3 ms·

In my case the answer to why not both was unattended reliability and piece of mind. If it's raining and we lose power we have about four hours before we start t

by jareds 2y ago

In my case the answer to why not both was unattended reliability and piece of mind. If it's raining and we lose power we have about four hours before we start to get flooding do to a sump pump not running. Our backup generator will run a self test every week and automatically power the house with a ten second delay when the power goes out. While I suspect solar and a battery backup would keep the sump pump running for a long time it's nice to not need to choose what to run and monitor our power usage during an outage. It's also nice to not worry about power while were on vacation. With solar and a battery backup I'd be concerned about checking it while away from the house. I realize I"m somewhat of a unique situation though in just how quickly we get flooding when power goes out.

TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
You've already got a solution, and often the cheapest solution is the one you already have. There's no technical reason a generator + battery (and solar?) setup couldn't be configured to run off battery till the battery reaches a preconfigured state of charge then call for the generator.
- jareds 2y ago
  DO you have commercially available examples of this setup? While I agree there's no technical reason this wouldn't work when doing research for our generator all the hole house generators use a transfer switch so it's either running the entire house completely disconnected from the grid or turned off and running the house from the grid. Solar didn't make sense for us given the costs and our time horizon, but it's always been something I've been interested in. A solar system with a natural gas generator backup to charge the batteries would be nice, especially for shorter outages so we wouldn't need to hear the generator running.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
    Look for UPS with generator input. A business that sells solar with battery backup would know the current product range. I’m only really familiar with industrial kit tupicalled used in data centres.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
      typically*

by jareds 2y ago

TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago

You've already got a solution, and often the cheapest solution is the one you already have. There's no technical reason a generator + battery (and solar?) setup couldn't be configured to run off battery till the battery reaches a preconfigured state of charge then call for the generator.

jareds 2y ago
DO you have commercially available examples of this setup? While I agree there's no technical reason this wouldn't work when doing research for our generator all the hole house generators use a transfer switch so it's either running the entire house completely disconnected from the grid or turned off and running the house from the grid. Solar didn't make sense for us given the costs and our time horizon, but it's always been something I've been interested in. A solar system with a natural gas generator backup to charge the batteries would be nice, especially for shorter outages so we wouldn't need to hear the generator running.
- TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
  Look for UPS with generator input. A business that sells solar with battery backup would know the current product range. I’m only really familiar with industrial kit tupicalled used in data centres.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 2y ago
    typically*