Battery power for home during power outage

Ski in NC said:

I'm sure it is no consolation, but it is not transformers that make that bang, but a fuse. The fuse wire is surrounded with explosive so it blows out any arc that might start. Explosive fuses. Means there is a fault or short down the line. Like a squirrell on an insulator.

At least it is fall so it is not so hot. Just kidding, I know sfl.

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Learn something new every day.

Thanks!

Ted

HopCar said:

Power is back on. I shouted "thank you" out the window. A you're welcome came back from the top of the pole. He said a palm frond had fallen on it. He confirmed it was the fuse.

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Brings up an interesting topic of above ground vs. underground power lines. It's been a discussion in our neighborhood but as going underground is costly and requires 100% homeowner approval, and is very expensive for neighborhoods, it's not likely to ever happen. 37% of FPL is underground, including almost all new neighborhoods.

Advantages of underground:
-Appearance
-Fewer power interruptions

Disadvantages:
-Longer outages
-Susceptibility to flooding
-Repairs may require planned outages and excavation

Very disruptive to go from overhead to underground in an existing neighborhood. Probably not worth it. If building a new neighborhood, then yep, underground.

B&B, my neighbor has his power running underground from the pole to his house. Mine is a typical overhead connection to a weather head.

During Hurricane Andrew we both lost the connection between the house and the pole. Falling trees brought down my overhead line and the roots of the falling trees damaged his underground cable.

About ten days later power company trucks came down the street reconnecting the houses. They skipped his house because of his underground connection. It was probably another week before he got his power back.

We did run an extension cord from my house so he could run his refrigerator and some fans.

That's an example of the longer repair time you mentioned.

My power outage last night would not have happened if the lines were
underground. That is an example of the greater reliability you mentioned.

Ski in NC said:

Very disruptive to go from overhead to underground in an existing neighborhood. Probably not worth it. If building a new neighborhood, then yep, underground.

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Well, the odds of getting 100% to agree and sign are 0% so not going to happen in our neighborhood. Still it sits on the HOA webpages and has apparently for years, at least since we moved here in 2012.

If HOA's were tumors, ours is benign. It was created decades ago to put in a guard house and gate and fund security for the neighborhood. Contributions are voluntary. However much money they have is how many hours a week security works. (It's 168 hours now). Must work as no crimes in years. All the associations near us are basically like this as there is no property deeded to them and no mention in the deeds nor do they have any legal position. No HOA rules or restrictions.

Qoute : Install a sub panel in your home which will be your "inverter panel"


This option is going to have to be installed by a licensed electrical contractor, filed, and inspected. This would also have to include a transfer switch, or running homeruns to needed areas. I'm not sure what the prices are in Florida ,but you could easily be looking at 2-3k if you were in New Jersey ? New York.


I agree with Wes K, get a motel

tinped said:

Qoute : Install a sub panel in your home which will be your "inverter panel"


This option is going to have to be installed by a licensed electrical contractor, filed, and inspected. This would also have to include a transfer switch, or running homeruns to needed areas. I'm not sure what the prices are in Florida ,but you could easily be looking at 2-3k if you were in New Jersey ? New York.


I agree with Wes K, get a motel

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Get an interlock kit for your panel. Many panel makers have them you can buy at an electrical distributor, or online, you can find them at Home Depot.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Square-D-Homeline-Outdoor-Generator-Inter-Lock-Kit-HOMRBGK2C/203030954
I used a 60 amp breaker.

That uses your existing panel to power your home.
It interlocks the main breaker with the gen breaker so neither can be on at the same time.
I did that with my Square-D Homeline panel.

So then no need for an electrician or a subpanel. You can power every single circuit in the home if you wish. I even ran my central air off a 8000 watt, 13000 watt surge gen on the last huricane..

We did not use the oven or the dryer, everything else was used..

dwhatty said:

Disregarding the cost, would something like a Tesla Powerwall do it?

