I have only had my Lightning XLT for 6 months and absolutely love it!! At the time I couldn't afford the ER pack so went with the SR, I wish I had the ER but SR is working well so far. Having the truck is just an added layer of piece of mind for power outages as we have a 17Kw Generac generator running off of our natural gas feed to the house so its great having a back up to the back up. And I can help any neighbors out with the truck for power if need be
I wish, a lot of my land is forest. We’re in the midst of a giant aspen grove. Cattle and sheep free range amongst the trees. Solar is great, until it’s covered in snow.
I'm so glad you mentioned disconnecting ground. There's so many videos of people trying to power their house thru a generator inlet plug and having it fail, full stop... No explaining it or suggested solution.
dope video, cool info! ive been wanting a Lightning for some time...I have a F150 PB with the 2.4kw pro power which ive used a few times at our lake property. One day we'll switch over to solar and utilize the truck as well dont fret about the negative comments, its cool to see how people utilize these vehicles that suit their needs! Keep up the content
I wish we get a generator mode for our Lightning’s had my plat since 2022 and love it. Great safe truck and only done recalls on mine have used my truck to power a taco truck that generator ran out of gas and charged a few ev on side of the road. But I do wish we get a generator mode and a pup mode and camping mode we used out truck for 4 months living in it due to a squatter issue. Over 34,000 miles on it would be more miles but health not that great.
I'm planning on using 'vehicle to home' as a backup for my not-yet-built off grid house. I would prefer a solution where the vehicle is AC coupled to the house and just provides a boost for the home loads, preferably without charging the home battery. One critical requirement for my use case is connecting the vehicle/generator must not result in a power outage (eg from switching a transfer switch). I guess in the worst case I could use an AC/AC inverter that is AC coupled on the output side. Hopefully as this becomes more popular the car manufacturers will provide more user friendly solutions.
Thank you for sharing. I'm looking to buy a Lightning which I can also use as a home energy battery (charging from grid at night and run HVAC/home off it daytime) 3-4 days a week when working from home. so your video gives me clear idea of what to expect especially in winter time. I don't have solar but hope to get some when they get even more efficient and cheaper (tariff lifting?). And I think I might add some batteries as they get cheaper, so when I drive the lightning there's still battery powering the house. While I'm not convinced about Ford quality or battery's longevity, I think Ford the company will stick around longer than Rivian so R1T is out. The only viable EV/storage battery choice for my need is the Lightning, Silverado EV and the cybertruck. And at current prices Lightning wins.
Glad my information could help! My biggest determining factor was budget, which the Lightning outpaced any other offering at the time for the features I needed. I still have a cybertruck reservation but the price is still too high IMHO.
If you keep your charging limited to 80ish percent, you shouldn't notice a lot of degradation. I love my lightning. I with from home. So i installed a 5.3kw solar system dedicated to charging the truck. I can't keep the solar panels optimal. But i can charge at 240v/3kw. If i were to lose power i would power the fridge etc with the truck. But i live in town.
I want to buy some land maybe 100 miles away and I intend to build a vehicle shelter first, with PV panels and a battery bank. I would plug in my F150 Lightning Lariat ER while there, but use my truck as back up power away from the base camp.
My take: instead of running the house off the truck, which ties the truck to the house long term and stops you from using it for anything else, use a high-amperage battery charger to quickly charge your house batteries off the Pro Power. Then you can keep running the house off the batteries but use the truck for other things.
The software experience alone in the F150 lightning makes me consider it and every other Truck null and void and that a Cybertruck is the only truck for me. FSD and Tesla software truly cannot be beat.
For sure the software is an issue compared to Tesla. We went from a model 3 to the Lightning, so I do know exactly what you are talking about. Problem for me is my budget is a public school teacher budget and the Cybertruck production version is just way too expensive, even with incentives.
So, you're using the truck bed for charging. I wonder what it would look like if you had the charger with auto transfer system instead of using the truck bed system
I wonder too, but wonder it shall remain because it's $10k to get that thing purchased and installed. I charge at work, and my home solar pv isn't enough to power our home and charge the truck at the same time, so it would be a useless set up for me.
I wanted to buy a Lightning but bought a F150 Powerboost Hybrid with the 7200 watt onboard generator. We have a camper and the Lightning would not work as well as the Powerboost due to charging every 120 miles of driving. I have used my Powerboost during power outages with a transfer switch and my camper during boondocking. The Ford Lightning and Powerboost are great vehicles! Nice off grid house in a house with an incredible view. We have Solar tied to the grid and geothermal heating and cooling but will be building another much smaller house completely off grid.
