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My family live in a rural area. For a while, we had an unusually high frequency of power cuts around here. If I understood correctly, it was something to do wit

My family live in a rural area. For a while, we had an unusually high frequency of power cuts around here. If I understood correctly, it was something to do with recurring problems with the overhead lines supplying local substation(s). Mostly it was just a few seconds or maybe a few minutes, enough to reset equipment and cause some irritating disruption but not catastrophic. Occasionally, though, the supply did cut out for a much longer time and you had to start thinking about whether you really needed to open the fridge/freezer right now. Between that experience and the environmental benefits, we were already discussing installing a big solar panel and battery system at our home with local suppliers, even before the recent dramatic price rises and the bizarre news that in the 21st century there’s a credible threat of rolling blackouts here. I can tell you from first-hand experience that getting such a system professionally installed and commissioned is likely to be a long wait and then cost a small fortune. Systems that can keep the household power on when the mains supply cuts out can require jumping through extra regulatory and consent hoops before anyone installs the new gear alongside a mains supply. You’ll also have fewer and often much more expensive options for the hardware than systems designed for efficiency/environmental benefits but not resilience to outages. Of course it might still be a very good idea to do this, if you’re lucky enough to meet the practical requirements and have the money to do it. But it’s definitely not going to be some DIY system you can build for £1,000. More like £10,000–20,000 and several months of waiting for an installation date, at least in this area.

tnjm 4y ago
Very true. An alternative is to install a lower-spec off-the-shelf charger/inverter for closer to £1k though, and instead have a handful of sockets with backup power. Being able to charge your phone and laptop, keep the fridge/freezer running and have at least some light is still magical.
- Chris_Newton 4y ago
  Anything like that is better than nothing, for sure. Personally, we already have various critical equipment on UPS. Having to work out what is protected and for how long gets old pretty quickly, though. So do alarms going off in one room or another if the mains supply cuts out in the middle of the night, when everyone is (was) probably sleeping anyway. Or occasionally annoyances like waking up to find a big job scheduled to run overnight hasn’t actually run because the system that should have run it executed a controlled power-down after an earlier power outage instead. In contrast, a relatively large but domestic-scale battery system can easily store 10kWh or more of usable energy these days and provide it to anywhere in the building. That’s enough to run most of our house for 24h, as long as we avoid using very high consumption devices for extended periods or running too many of them at once with peak consumption levels higher than the equipment supports — a huge upgrade compared to the small-scale alternatives.
- thehappypm 4y ago
  I used to trigger my fuses in my apartment a lot, so I got a UPS power strip. I connected it to my router so the internet would stay on in case I was on a work call or something. Maybe that’s the simplest solution. Every important appliance has its own UPS. Small UPS’s like that require no setup or permits and just kinda work. I wonder if you could use one to power a fridge..
Scoundreller 4y ago
As fridges increasingly become inverter-drive (ie: continuous drive), it’s my dream that one day they’ll have a 48VDC port and anyone can setup a PV on them, no permit required. Or bypass their inverter from their battery bank (before the fridge rectifies it and inverts it again). It’ll use solar when available and grid for the rest. Since it’s inverter drive, it can use whatever amperage comes in, even if it means running a 5% duty cycle and do at least something. The contents are the battery!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- petre 4y ago
  They might use a switching power supply on the rectifier side, which works anywhere from 100 to 240V.

tnjm 4y ago

Very true. An alternative is to install a lower-spec off-the-shelf charger/inverter for closer to £1k though, and instead have a handful of sockets with backup power. Being able to charge your phone and laptop, keep the fridge/freezer running and have at least some light is still magical.

Chris_Newton 4y ago
Anything like that is better than nothing, for sure. Personally, we already have various critical equipment on UPS. Having to work out what is protected and for how long gets old pretty quickly, though. So do alarms going off in one room or another if the mains supply cuts out in the middle of the night, when everyone is (was) probably sleeping anyway. Or occasionally annoyances like waking up to find a big job scheduled to run overnight hasn’t actually run because the system that should have run it executed a controlled power-down after an earlier power outage instead. In contrast, a relatively large but domestic-scale battery system can easily store 10kWh or more of usable energy these days and provide it to anywhere in the building. That’s enough to run most of our house for 24h, as long as we avoid using very high consumption devices for extended periods or running too many of them at once with peak consumption levels higher than the equipment supports — a huge upgrade compared to the small-scale alternatives.
thehappypm 4y ago
I used to trigger my fuses in my apartment a lot, so I got a UPS power strip. I connected it to my router so the internet would stay on in case I was on a work call or something. Maybe that’s the simplest solution. Every important appliance has its own UPS. Small UPS’s like that require no setup or permits and just kinda work. I wonder if you could use one to power a fridge..

Scoundreller 4y ago

As fridges increasingly become inverter-drive (ie: continuous drive), it’s my dream that one day they’ll have a 48VDC port and anyone can setup a PV on them, no permit required. Or bypass their inverter from their battery bank (before the fridge rectifies it and inverts it again). It’ll use solar when available and grid for the rest. Since it’s inverter drive, it can use whatever amperage comes in, even if it means running a 5% duty cycle and do at least something. The contents are the battery!

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
petre 4y ago
They might use a switching power supply on the rectifier side, which works anywhere from 100 to 240V.