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Yes. Or a Tesla car! Not standard equipment, but I have a hybrid and a battery electric car, and many hobbyist owners have found ways to draw from their cars for backup AC. My Leaf has a 24 KWH battery that in theory could run my house for a while. There is serious discussion and research on having bidirectional flows of power between the grid and electric cars, mostly for grid load balancing.

sdowney717 said:

Get an interlock kit for your panel. Many panel makers have them you can buy at an electrical distributor, or online, you can find them at Home Depot.
Square D Homeline Outdoor Generator Inter-Lock Kit-HOMRBGK2C - The Home Depot

That uses your existing panel to power your home.
It interlocks the main breaker with the gen breaker so neither can be on at the same time.

So then no need for an electrician or a subpanel. You can power every single circuit in the home if you wish

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Mine is actually a separate, enclosed DPDT knife switch. Same idea.

I don't know why anyone would want to buy a second panel, or limit their generator to powering just a few preselected circuits.

Worse yet, everything I read suggests you need to buy a big enough generator to power ALL the circuits in the panel to their full capacity all the time. Who DOES that???

Yep, if you sized gennie to handle everything at once, you would have a big beast.

I've learned load management with my 8kW: There are three big loads in house: AC, waterheater and dryer. You can run one of the three. All the other loads are "little", so no restrictions. Pick a big load and run it, all little loads stay on.

Entire panel is hot once transferred to gennie.

sdowney717 said:

Get an interlock kit for your panel. Many panel makers have them you can buy at an electrical distributor, or online, you can find them at Home Depot.
Square D Homeline Outdoor Generator Inter-Lock Kit-HOMRBGK2C - The Home Depot
I used a 60 amp breaker.

That uses your existing panel to power your home.
It interlocks the main breaker with the gen breaker so neither can be on at the same time.
I did that with my Square-D Homeline panel.

So then no need for an electrician or a subpanel. You can power every single circuit in the home if you wish. I even ran my central air off a 8000 watt, 13000 watt surge gen on the last huricane..

We did not use the oven or the dryer, everything else was used..

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You still need a licensed electrician to install. While you may be very handy, what you are advising is at the very least illegal, and potentially dangerous. If a fire occurs, insurance wont cover loss. When you go to sell, many municipalities do a reinspect with all the trades covered (Mine does),and if you are caught, it is a $5000 fine, and then you still have to hire a contractor. While giving advise on this site to help someone increase their knowledge base, it is not a good idea to go as far as you did.

tinped said:

You still need a licensed electrician to install. While you may be very handy, what you are advising is at the very least illegal, and potentially dangerous. If a fire occurs, insurance wont cover loss. When you go to sell, many municipalities do a reinspect with all the trades covered (Mine does),and if you are caught, it is a $5000 fine, and then you still have to hire a contractor. While giving advise on this site to help someone increase their knowledge base, it is not a good idea to go as far as you did.

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I do not know WHERE you live, but where I live in Virginia this is fully legal.

So why are you acting like the pope and getting all righteous on me about something you are clearly ignorant of??

I replaced my entire fuse panel, upgrading from 150 to 200 amp and had code compliance approve the work, otherwise Dominion power wont hook you up to the new meter base.

I had to go and pull my own permit, as a homeowner in Virginia we are allowed to do these things.
AND I am not a licensed electrician.
Frankly your ignorance is appalling and then you got the gall to slam me about advice?

sdowney717 said:

I do not know WHERE you live, but where I live in Virginia this is fully legal.

So why are you acting like the pope and getting all righteous on me about something you are clearly ignorant of??

I replaced my entire fuse panel, upgrading from 150 to 200 amp and had code compliance approve the work, otherwise Dominion power wont hook you up to the new meter base.

I had to go and pull my own permit, as a homeowner in Virginia we are allowed to do these things.
AND I am not a licensed electrician.
Frankly your ignorance is appalling and then you got the gall to slam me about advice?

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I am licensed in two states,and in Florida you also need a license.

Under Florida statute, a homeowner IS allowed to do electrical work at his/her own dwelling, and it does need to be filed ,and inspected. So while you should be proud that you could tackle a job of this magnitude, and get passed off by the inspector, I don't think you should be giving another person advice as to doing their own work without knowing their abilities. And it was a good thing that in your second post ,you eluded to the fact that this was a much larger project you took on.You made it sound in the first post like it was a simple thing to just purchase the interlock, and you are done, which is not the case.