All good points. Bear in mind, this is off the budget of a classroom teacher. That’s my full time gig. We put $6k in lithium storage for the home, which came out to 15kwh but capped at 80% for longevity of the pack. Even these home battery systems are only rated for 1500-2000 cycles before their warranty or life expectancy is hit. When we moved here, the home was on 800w solar and flooded lead acid batteries of 4kwh usable storage. Power systems were not the only need to get the home fixed up, so we had to work on a budget. My 98 F150 died on me, so we needed a new vehicle. A lot of CO incentives made the F150 come down to $35k. New truck for the work we need to get done, a mobile power workstation, and a back up generator? It was a win win for us.
I struggle to truly understand this argument the few times I've heard it, for several layered reasons: 1. During COVID, teachers are heroes they should be paid so much! *plugs into workplace charger* how dare you use that electricity for transportation and back up emergency power! *scratches head* 2. Pricing: Xcel energy charges public buildings $0.016 per kwh. During *backup emergency cases* I use 10% to power the home. 10% of 98 kwh is 9.8kwh, or $0.1568 to power my home. Should I write a check? Give a dime and a nickel to my principal? have the school send me an invoice to the school for the few times in the winter I'll use the back up power component? How do I differentiate the consumption of battery pack for heating the cabin or losses in electricity transferring from transportation to power station mode? Should I pay back the electricity that kept me warm in the cabin, because a public charger shouldn't keep a teacher comfortable? 3. I'm at an education conference in Denver, and my colleague uses their per diem to just get an appetizer and a beer instead of a full meal with just water on the side. Should I report that person spending tax payer per diem on that beer? I don't think tax payers want people spending money on alcohol during dinner time. Or what if I'm riding with someone who is getting their mileage reimbursed and they stop at Target real quick to get a snack but that took us two miles outside the route? That $1.30 in mileage reimbursement would be the equivalent cost of powering my home 9 nights. But nobody would bat an eye at that mileage report. I don't use medicaid but I'm still taxed for it. Social Security looks like will be gone by the time I retire. And yet people nitpick that I will use my employee perk for making sure that during a storm, my family has electricity. so interesting to me.
that gets to be pretty expensive pretty quick. Large home battery installs are getting more affordable, but we could only budget so much. Incremental growth!
Even though the truck has a huge battery pack it is a VERY EXPENSIVE battery pack to be discharging on the daily 365 days a yr. It would be more cost effective to beef up your solar battery bank and use the truck battery 2 days a week. You also have to figure in the price of charging the truck. In an emergency situation all this is moot and it's awesome to have like a 90kwh battery in the driveway.
Yes, I use it as an emergency back up. Systems fail. Last winter we had an inverter fail and had to run our generator until it arrived. Our generator had maintenance issues late spring. Knowing we have multiple methods of power is helpful. For what it’s worth, I get free charging at work and our local DCFC is 0.35 per kWh.
Keep your truck as a backup only. That way when the real Snow Apocalypse hits you have more reserve. The fact you have a capacity gap in the winter for the house means you should work on closing that gap. That way if you have a component failure in any of your three primary systems you have two systems to work with.
If I remember correctly, the cost per kwh of an entire f150 lighting just for it's battery is VERY competitive with the sort batteries you'd buy for off grid solar, so I'm not so sure I'd agree with that take. The only catch is solar batteries are typically lithium iron phosphate, which are much more durable (but not as energy dense) as the chemistries you find in traction batteries (ev batteries, like nickel manganese cobalt), so theoretically you'd have to replace it twice as often (although, even non iron phosphate batteries still have plenty of longevity so I'm not so sure that matters too much).
I would absolutely power my home from a LifePO4 battery designed for many more cycles than the truck. You have a $70,000 truck powering your home. I would prefer to buy $5,000 of batteries and handle the needs of the home that way. If the truck battery pack is NMC, you are using up a lot of the cycles on non transportation. My advice is to get more solar and more batteries and leave the truck alone unless you absolutely need the pack to power the home.
All good points. Bear in mind, this is off the budget of a classroom teacher. That’s my full time gig. We put $6k in lithium storage for the home, which came out to 15kwh but capped at 80% for longevity of the pack. Even these home battery systems are only rated for 1500-2000 cycles before their warranty or life expectancy is hit. When we moved here, the home was on 800w solar and flooded lead acid batteries of 4kwh usable storage. Power systems were not the only need to get the home fixed up, so we had to work on a budget. My 98 F150 died on me, so we needed a new vehicle. A lot of CO incentives made the F150 come down to $35k. New truck for the work we need to get done, a mobile power workstation, and a back up generator? It was a win win for us.
