A) for four to eight minutes at a time at most a few times in an hour. During our 15 kW usage time periods, the data show a maximum draw from the grid of 12 kW, with the rest being supplied by the solar panels and batteries. Otherwise, during the last month there was one four minute point that showed drawing 21,099 watts (21 kW) from the grid.
