Spoiler Alert! You bought a WHAT!?

That's right. If you've been watching the channel lately you've likely noticed the new truck in the background. We bought an F150 Lightning, all electric pickup truck. This is the first new car either of us has ever purchased. It's the most bare bones version Ford offers with a whopping 90kwh battery pack, and a 7200w inverter on board. Shockingly, the truck cost less (per kwh of capacity) than many of the plug and play home backup energy systems!

We're going into this somewhat blind and hope you bring you along for the ride as we learn how this truck fits into our off-grid lifestyle. Our hope is that it can become the missing link in our power system. In the summer, we can use our excess solar capacity to charge the truck, making our trips to town "free". But here's where things get interesting. In theory in the winter time we'll be able to charge the truck with inexpensive grid power in town and then use that electricity to recharge our home battery system, rather than run the propane generator. Not only can the property charge the truck, the truck can charge the property!

The opportunity doesn't stop there. We do occasionally have very bright sunny days in the winter time. On days like this the Lightning can serve as additional battery capacity, once the main batteries are charged up to 100% (and the solar would normally be wasted) we can start charging the Lightning. A few days later, once our state of charge on the house batteries drops, we can then dump the energy from the Lightning into the house. This makes full use of the sun we do get in the winter time.

Basically, this truck gives us a flexible 90kwh of battery capacity (for reference our house system is 60kwh) that should allow us to maximize our existing solar array and put our energy to it's highest and best use.

Beyond that, we also have a very capable 4x4 truck!

Let's see if the concept holds true! Stay tuned for a future video.