Lots of reliability data out there that shows NMC battery degradation at 5-10% per 100k miles. That works out to 300 full cycles. Running 50 cycles a year for house backup won't make nearly any difference in the battery health. It's much cheaper to run the backup power this way than use propane or a generator... And will have no noticeable impact on battery health
I think Tesla looked into this with their Cybertruck tonneau cover but realized the square footage on any vehicle rooftop wasn’t going to amount to anything more than 3-5 miles of range per day of peak solar production. I imagine it would be a similar situation on the Ford.
70k for a truck that powers your home at night. Then the house is cold during days with the storm. Or $10k for a diesel 40kw generator to power the home and charge your solar batteries, and turn it off when the solar batteries are ready. You’ll be way more comfortable instead of brown out.
@@MrNismopro truck was $35k. 40kw generators are above $20k, $10k is more like 15kw these days. We don’t have a furnace, just wood stove so we’re actually quite warm during the day thank you. Needed a truck as my 98 F150 died. This was a win win. I have free charging at work, so that’s a great perk. Diesel is expensive in my area. Not to mention the maintenance, my EV truck requires no maintenance.
@@benjaminwestby5836People just think what Generator can do, not the cost to run and maintain it. Your plan is great, just get some more panels moving forward to dedicate charging the truck while at home and you should be good
Hello! Your video content is very impressive! We would like to invite you to review our products. Could you please provide your email so we can contact you?
I have only had my Lightning XLT for 6 months and absolutely love it!! At the time I couldn't afford the ER pack so went with the SR, I wish I had the ER but SR is working well so far. Having the truck is just an added layer of piece of mind for power outages as we have a 17Kw Generac generator running off of our natural gas feed to the house so its great having a back up to the back up. And I can help any neighbors out with the truck for power if need be
That’s awesome! I also could only afford the SR but we make do!
Nice video! Neat to see you figuring it all out.
If I had a ranch with unlimited space I'd have a ton of cheap solar panels. 😀
I wish, a lot of my land is forest. We’re in the midst of a giant aspen grove. Cattle and sheep free range amongst the trees. Solar is great, until it’s covered in snow.
You could mount the panels vertically. They don’t get as much sun as angled south facing but won’t have snow issues and don’t take up much space.
I'm so glad you mentioned disconnecting ground. There's so many videos of people trying to power their house thru a generator inlet plug and having it fail, full stop... No explaining it or suggested solution.
dope video, cool info! ive been wanting a Lightning for some time...I have a F150 PB with the 2.4kw pro power which ive used a few times at our lake property. One day we'll switch over to solar and utilize the truck as well
dont fret about the negative comments, its cool to see how people utilize these vehicles that suit their needs! Keep up the content
I’m not too worried about comments. It’s fantastic for us and that’s what matters!
I wish we get a generator mode for our Lightning’s had my plat since 2022 and love it. Great safe truck and only done recalls on mine have used my truck to power a taco truck that generator ran out of gas and charged a few ev on side of the road. But I do wish we get a generator mode and a pup mode and camping mode we used out truck for 4 months living in it due to a squatter issue. Over 34,000 miles on it would be more miles but health not that great.
I'm planning on using 'vehicle to home' as a backup for my not-yet-built off grid house. I would prefer a solution where the vehicle is AC coupled to the house and just provides a boost for the home loads, preferably without charging the home battery. One critical requirement for my use case is connecting the vehicle/generator must not result in a power outage (eg from switching a transfer switch). I guess in the worst case I could use an AC/AC inverter that is AC coupled on the output side. Hopefully as this becomes more popular the car manufacturers will provide more user friendly solutions.
Thank you for sharing. I'm looking to buy a Lightning which I can also use as a home energy battery (charging from grid at night and run HVAC/home off it daytime) 3-4 days a week when working from home. so your video gives me clear idea of what to expect especially in winter time. I don't have solar but hope to get some when they get even more efficient and cheaper (tariff lifting?). And I think I might add some batteries as they get cheaper, so when I drive the lightning there's still battery powering the house. While I'm not convinced about Ford quality or battery's longevity, I think Ford the company will stick around longer than Rivian so R1T is out. The only viable EV/storage battery choice for my need is the Lightning, Silverado EV and the cybertruck. And at current prices Lightning wins.
Glad my information could help! My biggest determining factor was budget, which the Lightning outpaced any other offering at the time for the features I needed. I still have a cybertruck reservation but the price is still too high IMHO.
If you keep your charging limited to 80ish percent, you shouldn't notice a lot of degradation. I love my lightning. I with from home. So i installed a 5.3kw solar system dedicated to charging the truck. I can't keep the solar panels optimal. But i can charge at 240v/3kw. If i were to lose power i would power the fridge etc with the truck. But i live in town.
