Backup electricity supply in new house

hurlerman

Hi, building a new house down the country soon and having been caught in a recent 24 hour power outage Im wondering what kind of backup electricity options are there for the average joe soap home owner. Likely to be working from home on the computer a good bit so can't be stuck without power for periods

Are generators feasible or expensive ?
Could I put up some solar panels and use them - would they generate much?
Put a wind turbine in the back garden! - sounds a bit too much

Any thoughts - needs to be reasonable and not too complicated and not ludicrously expensive

Stoner

hurlerman

a generator is your main option IMO, this would be a "Stand By" generator and will work in darkness and with or without wind, it would not be designed for contineous use

The other options you have mentioned would generally be associated with cutting your electricity bill and would not really be good enough (in most cases) to provide reliable back up power IMO.

there are a few places that are good suppliers for these sized generators, usually the smaller suppliers and not the big suppliers have better value in this area, some also offer reconditioned units.
You'll need to consider things like a change over panel and decide if you want an automatic kick in over a manual option, depending on the unit and the duration of your blackouts you may also need to consider an additional tank, most units will have a small tanks that will give you 8+ hours operation.
If you want a list of 3 or 4 supplier then give me a PM and you can take it from there yourself.

leex

Researched the purchase of a generator some time ago. Some of the cheaper ones do not produce what is called "clean" electricity so would not be suitable for high value equipment. Clean = a proper sine wave if measured with the appropriate equipment.

txt_mess

If it's just a computer that you are looknig to run and not the whole house you could look into getting a UPS ( Uninterruptable Power Supply ) basically a big battery that will allow you to keep you kit going for a few hours depending on which model you get.

We use larger versions of these in work and can keep our buildings and kit going for beyond 8 hours and then we mix it in with generators so the power supply never drops and seamless switch from mians to UPS to generator and then back again once hte power comes back on.

Here's a quick link but would be worth shopping about and Ebay might not be a bad idea either for small businesses that might have had them and shut down.

http://www.komplett.ie/k/search.aspx?q=UPS

ircoha

hurlerman wrote: »

Hi, building a new house down the country soon and having been caught in a recent 24 hour power outage Im wondering what kind of backup electricity options are there for the average joe soap home owner. Likely to be working from home on the computer a good bit so can't be stuck without power for periods

Are generators feasible or expensive ?
Could I put up some solar panels and use them - would they generate much?
Put a wind turbine in the back garden! - sounds a bit too much

Any thoughts - needs to be reasonable and not too complicated and not ludicrously expensive

The jenny is the man for a short term solution, as noted the cheaper ones are not for continuous use.
However, the petrol ones can be very noisy, particularly at night.

Solar PV, on a pure money-math basis, has a v long payback: depending on who u talk to it is between 25 and 100 years.
However, in its favour and which is not included in the money-math, is it is the only system that u can store energy in a form ready to be used and if u have some DC kit it can be very effective, u would then only need an invertor for a few 220AC items such as the fridge freezer, heating sytem etc.

The wind could be used to supplement the pv: however there are issues with sizing as if the turbine is 2 big then u wont get the required voltage unless the wind is strong enough,

AFAIK, u need 13 volts or more to charge a 12v battery but it wont charge if charging voltage is at 12 or less.:)

If went the pv route u could always get a dc jenny to top the batteries up if needed [ not very effient ] but it would mean that u only spend the money on one clean current invertor which would work for both the pv power and the jennied power.
Hope this makes sense.

riccol1966

hurlerman, I started by needing a backup for my computer - steer clear of all industrial and 'power tool' cheapo generators because they will cause your equipment all kinds of damage.

If you want to go the generator route I did all the investigation before and picked the Honda EU suitcase range - that power from these, when I tested it, is cleaner and less fluctuating than the ESB! Mine's a EU20i but I think you can get a lower model EU10i (2kw and 1kw respectively). For info, you can draw appx 150Watts for almost 7 hours on a tank from the EU20, as there have been days when the ESB was out for the day and I needed power to my PC.

They are not cheap but they can form the basis of a backup energy system and in my opinion are a) very reliable and b) best suited to home appliances such as TV, PC, Stereo etc.

R.