Best strategy for power backup in case of cuts?

Fill up the freezer with bottles of water. The fuller it is, the longer it will keep everything frozen. Thermal mass is your friend.

Otherwise, do your know how many kWh per day your chest freezer uses? How long of an outage do you want coverage for? That gives you a kWh figure which tells you how big a battery you might need.

If you expecting to use the items in the freezer during a power cut, a second freezer could be used to decant items you're going to use soon, to reduce the times you open the main freezer.

(4) an EV which will allow use of the battery pack for other purposes, be it mains sockets inside, 'vehicle to load' (charger port turns into mains socket), or a direct tap off the battery (eg disconnect the battery from the car and use it as a stationary battery on wheels - old EVs like the Nissan Leaf are cheap now)

Theo

How long a period without power do you wish to prepare for?

backfeeding whole house really not recommended

UPS or small petrol generator for deep freeze already unplugged from dysfunctional 'renewable' grid much better.

Current El Niño is providing extremely 'unusual' weather. It might be warm and rain all winter. 10 ft snow drifts or just cold and dry. No one has a ***ing clue.

What is sure is that all fuel and electricity prices will be woefully high, because Trump. And renewables

Don’t forget to factor in the value of the freezer contents compared to the cost of all these back-up scenarios. ;-)

Tim

The latent heat of fusion is your best friend. If the bottles are filled with salt water, of about half the salt concentration needed to make a saturated solution, then the temperature during thawing will stabilise for some time at about -10degC. A saturated salt solution has a freezing point of about -21degC which is a bit too low as many freezers are run at about -18degC. John

If the freezer contents had no value, then no backup would be needed…

So, run the freezer down before leaving for the long winter sojourn, turn the freezer off before departure, and enjoy the benefits of reduced electricity consumption while away and the interest earned by not spending the money on backup, then laugh when you hear that the electricity has gone off for the nth time. What’s not to like?

I can't really think of anyone else who has done so much to promote renewables as Trump

'Through the windmills of his mind'.

Why does he have a 'thing' about "windmills"? - which most rational people call "Wind generators", since precious little milling is going on.

But not a very great deal of generation either inland in this country considering their cost, and other disadvantages.

Choosing a UPS the peak current on starting the compressor may actually be a limiting factor as well as the total capacity. Maybe power factor correction would help, I don't know?

Bit of a tangernt but I'd suggest putting up a few PIR nigh5lights - especially near stairs - in case there's a power cut at night.

Wouldn't work for me, my freezer is the biggest vertical freezer you can buy which is always full of food

Equip the family with USB charged headlights - they are fairly cheap and last a decent length of time on a charge. They guarantee lighting wherever they need it, not just on stairs.

Well, offshore contributes about 62% of wind's share of renewables generation, versus 38% for onshore - for a similar on paper capacity.

So, in absolute terms, inland wind generated a fair chunk of the overall 30% contribution towards UK electricity generation.

You'd have to spell out costs and 'other disadvantages' as it's all relative. Energy from any source isn't exactly cheap right now. And each has downsides.

I'd say, overall, it's a pretty good deal likely to get better when/if we get increased storage and decent grid upgrades.

Good question. If we are being told to stock up on non-perishable items like tins of fish I would assume long outages. Unless transport of food is expected to be the main issue.

Cheers

Dave R

A full chest freezer (left unopened) should survive 48 hours without power (you'd probably want to eat everything and replenish soonish) maybe 24 hours if it's half-empty?

The problem of renewables is intermittency, which means conventional power sources for backup.

The Greens in Germany shut down their nuclear generation on political grounds, and now to get round the lack of winter power had to open lignite-fuelled power stations. As lignite is about the most polluting source available, this meant that Germany is right up there in the European table of major polluters.

Greens, eh? Can’t see the wood for the trees.

There’s too many riding the renewables gravy train for that to stop any decade soon.

And the grid ’problem’ is actually caused by renewables, as the generation isn’t where the demand is, unlike the good old days of cheap electricity, where the grid was a balancing grid rather than a supply one. The two are expensively different.

You forgot the /sarc

-- “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

― Leo Tolstoy

Windmilling is a term that is used to describe anything that turns in the presence of wind. E.g aircraft propellors when the engine is idle or off.

Callng it a wind turbine doesn't make it any less s**te than it already is

-- “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

― Leo Tolstoy