I want to buy some land maybe 100 miles away and I intend to build a vehicle shelter first, with PV panels and a battery bank. I would plug in my F150 Lightning Lariat ER while there, but use my truck as back up power away from the base camp.
My take: instead of running the house off the truck, which ties the truck to the house long term and stops you from using it for anything else, use a high-amperage battery charger to quickly charge your house batteries off the Pro Power. Then you can keep running the house off the batteries but use the truck for other things.
The next thing to figure is how to charge the truck with solar while using the on board power.
FYI You can reset the efficiency in both the menu and screen
Might be advantageous to just the truck at night when it is cold. Discharging might help warm the batteries
The software experience alone in the F150 lightning makes me consider it and every other Truck null and void and that a Cybertruck is the only truck for me. FSD and Tesla software truly cannot be beat.
For sure the software is an issue compared to Tesla. We went from a model 3 to the Lightning, so I do know exactly what you are talking about. Problem for me is my budget is a public school teacher budget and the Cybertruck production version is just way too expensive, even with incentives.
So, you're using the truck bed for charging. I wonder what it would look like if you had the charger with auto transfer system instead of using the truck bed system
I wonder too, but wonder it shall remain because it's $10k to get that thing purchased and installed. I charge at work, and my home solar pv isn't enough to power our home and charge the truck at the same time, so it would be a useless set up for me.
Would disconnecting the ground on your feed line solve the bonding issue?
Yes, disconnecting the ground wire within the disconnect box was exactly the resolution to the ground feedback
I wanted to buy a Lightning but bought a F150 Powerboost Hybrid with the 7200 watt onboard generator. We have a camper and the Lightning would not work as well as the Powerboost due to charging every 120 miles of driving. I have used my Powerboost during power outages with a transfer switch and my camper during boondocking. The Ford Lightning and Powerboost are great vehicles! Nice off grid house in a house with an incredible view. We have Solar tied to the grid and geothermal heating and cooling but will be building another much smaller house completely off grid.
Hella dirty.
What is the price of charging per kwh for the lighting ?
I have access to free level 2 charging at work. When I'm road tripping, my average DCFC costs are .36 per kwh, or $35 for a 0-100% charge.
I suspect you might be better off investing in more solar and home battery storage capacity. Those LFP batteries are better suited for that purpose.
All good points. Bear in mind, this is off the budget of a classroom teacher. That’s my full time gig. We put $6k in lithium storage for the home, which came out to 15kwh but capped at 80% for longevity of the pack. Even these home battery systems are only rated for 1500-2000 cycles before their warranty or life expectancy is hit. When we moved here, the home was on 800w solar and flooded lead acid batteries of 4kwh usable storage. Power systems were not the only need to get the home fixed up, so we had to work on a budget. My 98 F150 died on me, so we needed a new vehicle. A lot of CO incentives made the F150 come down to $35k. New truck for the work we need to get done, a mobile power workstation, and a back up generator? It was a win win for us.
Odd video start, imagine the Chevy EV truck, it has 205kw pack!
yes, but the MSRP reflects that too. My truck was $35k, so I was able to afford that based on my budget.
I doubt the free charging for public employees was intended to supply free energy to your house!
I struggle to truly understand this argument the few times I've heard it, for several layered reasons: 1. During COVID, teachers are heroes they should be paid so much! *plugs into workplace charger* how dare you use that electricity for transportation and back up emergency power! *scratches head* 2. Pricing: Xcel energy charges public buildings $0.016 per kwh. During *backup emergency cases* I use 10% to power the home. 10% of 98 kwh is 9.8kwh, or $0.1568 to power my home. Should I write a check? Give a dime and a nickel to my principal? have the school send me an invoice to the school for the few times in the winter I'll use the back up power component? How do I differentiate the consumption of battery pack for heating the cabin or losses in electricity transferring from transportation to power station mode? Should I pay back the electricity that kept me warm in the cabin, because a public charger shouldn't keep a teacher comfortable? 3. I'm at an education conference in Denver, and my colleague uses their per diem to just get an appetizer and a beer instead of a full meal with just water on the side. Should I report that person spending tax payer per diem on that beer? I don't think tax payers want people spending money on alcohol during dinner time. Or what if I'm riding with someone who is getting their mileage reimbursed and they stop at Target real quick to get a snack but that took us two miles outside the route? That $1.30 in mileage reimbursement would be the equivalent cost of powering my home 9 nights. But nobody would bat an eye at that mileage report. I don't use medicaid but I'm still taxed for it. Social Security looks like will be gone by the time I retire. And yet people nitpick that I will use my employee perk for making sure that during a storm, my family has electricity. so interesting to me.
