Power Cuts/Generators yet again

They're 4 stroke.

Yes, I wouldn't run it all concurrently - see my previous post.

Ah, now that's interesting! The little plug in volt/amp/watt meter which I have bought also displays phase angle as cos-phi (can't do Greek symbols in plain text!). What use should I make of this information when determining genny load?

When used in a car... you could lie of course. B-)

I think from what others have said car batteries don't last long if deeply discharged frequently. I can't comment on that because I have no knowledge of it.

But so what? The likelihood is that it will rarely if ever go into deep discharge! Most power outages last only a short time (an hour or two), which the car battery can easily hold out for.

If your car battery is being deeply discharged by the UPS arrangement then my guess is that there's some sort of major disruption to the power grid connecting to your property - and you'd be sorting that out as the critical issue - not fannying around trying to find a battery that is friendly towards being deeply discharged.

I have a Smart UPS on my PC equipment here - which from memory I think holds up for 25 minutes. Now and again I hear it clicking in as the lights go dim for a second or two. A couple of times over the last few years it has had to come online seriously when we lost power to the house for a considerable period of time - which was fine because it gave me time to shut things down gracefully.

I think your decision is okay personally :)

PoP

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I'm not quite sure why you'd want a microwave to work as part of an emergency installation. Fine if you're providing a *proper* standby generating facility, but few would - unless they live somewhere subject to frequent cuts. Surely some form of calor gas cooking would be easier for emergency use - assuming you don't have mains gas and can't just use a hob.

Well, I do like them. They usually do what they say on the box. And in the case of this invertor - it's fine, and looks to me well designed. Of course it's perfectly built. ;-) I didn't use their own transformer (an 'extra') which is about double the cost of a new suitable toroid from Maplin. I actually found a suitable one on Ebay for half the Maplin price. And Maplin are quite competitive for some mains toroidal transformers.

It's said to be true - they certainly don't like being flattened. I remember buying one AC Delco 'Freedom' car battery which had a three year warranty for car use, but one year for golf buggy or wheelchair etc.

That's what I'm gambling on. If it proves wrong, I've lost little and can simply buy a traction battery.

The Acorn I use doesn't suffer as much from being inadvertently shut down as a PC - all you'll loose is your work from the last save - and on important stuff I set it to save every 15 minutes. ie rarely. ;-)

Try telling that to the last few people to be reconnected 48hrs after any major storm... I expect there will be a few down south on tues/wed without power after Mondays storm (if it happens, something will but how big?)

Power outages might only last an hour two at your location but up here they are either a second or so as the auto recloser resets but if that locks out then the power will be off for 5 or 6 hours. Say 1/2 an hour for the supply company to get enough reports to indicate it is their problem, 1 1/2 hours to get the engineers out of bed and drive in and a couple of hours to find and fix the fault.

Personally I'm not going anywhere near the 11kV distribution. If my incomer is dead I get on the phone, couple of minets job done. B-)

No you'd start with a battery capable of handling repeated deep discharges. I'd like something like Mr Firth has recently outlined, especially the wind turbine part but I'd also like to put the whole house on it all the time thus reduce consumption from the grid or even sell back...

Was that ScrewFix? I remember the price =A320. I have one but that's more sided to costs rather than techy things like V I phase difference. It also doesn't like light loads (below about 50W).

Donno, only did AC theory up to A level, 25 years ago and not used it since. That's what google and the web is for... B-)

I guess it's simply a matter of keeping my options open. We have gas for the central heating of course - but an all-electric cooker! I'm thinking of a situation where power lines get brought down by ice and where it takes the electricity board 2 or 3 days to restore the supply. [This *did* happen to some near neighbours of ours a few years ago - who are fed from a different sub-station from ours]. Provided the path from the house to the caravan is not blocked by a 6 foot snowdrift, we would probably use the caravan's cooker, powered by propane. Even so, the microwave would be useful for thawing any frozen food we may wish to eat.

Generators (and UPS's) normally care about the VA of the load. So for practical purposes, simply measure the current drawn by the appliances and ignore the phase angle and power.

No, I got it from Machine Mart. It's made by brennenstuhl - and the model is PM230. It incorporates a 13A plug and socket, and has an lcd display - plus several buttons to select function/mode etc.

Ah, well I did it over 40 years ago - and it's sort-of coming back. I seem to remember that watts = rms volts x rms amps x cos(phi) - where phi is the phase angle [so that cos(phi) is the power factor (= 1 for a phase angle of zero or less than 1 for a non-zero phase angle, as with an inductive load)]

Assuming that is correct, how do I use it to de-rate my genny? For example, when the CH is running, it is taking 118 watts = 240v x 0.56a x 0.88 Should I multiply the volts and amps together and ignore the phase angle to get 134VA - and treat this as 134 watts as far as the genny is concerned?

Yes, but I live in Central London. If I lived where you do, I'd probably have a full blown standby diesel genny by now - you've presumably not got a space or noise with neighbours problem?

Large non portable gennies can be very cheap - relatively - second hand. It's the 3 ish kW ones which cost a fortune.

Thanks. That's what I suspected. [Sorry didn't read your post until I had posted another question along these lines].

The last time we were off for 96 hours.

"Huge" wrote | The last time we were off for 96 hours. | 24/7 kept telling us ...

Does their company name constitute false advertising?

Owain

Nah. Just tells you how long you can expect to ring them for without getting a useful response...

Stefek

It was high up the list when we moved in. A couple of the poles supporting our (we are the only people on it) 1/2mile single phase

As it happens the supply is pretty stable and I can cope with an average of one 6hr outage a year. This is *much* better than some people living in urban areas near major cities. Of course having said that we'll get a big storm this winter that brings down our spur and half the other lines in Cumbria/Northumberland/Durham and we'll be without a mains supply for 5 days...

No plenty of space and nearest neighbours would be well out of earshot of any half decently silenced genset.

Thats probably what I'd go for, preferably able to run on 28sec heating oil as we have a good supply of that. Cheaper than red diesel as well...

Just had a 30 min outage here (Spalding), UPS barely troubled running Tivo, DTT decoder, PC, router and 1 CFL lightbulb. Gas hob carried on through with no disturbance, unlike my parents' which cuts the flame back when the leccy goes off. Heating went off but that's no biggie, there's always a few more layers of clothing that can go on before I start feeling cold.

=A325.00ish inc VAT and delivery. Tempted but there is a dearth of any real information on the net including the Brennenstuhl site. B-(

Any chance of posting up a spec sheet for it? Always assuming that information is supplied with the unit... Nearest Machine Mart is Carlisle (50+ miles RT) and we rarely go to Carlisle.