Back up batteries - emergency preparation

[dhunt]

Back up batteries - emergency preparation

You may of heard of people in NZ fitting solar cells to their homes and actually creating a positive amount of energy that they return to the grid.

You may also of heard of battery backup systems - where a battery bank is installed in your home and in the event of a power cut your appliances continue to run. This is along the same lines as a computer UPS but on a larger scale to run several/all home appliances.

Battery banks are relatively simple to construct, as well as a black out relay.

The main things are the high cost of batteries and ensuring a way of recharging the battery bank. It is important to note that the wiring can get complicated!

So does anyone have a battery backup system installed already? How/where did you mount everything and where is the best place to get deep cycle batteries?

I'm researching ways in which to power a large aquarium, security system and also limited lighting (even computer). A standard computer UPS is simply not large enough power all of the items so I am looking into either a large battery bank located outside in a weather proof box and routing the wiring inside to the appliances.

Making a control box with indicator lights, override switches and meters.

Anyone have any experience with this sort of thing??

1) Get some old telcom exchange batteries or buy some truck lead acid batteries. Hook a few in parallel to increase storage space.

2) Buy a decent size inverter - 1k-2kW is probably pretty good. An average a house uses about 1kW if I remember right. Keep the wires to your inverter short & use large gauge wires to lower losses in wires.

3) For higher efficiency (less losses) run stuff straight off the 12V system if you can. ie lights, power packs etc.

4) Replace all incandescent lights with fluorescents.

5) Get rid of your desktop and buy a laptop to save power.

Just remember if you get lots of cloudy days/our current weather. Solar panels will not make as much power. So you will need to reduce your load in these cases.

For example when I was growing up we just had solar power. We ran 4x 60w panels for our fridge (high efficiency super thickwalled 3-4"). Which after 3 days of bad weather would turn off.

The rest of the house ran off another 4x 60w panels. All our lights were 12V high efficiency fluorescents. We ran as much as we could off 12V. Computers/laser printer ran off an inverter. If we had a few days of bad weather we had to limit computer usage and limit number of lights on simultaneously.

Hopefully that gives you some ideas.

[Swoop]

The "sending excess power into the grid" thing is being attended to. A lot of the old type of meters (with the wheel that goes around, and around, and around...) are being replaces with digital ones. I am led to believe that you cannot "back feed" power into the grid with these (and get paid for it of course).

[CookMySock]

Computer is easy 280w
Aquarium - x3 50w lamps, fluro tube (w?) filter (w?)
Lighting - one 100w bulb would be sufficient.

Turn the PC off and boot teh lappy up 280w becomes 21w. Dont use 100W incandescent lamps - use an LED equivalent - 100w becomes 4w.

be aware that the batteries wear out in a shortish period of time.

Just replace them with some car batteries.

DB

[FROSTY:Me]

Currently my parents house is 100% self sufficient electricity wise. -has been for a number of years.
For lighting/tv etc they have a bank of deep cycle batteries which are stored outside under the deck.
To charge it up they have a bank of solar panels with a windmill backup unit.
Refrigeration is by lpg
water heating is a combination of wood stove wetback and solar
cooking is either lpg stove or woodfire