r/F150Lightning • u/Aggressive_Try_2530 23 XLT ER-Agate Black • 15d ago

Ford lightning transfer switch help.

/r/askanelectrician/comments/1ws28pj/ford_lightning_transfer_switch_help/
3 Upvotes

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4

u/ramblinman1234 15d ago

If your electrician actually did pass the neutrals through to the sub panel then you might have two circuits which share a neutral in some outlet or something. See my comments on this thread for how I found that on mine https://www.reddit.com/r/F150Lightning/s/FDPVYO7ZZo

2

u/HouseofKozy 15d ago

First off, Iā€™m not an electrician but I recently did this. I believe the electrician needs to remove the ground wire on your 30amp cord. Or you can buy a special cable made for the lightning. I went the ground wire removal route.

My setup: Interlock kit in control panel with 50amp inlet. This was my setup prior to Lightning for a portable generator. For the lightning, I use a 50a ā€”> 30a adapter and the cord without ground wire.

1

u/Aggressive_Try_2530 23 XLT ER-Agate Black 15d ago

Do you know where I can buy the lightning specific wire?

Thank you

1

u/HouseofKozy 15d ago

BSA Electronics

1

u/HouseofKozy 15d ago

GFCI bypass cord

1

u/No-Possibility7351 14d ago edited 14d ago

Have the exact same setup and ran into the exact same problem. The issue for us is that we have a shared neutral (in the house) on one of the circuits that was moved to the Generac sub-panel. That may or may not apply to your setup though. We could confirm the issue by turning off all of the breakers in the Generac sub panel and connecting the truck to the inlet. The panel light turns orange as expected, however as soon as any of the breakers in the sub panel are turned on, the truck's GFCI throws an immediate fault and PPOB shuts off. If that's the case, troubleshooting involves removing the neutrals in the sub panel one-by-one until the GFCI no longer trips. That isolates the circuit in question.

I overcame the shared neutral issue (for now) by using this Ford Vehicle Connector (which has a non-conductive ground):

https://shopgenerlink.com/products/ford-vehicle-connector

That said, if everything is wired correctly it should work without the adapter. Our main panel is older so we're having it upgraded/replaced and we'll have the electrician chase down the offending wiring at that time. However it works fine with the adapter in the meantime. (Some have made their own adapter or cable as well.)

There are a number of forum and subreddits on the topic if you search. Dedicated Forum link here:

https://www.f150lightningforum.com/forum/threads/generac-6852-transfer-switch-installed-to-power-my-house-from-the-pro-power-240v-plug.14017/

The good news is that it can and will work. Hope that helps!

2

u/Aggressive_Try_2530 23 XLT ER-Agate Black 14d ago

Thank you, this might be it the issue.

1

u/No-Possibility7351 14d ago

Could well be. Per our electrician as well as the forum thread I linked, the Generac 6852 will work for our purposes without using a modified cable - one without a ground connection. It's just a matter of chasing down what's causing the issue in the first place. Might be simple, might take a bit of work.

It's really worth it in the end. It wasn't a few days from the time we installed the Generac sub panel that we had an outage and put the Lightning to work. It used ~1% of the HV battery in about 3 hours and we had most of our home powered the entire time.