Seems that for aggressive discussion, boat (and home) electrics have replaced anchors. Very entertaining.

Greetings,
Hmmm...Electric anchors?

Hmmmm...

tinped said:

Under Florida statute, a homeowner IS allowed to do electrical work at his/her own dwelling, and it does need to be filed ,and inspected. So while you should be proud that you could tackle a job of this magnitude, and get passed off by the inspector, I don't think you should be giving another person advice as to doing their own work without knowing their abilities. And it was a good thing that in your second post ,you eluded to the fact that this was a much larger project you took on.You made it sound in the first post like it was a simple thing to just purchase the interlock, and you are done, which is not the case.

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Anyone with half a brain can install a breaker interlock into a panel, especially when it is made for that panel and they have some experience. And of course you are an electrician and will discourage anyone from working with electricity to keep you income flowing in.

People thankfully according to the law do not have to use your type services in many states.
And people with half a brain will know for themselves if they are willing to work on their indoor panels, yet you if you got your way would make that illegal.

Its the other half of your brain that concerns me. Lets compare the statistics : sdowney successfully completes 1 job, tinped's two companies successfully completes 33000 jobs since 1981.I make half my income from weekend warriors like yourself. Keep up the good work.

tinped said:

Its the other half of your brain that concerns me. Lets compare the statistics : sdowney successfully completes 1 job, tinped's two companies successfully completes 33000 jobs since 1981.I make half my income from weekend warriors like yourself. Keep up the good work.

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Thanks for the glowing endorsement.
Anyone who reads your first post again to me and your responses, will clearly see it as an attack against those who DIY their own electrical work.

Curious why you think I only did one job?
I have put in 3 new panels, 2 were new work.
I also rewired my entire boat AC system.
I have met electricians like you, pretty much if they don't do the work, they hate what your do.
And also plumbers have the same attitude.
I was helping a friend do the plumbing in his addition, full bath and water heater, and the codes guy was a former plumber and kept trying to get us to hire out a plumber friend he had with every inspection he did.

The point I was trying to make, is that just because you are a talented guy, doesn't mean that all people out there have your abilities/knowledge base. Otherwise, the statistics I quoted would be reversed. There is CLEARLY a need for skilled tradesmen, and I don't think someone who is not in the business should be advising someone else to do what you can do. Stick to what you do for a living, not what you do as a homeowner. Misleading a person by trivializing the task at hand could lead to some dangerous results.

tinped said:

The point I was trying to make, is that just because you are a talented guy, doesn't mean that all people out there have your abilities/knowledge base. Otherwise, the statistics I quoted would be reversed. There is CLEARLY a need for skilled tradesmen, and I don't think someone who is not in the business should be advising someone else to do what you can do. Stick to what you do for a living, not what you do as a homeowner. Misleading a person by trivializing the task at hand could lead to some dangerous results.

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That chaps, would appear to be a really good note to end this discussion on, or otherwise it is going to go pear-shaped enough to end up over on the dark side, ok..?

sdowney717 said:

Anyone with half a brain can install a breaker interlock into a panel, especially when it is made for that panel and they have some experience. And of course you are an electrician and will discourage anyone from working with electricity to keep you income flowing in.

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I'm sure then whatever your profession is that anyone with 1/4 brain could do it. Why do you feel the compulsion to insult someone else's profession?

And everywhere I've lived, this work would require an inspection and sign off, not just through state laws but municipal codes. A significant percentage of house fires are the result of faulty D-I-Y wiring and the use of unlicensed people to do electrical work. While you may be quite capable of doing it well, one must be careful advising others to do so. Regardless attacking another's profession isn't appropriate, in my opinion.

BandB said:

I'm sure then whatever your profession is that anyone with 1/4 brain could do it. Why do you feel the compulsion to insult someone else's profession?

And everywhere I've lived, this work would require an inspection and sign off, not just through state laws but municipal codes. A significant percentage of house fires are the result of faulty D-I-Y wiring and the use of unlicensed people to do electrical work. While you may be quite capable of doing it well, one must be careful advising others to do so. Regardless attacking another's profession isn't appropriate, in my opinion.

