Ford's home charging solution is pricey and can be difficult to use. Here's what to know.

One of the biggest perks of owning an EV is waking up each morning with a full charge. Or at least so I’m told.

I’ve been daily-driving MotorTrend’s long-term 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning for a few weeks and haven’t yet been able to install a Level 2 home charger, meaning I’ve been relying exclusively on public chargers. But that isn’t for lack of trying.

As it turns out, getting an at-home charger installed—especially if you’re interested in using your Lightning’s Ford Charge Station Pro bidirectional capability to enable both charging your truck and powering your home with the truck—isn’t as easy as it seems. Poor communication and an eye-watering $18,000 estimate have cooled us on what promises to be the next frontier in EV technology.

How To Use the F-150 Lightning To Power Your Home

Ford’s offer of a home charging solution is definitely pricey, but it’s still ingenious. While most EVs simply take electricity from your house and store it in the vehicle’s battery for use on the road, Ford’s system—built in conjunction with solar energy giant Sunrun—also allows you to export power from the F-150 Lightning back into your house during an outage.

Dubbed the Home Integration System by Sunrun and Intelligent Backup Power by Ford, the system uses the Ford Charge Station Pro Level 2 charger included with our Lightning extended range, and an inverter installed by Sunrun to supply power to your home.

Although it was initially intended for power outages, Sunrun and Ford have clear intentions to also use Lightning batteries as “virtual powerplants” to sell energy back to the grid during periods of high demand. Two pilot projects, one in Northern and Central California with PG&E and another in Florida with Duke Energy, are actively trialing such a system.

Setting Your Home Up for Intelligent Backup Power

If this all sounds like it has the potential to be hideously expensive or complex, you’d be correct. Early reports from Lightning customers online hinted as much, and soon after our Lightning arrived, I reached out to Sunrun to see how much it would cost to install Ford’s Charge Station Pro and the Home Integration System in my home—a fairly typical 1950s single-family structure with a detached garage.

The process started simple but devolved from there. Our first call with Sunrun went well. A helpful agent confirmed we were Lightning owners and that we received our Charge Station Pro. She then said the base cost for installing just the Charge Station Pro charger was $1,650, while adding in the Home Integration System would up the cost to $9,400.

However, she added, neither cost would include any necessary home upgrades, such as an upgraded electrical panel—something I would surely need considering I have a common 100-amp electrical panel and the Lightning’s charger draws up to 80 amps. A home inspection would determine what upgrades I’d need and my true cost.

Two weeks later (and two days after when they said they’d arrive) a Sunrun tech showed up for an inspection. His site survey was quick. He took a look at my electric panel then took photos of each circuit, the spot in my garage where the charger would go, my central A/C unit, and both the overhead lines feeding my house and my detached garage. He said he suspected my home wouldn’t need any upgrades and was “good to go,” but he added that a Sunrun electrical engineer would be in contact the following week with more info.

After being ghosted for nearly two weeks, I followed up with Sunrun. The new rep I spoke with told me, “The project is currently at stage five,” and, “Once it hits stage seven, you’ll get a call back to schedule the start of installation.”

You might be wondering what “stage five” and “stage seven” are (and what happened to stage six?). I am, too. I still don’t know. I asked the rep, and he waffled back and forth about what the stages could mean before saying someone who knew more would follow up with me by phone the following week with my quote.

They never did, but two weeks later, I checked my email and found three DocuSign contracts from Sunrun. The first was a quote for the installation of just the Charge Station Pro and Home Integration System: $9,400 due upon completion. A clause on the fourth page notes: “We may find that your home requires additional work or upgrades to make it suitable for the Equipment (‘Home Upgrades’). For example, your main electrical panel may need to be upgraded to be able to handle the additional power for the Equipment. If your home needs Home Upgrades, we'll provide you with written notice.”

That’s what the second document entailed. For an extra $7,940, Sunrun would upgrade my 100-amp panel to an unspecified amperage ($5,500), relocate some circuits ($840), and do some “Other Work” ($1,600—yes, really., “Other Work” is all the detail Sunrun gave). The document also notes, “Additional work (which does not fall within the scope of this document) is also required. This work is listed in the Customer Managed Scope of Work document.”

That brings us to document three. This document lists two items “outside Sunrun’s scope of work” that I must complete before Sunrun installs the system: a trench to bury the overhead line powering my garage and “removal of items around electrical and/or gas equipment,” which I suspect refers to the small handful of gardening tools leaning against my garage wall where I’d like the charger installed, though I have no way of knowing. I still haven’t heard from Sunrun. Regardless, that’s an estimate of at least $17,340 to give our $80,889 Lightning the ability to power my home in an emergency.

About 1,000 of the F-150 Lightning’s 13,258 new owners have opted for the Home Integration System thus far, according to a Sunrun spokesperson, but we’re not going to be among them. Should we need a workaround to power our home in an emergency, we’ll do what other Lightning owners have done by using the Pro Power Onboard system and a manual transfer switch, effectively turning the Ford into a fancy mobile generator.

How We’re Charging Our F-150 Lightning

Instead, I’m going to be doing what MotorTrend recommends most people do. I’m going to have an electrician upgrade my panel to 200 amps, install a subpanel and NEMA 14-50 outlet in my garage, and plug in a Level 2 charger such as the Wallbox Pulsar Plus we just reviewed (or Ford’s Mobile Power Cord, which also came with our Lightning) into it.

Although that won’t be able to power my home in a power outage or charge as quickly as the Charge Station Pro, a 50-amp charger on a NEMA 14-50 outlet should easily top off an average EV battery overnight. It also has the added benefits of being easily replaceable and portable if I move, and it offers the ability to charge plug-in hybrids. One of the biggest downsides with the Ford Charge Station Pro is its use of a Level 3–style CCS1 plug, which won’t fit in the standard Level 2 J1772 slot that most PHEVs, such as my wife’s Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid, use.

I’ve sourced a quote for the above work from a local electrician I trust, and it comes in at an expensive but still much more palatable $6,000 before any applicable federal, state, or local incentives. While I get my ducks in a row for our charger install, I’ll continue to get by on public chargers—a minor inconvenience, but hopefully not for much longer.

For More On Our Long-Term 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat: · We Just Bought a Ford F-150 Lightning · A New OTA Update for Our F-150 Lightning Gets a Thumbs Up From Glove Users · Winter Road Tripping in Our Long-Term EVs Has Been Interesting...

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MotorTrend's 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat

SERVICE LIFE 3 months/3,076 miles

BASE/AS TESTED PRICE $69,269/$80,889

OPTIONS Equipment Group 511A ($10,000: extended-range battery, Blue Cruise, Tow Technology package, twin-panel moonroof), Max Tow package ($825: onboard scales with Smart Hitch, integrated trailer brake controller); Toughbed spray-in bedliner ($595); tray-style floor liner with carpeted mats ($200)

EPA CTY/HWY/CMB FUEL ECON; CMB RANGE 78/63/70 mpg-e; 320 miles

AVERAGE MILES/KWH 2.17 mi/kWh

ENERGY COST PER MILE $0.19

MAINTENANCE AND WEAR $0

DAMAGE $0

DAYS OUT OF SERVICE/WITHOUT LOANER 0/0

DELIGHTS Relatively frequent OTA updates; the center console that converts into a desk; having a pickup bed.

ANNOYANCES Range readout doesn’t feel trustworthy; using the heater destroys the truck’s range; touchscreen HVAC controls are annoying.

RECALLS None