I would have enough battery power to run the house for 2 days without sunlight, then use the truck for emergency.
that gets to be pretty expensive pretty quick. Large home battery installs are getting more affordable, but we could only budget so much. Incremental growth!
Even though the truck has a huge battery pack it is a VERY EXPENSIVE battery pack to be discharging on the daily 365 days a yr. It would be more cost effective to beef up your solar battery bank and use the truck battery 2 days a week. You also have to figure in the price of charging the truck. In an emergency situation all this is moot and it's awesome to have like a 90kwh battery in the driveway.
Yes, I use it as an emergency back up. Systems fail. Last winter we had an inverter fail and had to run our generator until it arrived. Our generator had maintenance issues late spring. Knowing we have multiple methods of power is helpful. For what it’s worth, I get free charging at work and our local DCFC is 0.35 per kWh.
Keep your truck as a backup only. That way when the real Snow Apocalypse hits you have more reserve. The fact you have a capacity gap in the winter for the house means you should work on closing that gap. That way if you have a component failure in any of your three primary systems you have two systems to work with.
If I remember correctly, the cost per kwh of an entire f150 lighting just for it's battery is VERY competitive with the sort batteries you'd buy for off grid solar, so I'm not so sure I'd agree with that take. The only catch is solar batteries are typically lithium iron phosphate, which are much more durable (but not as energy dense) as the chemistries you find in traction batteries (ev batteries, like nickel manganese cobalt), so theoretically you'd have to replace it twice as often (although, even non iron phosphate batteries still have plenty of longevity so I'm not so sure that matters too much).
@@TAWithiam good points!
I would absolutely power my home from a LifePO4 battery designed for many more cycles than the truck. You have a $70,000 truck powering your home. I would prefer to buy $5,000 of batteries and handle the needs of the home that way. If the truck battery pack is NMC, you are using up a lot of the cycles on non transportation. My advice is to get more solar and more batteries and leave the truck alone unless you absolutely need the pack to power the home.
All good points. Bear in mind, this is off the budget of a classroom teacher. That’s my full time gig. We put $6k in lithium storage for the home, which came out to 15kwh but capped at 80% for longevity of the pack. Even these home battery systems are only rated for 1500-2000 cycles before their warranty or life expectancy is hit. When we moved here, the home was on 800w solar and flooded lead acid batteries of 4kwh usable storage. Power systems were not the only need to get the home fixed up, so we had to work on a budget. My 98 F150 died on me, so we needed a new vehicle. A lot of CO incentives made the F150 come down to $35k. New truck for the work we need to get done, a mobile power workstation, and a back up generator? It was a win win for us.
Lots of reliability data out there that shows NMC battery degradation at 5-10% per 100k miles. That works out to 300 full cycles. Running 50 cycles a year for house backup won't make nearly any difference in the battery health. It's much cheaper to run the backup power this way than use propane or a generator... And will have no noticeable impact on battery health
Ford needs a 5-10kwh of Solar input on there trucks 🛻 to charge up ⬆️
I think Tesla looked into this with their Cybertruck tonneau cover but realized the square footage on any vehicle rooftop wasn’t going to amount to anything more than 3-5 miles of range per day of peak solar production. I imagine it would be a similar situation on the Ford.
I think what this guy is suggesting is a DC solar input to avoid inverter loses. Kind of like a really big Eco Flo battery pack has.
Try to remember free is an illution, somebody is paying for it and it's always we the people.
yes, of course. I'm a public school teacher. my salary comes from the people. Not lost on me.
70k for a truck that powers your home at night. Then the house is cold during days with the storm. Or $10k for a diesel 40kw generator to power the home and charge your solar batteries, and turn it off when the solar batteries are ready. You’ll be way more comfortable instead of brown out.
@@MrNismopro truck was $35k. 40kw generators are above $20k, $10k is more like 15kw these days. We don’t have a furnace, just wood stove so we’re actually quite warm during the day thank you. Needed a truck as my 98 F150 died. This was a win win. I have free charging at work, so that’s a great perk. Diesel is expensive in my area. Not to mention the maintenance, my EV truck requires no maintenance.
@@benjaminwestby5836People just think what Generator can do, not the cost to run and maintain it. Your plan is great, just get some more panels moving forward to dedicate charging the truck while at home and you should be good
So you have a $70k+ power source, that ain't cheap even with free charging .
Thanks for asking instead of assuming. Oops. Truck was $35k.
Hello! Your video content is very impressive! We would like to invite you to review our products. Could you please provide your email so we can contact you?