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Did you read that guys first post to me, shows his contempt for me suggesting to DIY an interlock into their panel, and he said what I did was ILLEGAL!

Why you bringing this up, seeing the mod wants this to cool down?

I suppose having codes compliance and Dominion Power check your work, just is not good enough for you, your being extremely annoying. Must be one of them rich folk have everything done for them and hate someone who works on their own stuff.

Taken to your level of extremism, nothing should be allowed by the owner, all things to be performed should be done only by professionals.

sdowney717 said:

Did you read that guys first post to me, shows his contempt for me suggesting to DIY an interlock into their panel, and he said what I did was ILLEGAL!



Why you bringing this up, seeing the mod wants this to cool down?



I suppose having codes compliance and Dominion Power check your work, just is not good enough for you, your being extremely annoying. Must be one of them rich folk have everything done for them and hate someone who works on their own stuff.



Taken to your level of extremism, nothing should be allowed by the owner, all things to be performed should be done only by professionals.

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Uh... Wow. ?

I'm going to try to get this back on track.

To the OP, one solution I did for a local bud was to build him an enclosure for his gennie. Building an enclosure is tricky as they are air cooled and if not done right, gen can overheat, burn out or worse, catch on fire. In fact one local knucklehead built an enclosure with NO provision for cooling air and it did catch on fire. Brand new gennie toasted, lucky the fire did not spread.

What we built was a plywood box with a baffled air entry and exit. If you run the gen you will see that hot air is blown out at one region, and exhaust is blowing out from another region. Sometimes both blow out the same way. Set it up so this air flows out the baffled exit. On the air entrance side, we mounted a fan to force air into the entrance.

We ran the gen with no enclosure, measured temps in various places with IR gun, then put it in the enclosure. After about a half hour, took lid off and checked temps. Only about 10F higher, so we felt it was safe.

In the box, it was nearly silent.

Get something like a Honda 2000, which is very quiet already, do an engineered box, and the neighbors probably will not hear it at all.

If nobody hears it, nobody is likely to complain to the HOA, and if nobody complains, everyone is happy and you have AC and fridge and lights all night.

Greetings,
Mr. Ski. FULLY AGREE!!!! Now, if the contestants will return to their own corners, we can schedule some light entertainment...

Took a good look at this. IMO, the attachments at the end of the cabling are too light, the wrong brand, incorrectly designed and badly made. The connecting cable is too short and not heavy enough. Worse still,the components are incompatible, working against each other, and causing significant drift and promoting corrosion.
Comments like this usually reconcile the warring factions and draw fire towards the intervener. Incoming!!

O C Diver said:

Go buy the 5,000 btu window shaker; install it in the guest bedroom window, and buy a power consumption meter. The meter is good for up to 15 amps and will show you how many watts you consumed over night. Then do a test run by sleeping in the room with the central AC turned off and the window unit plugged into the power consumption meter plugged into the wall outlet. No more guessing; you will know how much stored energy you will need. Between the AC unit and the meter, you will probably invest less than $300 in the experiment.

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This is me aboard Seaweed. I bought a 5k btu Haier air conditioner -- the cheapest I could find from NewEgg. Figure less than $150.

Next I bought a Killawatt meter -- again the least expensive I could find. I was not interested in lots of readings. I wanted to know what my Haier used in real time.

The paperwork on the Haier said 455 watts if memory serves me. (might have been 445)

In any event my meter has read between 55 watts (fan/not cooling) and 485 watts. Mostly I'm in the 435 to 465 range.

That's real world as of last month figures. Haier is a couple years old. Outside temps were in the 90's.

Good luck.

Were this my issue I'd chill the smallest bedroom with a bathroom (I get up in the night) and close off the rest of the house. Get the little bedroom cool then leave it closed up. Turn the generator back on when you wake up in the morning.

Or use a 5k btu unit on batts. Mine works fine with a 1000 watt inverter. Square wave. My a/c does NOT have the remote control with digital pad. Those require a pure sine wave inverter. My Haier has a dial, nothing more.

Good luck.
J.

When the power goes out, and my boat is on the hook down the street in 15 feet of water. What side of the boat should I set my anchor on?