Power Station Or Generator Wont Power Your Furnace? Try This!

This might work but just because something works doesn't mean it should be done that way. A portable power source should not be grounded to the building. The reason the equipment isn't working is because it needs a bonded neutral and the inverter uses a floating neutral. The solution is to buy or make a bonding plug to connect the neutral to ground and plug it into one of the outlets on the portable power source. Keep up the great videos!

Kudos to you for NOT calling it a solar powered generator.

If you're going to do this, just clip the black and white wires and only solder/connect the green ones. Ideally just clipping the prongs will be sufficient, but not connecting the black and white wires will make doubly sure that there is no chance of back feeding power.

I solved that issue by making sure the furnace itself was still grounded when the pigtail was unplugged from the outlet. That solved the ground reference difference since the ground in the generator cord is being utilized for that. Great videos.

pretty awesome fix. havent lost power yet this winter cause lines are mostly buried around here. in the rural area lines are surrounded by trees and when the winds come up everything becomes chaotic.

Thank You so much We used the generator power cord and plug set up to power my heater in the last storm

Thank you for all you do man!! Your videos are SUPER helpful. HVAC was a mystery to me before learning stuff from you. And you are probably going to save a lot of lives with these hacks. So thanks

Like others have said - This only works because you're getting the effect of the ground/neutral bond in your main panel. A better way to do this would be a ground/neutral bond adapter at the power bank. Much simpler device too.

Super video to add to the series! I’m hoping to get my high efficiency furnace retrofitted with your earlier switched outlet hack so I can use a battery pack during an outage. I think I’ll take the advice of another commenter and just connect the ground wire and not clip the prongs f I need this hack

Love the Florida Style jeans and Flip Flops.

As always great Vid brother.

Thanks you great content 😊

Thank you for the video! I appreciate the time and effort you invest in your channel!! Question… The furnaces of today are considered an inductive load with the motor for the blower? I’ve read it’s not a good idea to use a battery power station to run heavy inductive loads (refrigerator/furnace) as the inductive load startups will far shorten the lifespan of the power station. Is there a better inverter (and transformer? ) to use to power the furnace in a grid down situation?

Hello from the great state of Michigan

Great idea. These high efficiency machines can be too smart for a basic hookup.

Hello, your videos are awesome! Thanks for teaching all us!! Question: for the 2ton system at 50 degrees (f) ambient temperature what is a normal working pressures range?

I have a new furnace with a Nest thermostat. The thermostat would call for heat but nothing happened when running off the AC200 MAX. Tried an older simple thermostat and it worked fine. Turned out it was the Nest that didn't like the floating ground of the AC200 MAX. I added a neutral/ground bonding plug to the AC200 MAX and now the Nest is happy and the furnace runs fine.

Wouldn't bonding the Ground and Neutral at the power source where it connects to Power Distribution Unit (PDU) be a better approach?

The biggest problem I see with this is the fact most inverters and power supplies are modified sine wave types which is not good for inductive loads as it causes something like a blower motor to generate excessive heat which will lead to premature failure of the motor and possible fire if it's a worst case. If you are planning to run inductive loads like fans / A/C units, power tools, appliances like a fridge and such then you need to make sure your inverter is a pure sine inverter first of all, secondly since inductive loads draw alot of current initially on startup, make sure the RMS wattage exceeds what your appliance is using during startup as most inverters have a bold number on the labels, that number would be the peak or spike wattage which is not a constant SO if your motor needs 500 watts to start and 250 watts to run you want your inverter to be able to supply a constant 500 or more watts and this is because some loads take longer starting than most inverters can deliver in peak/spike mode before something lets out the magic smoke or starts to become degraded due to overloading, or the inverter just shuts down to save itself if it's a good quality inverter.

A neutral ground bonding plug plugged into the power generator is cheaper!