UKH

Being pretty much at the end of the line for electricity supply, our place gets winter power outages a bit too frequently.

Much as I've looked I cannot find any emergency systems which would provide a minimum of power, (for say fridges/freezers/hot water pumping etc,) online.

Does anyone here know of, or have even, such a thing?

Thanks in advance.


ETA: I was hoping to avoid a petrol generator.

In reply to Big Ger:

>

Any particular reason?

If it's cost that concerns you a basic one isn't that expensive

https://www.machinemart.co.uk/p/clarke-720w-petrol-generator-g720/?da=1&...

In reply to Trangia:

Thanks Trangia. Space and noise were the considerations.

In reply to Big Ger:

Whatever you do will take up space but if you don't want noise then a collection of batteries with an invertor.
You would need a changeover switch as well to prevent you feeding power back in to the grid with the potential to fry someone who is working on it.

In reply to Big Ger:

computer UPS for each "vital" device.
second hand they are not too bad. just factor in a new battery when you buy.
Will ato switch on / off too

In reply to Big Ger:

Thanks all.

In reply to Big Ger:

Are you here?

In reply to Big Ger:

I have a 1.5 kW generator which will happily run the lighting, boiler/central heating, fridge/freezer, ADSL modem and random chargers etc with plenty to spare. Crappy little petrol thing from Screwfix. One day I'll replace it with a Hyundai DHY6000SE fitted inside the garage with an exhaust through the wall.

The generator is great but needs to run outside and isn't quiet - I don't want to annoy neighbours or advertise the genny's presence to any light fingered types. So I'm going to install a pure sine wave inverter and a 12 volt leisure battery to run the lightning and boiler over-night if needed. 115 Ah, 12V battery from Crown, circa £100 and a 1.5 kW inverter for a couple of hundred quid off amazon. The inverter is significantly over-specified and would not be run at more than 0.3 kW continuous but I gather you want to be over specced ~ 5-7x if you don't want them to die starting inductive motors (fridge/freezers, blower in the oil boiler.)

The battery does need periodic charging when not in use. My plan is a 100 W solar panel bought second hand on the cheap and a cheap charger, just as a fun side project really. Otherwise get a caravanning top-up charger. The generator I have also has a 12 V battery charger output.

I've got a 2-pole make-before-break manual transfer switch installed that selects between the grid and my local hookup, and feeds a secondary distribution board that feeds lights, critical sockets and the boiler, with an armoured cable buried from this to the hookup in the garage. Getting the correct switching in place is critical as if you energise the mains grid during a blackout - even just briefly during a switchover - you risk killing line workers trying to fix the problem. Switching live circuits is more complicated than people tend to think due to energy stored in the live circuit.

Regardless of generator or inverter+batteries the grounding of your local generation needs some careful thought...

I'm planning to get some long 4 awg cables with crocodile clips on the end so that If the generator fails, there's no sunshine and the battery runs down I can cross-connect it to one of the cars...

This may all sound paranoid but we've had 5 power cuts in the last year, one lasting 9 hours. We've also had a week with temperatures between -5oC and -18oC in recent years. I also remember vividly being a child in Essex after the hurricane in 1987 and not having power for a week... It wouldn't take many of these events to combine to really make life unpleasant. This seems doubly true given the number of severe winter storms we've seen recently. We saw one phase of an overhead line ripped off its insulator and touch another in 95 mph winds, a good 30 second light show...

In reply to aln:

No, I'm there.

In reply to wintertree:

Many thanks mate, I'll look into that.