UKC

Had a power outage at home today & although I have a Honda generator for such circumstances (I live in the backwoods of Cumbria) it is a bit of a faff to set up.
It would be better if I had a rechargeable battery based system (just like I have a mobile one for phone & pad albeit on a far smaller scale) that I could simply insert 3 pin UK plugs. With this system I would be interested particularly in powering up home hub, PC, Vodafone Suresignal & perhaps the odd light so no great current draw but gets me connected.
I have undertaken very scant research but this:- http://www.duracellpower.com/documents/tech-specs/powersource-1800.pdf looks as if it it is an ideal answer.. ..but for the fact that it has US sockets & unavailable here even if I imported & bought adaptors.
I suspect there must be something equivalent directly available in the UK & perhaps members of UKC might have insight/experience to help me & save me having to start from first base trawling the internet offerings, evaluating their reliability & accuity.. ..much easier if someone can tell me that they have been there, bought that & it works.
Just trying to delegate my research to UKC to be honest-but I know there will be industry field experts that could say yes or no in 10 seconds to a selection that I might take hours of random internet enquiry in a field I know nothing about, make my judgement.. ..and still get it wrong!

Any experience/feedback would be appreciated.

Regards

Mike

In reply to Tonto:
Go DIY... works well enough in third world computer labs

http://zedomax.com/blog/2008/03/22/diy-hack-how-to-make-your-own-ups-for-yo...

http://www.scienceinafrica.com/old/index.php?q=2008/february/backuppower.ht...

In reply to Tonto:

Depends on how long you expect the power to be out for. If it's short outages, maybe up to 30 minutes or so, search for UPS (ininterruptible power supply) units. Consumer versions are easily able to cope with the demands of electronic equipment during short-term power outages, while beefier systems will keep your power constant for longer.

In reply to Tonto:

I have one of these BK350EI APC Back-UPS 350, 230V

http://www.senetic.co.uk/product/BK350EI?gclid=Cj0KEQiAhvujBRDUpomG5cq_mI0B...

does the job,

if you truly are in the back of beyond you might want a slightly bigger version, if you call the sellers and tell them what you want to power and how long you think the power will be out they will do the maths for you

In reply to john arran:

Hello John,
UPS is not a parameter-no data will be lost.
I am interested in introducing a convenient short term power reservoir that will put me back up & running on line by just plugging a battery backup in.
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my enquiry.

Best Regards

Mike

In reply to Tonto:

Have just invested in something like this for our place in Africa. Won't be put in to action until January but all you appear to need is:

1. a car battery (ideally a "marine" battery actually)
2. an inverter - I got a "500W Pure Sine Wave DC 48V to AC 220V Power Inverter" off ebay from China
3. a car battery charger, ideally one that trickle charges with a cut-out once full.

Should give you enough to power lights and a laptop or two for the duration.

In reply to Tonto:

I have a Polco Power Inverter which I use for running the central heating pump during blackouts. It runs off a car battery which I keep under a kitchen unit to run a car stereo system I have in there. The longest I have had it run is about 6 hours (two large car batteries worth of power) and it worked well i.e. no interruptions and it got warm but not hot.
Not only does the one in your link have American sockets its also 120V!

Pretty much perfectly describes a UPS, it's just a battery and an inverter at its most basic.

In reply to Tonto:

Even if you don't care if the power is interrupted for a few seconds one of the consumer UPS units from APC will do what you need in a very convenient way. Look at it as a box with 13A sockets on top and some lead acid batteries inside.

In reply to Falung:

Seconded!

I'd go with a 12v inverter personally so I can run off one regular car battery.

In reply to Tonto:

If your generator has electric start you can connect it up to come on automatically if the power cuts out using a few relays or electronics.

In reply to Cheese Monkey:


And the services of a qualified electrician to install a not-exactly-cheap automatic generator isolator switch. Electricity travels both ways along the wire including from your generator to the guy repairing your power lines.

In reply to Tonto:
The clever folk of UKC cautioned me about start up currents when I posed a related current - a UPS or self made battery and inverter system should be rated for a current more than the start up current of all items attached, especially if they all power up at once. This can be 10x higher than steady state current for things like fridges and heating pumps. Apparently smaller inverters will crap out after repeated start up abuse.

Bimble solar for example sell all the bits you'd need to DIY - deep cycle batteries and an inverter.

Beware any automated hookup with DIY relays as suggested here. Get it wrong and you won't benefit from safety trips or worse will electrify the mains creating a death hazard for power line workers. You can get automatic transfer switches they sound overkill for your needs. Also, just using relays can dump the energy from the collapsing magnetic fields from the switched gear into the circuit being switched to which is not a nice way to treat everything else in the house.

In reply to jimtitt:

Generator isolation switch? Just use a relay on incoming supply as well

In reply to Cheese Monkey:


Not that simple. You need a dead period with neither feed connected to prevent "backwash" of energy stored inductively. You also need to make sure there's no fault condition that cross connects the 2 feeds...

It's an area where DIY solutions are not as simple as people think - if you care about safety. Which you should...

In reply to wintertree:

Agree about fault conditions. On initial connection though the genny would take time to start. Mains monitored on a timer would work nicely. It's not complicated for me but yes I agree maybe not for the average DIYer..

In reply to Cheese Monkey:


It wouldn't be complicated for me, but I just wouldn't feel happy having an ad-hoc system for reasons of liability - both in my head and potentially legally.

I'm considering exactly this for a house we're planning to fully re-wire, with a battery / trickle charger / generator system in the garage that can run the lights and heating pumps etc. I think I've decide to get a manual transfer switch and put a separate breaker box for backup circuits after that, something like http://www.thegreenreaper.co.uk/Generators/generator-accessories/briggs-and... - the hope is to add solar PV on an additional switch so that it either feeds a grid-tied inverter or into the battery/generator system as needed.

The switching gear needed to have grid tie solar that also functions as a backup and integrates a generator doesn't seem to be shipping certified in the UK at the moment?

In reply to Tonto:

If it's mainly for IT equipment, why not buy an off the shelf UPS unit?

Neil

In reply to Cheese Monkey:


You´ll going find the law thinks otherwise and so do I, ask your local power company what they think. You also need to supply an extra earth spike for the generator, bridge the feed so your RCD still works and acquire an armoured feed cable as it is unprotected.

In reply to Neil Williams:


I think its more than that. I have a similar requirement.

We get lots of micro blackouts during storms and the occasional longer one - now winter is coming and snow is weighing down powerlines it will be more frequent, although its quite mild at the moment.

I have a standard off the shelf UPS connected between the mains and our wood pellet boiler (with pump) to keep it going during the brief outages but anything more than 5 minutes and it struggles - I'm about to buy a petrol generator for these longer periods just to keep the heating running.

If I had a chargeable battery pack that I could plug in the internet router, and few lamps that would be more than enough. I've looked around but not seen anything that really fits the bill.

There are some rechargeable lightbulbs on Kickstarter that recharge when in the standard fixture from the mains power, and then continue from the battery when there's no power. With low wattage LEDs this should give some decent time.

In reply to yorkshireman:
With regard to lighting, with LEDs I can see that it might well be viable fairly soon for houses in locations where power can be a bit unreliable to have a low-voltage lighting circuit that just runs off a 12V battery charged as required from the mains. It could also perhaps have USB sockets or similar on the lightswitches for charging low power devices, and be separate from the 230V mains socket circuits.

Neil

In reply to Neil Williams:


Great for a room, for a whole house the currents and fire risk are not insignificant with 12v wiring?

In reply to wintertree:


On the super-jachts we built we didn´t have any problems running the entire halogen lighting (and a lot of other stuff as well) with 24v and they are substantially larger than most houses, with LED´s it wouldn´t be any issue. You don´t normally provide both 24/12V and 240 circuits though, you just step down and only use the lower voltage anyway driven from either generators, shore power or batteries.

In reply to wintertree:

I doubt it provided the wiring is thick enough. Particularly if it is all LED.

Neil

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:


Plus a (decent) UPS will monitor the batteries and keep them charged and conditioned, since it (should be) in the circuit all the time. Going down the route of standalone batteries + separate inverter means you need to keep the batteries up to scratch yourself.

A UPS with knackered/uncharged batteries is just a door stop with a light on...until the main power supply fails, at which point the light will go off.

In reply to jimtitt:
Yes absolutely agree thats what I had in my mind.

I fully admit I don't know the regs involved I'm just trying to get some ideas out there. Obviously it would have to be carried out by a qualified person.

In reply to Cheese Monkey:

The problem is combining various systems isn´t so easy as it appears, just the concept of earth or ground has different meanings depending on the system. even my local power suppliers idea is different to the ones who feed my workshop which is in another area. On the bigger yachts we built you usually end up with 5 or 6 different ground systems and they are all distinct and have to be kept so.
"Just" adding a generator into a domestic system with a relay or whatever means you´ve disabled all the protection systems built in unless the plant has it´s own RCD system which most small ones don´t. Nor are they connected to earth.

In reply to jimtitt and Neil Williams:

Thanks both. I wonder if we should be planning 12v/24v lighting throughout with our house re-wire. It'd certainly make switching to alternative power sources less complex...

In reply to Tonto:

I'd personally look at hacking an old UPS, replace the old storage with some big leisure batteries.

Actually I wouldn't bother, power cuts are an infrequent mild annoyance and a power outage that's short enough to cover with a battery is short enough to be not worth covering.

jk

In reply to jkarran:


Until they're not There was some kind of issue in a cable from a substation near us a couple of years ago and we ended up with 1 - 2 hour power cuts every couple of days for a month every one of which crashed the computer equipment in my home office. I bought a relatively cheap UPS - I think it was about £80 - to power the network disk, internet router and WiFi which are all relatively low power so it can keep them going for a good while and the network stayed up and I didn't need to worry about the disk getting corrupted and could work on a laptop/ use an iPad until the power came back. Now it just stays there under the desk being a glorified surge suppressor but I'm still glad I bought it.