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After a few powercuts im looking into battery backups for the essential things like router and boiler. We have no mobile reception here so rely on the internet for phone calls and messages.
Looking online battery backup packages range from 1000 to 10000 plus. Cant afford much beyond the minimum.
We dont need to run heaters or anything. Just want to be able to keep the router and boiler running. And a sewage pump that runs for about 3 mins each day.
Anyone have a battery backup? Were not interested in solar panels.
Would a generator not be easier and cheaper? Get it connected up to your consumer unit correctly with a manual change over isolator switch thingy so it can't feed back into the grid.
Too noisy.
They don't need to be noisy, a small Honda portable suitcase type just purrs away and could be made quieter with an acoustic barrier/box, and you could just run an extension lead to avoid complicated/expensive work to safely link it into your house sockets with an isolator.
Id much rather electric. Its silent here most the time and need to be able to use it during the night.
I dont know much about them. Power cuts here seem to be quite often and usually last 2 to 24 hours. So as long as the UPS can power a few small appliences for that long.
Work out the load and the duration and that’ll tell you how big a battery you’ll need.
router will be easy, I’m guess the boiler less so.
I used a generator for years until we fitted solar and batteries. - and I kept my generator for extended power cuts (see storm arwen)
But any old battery kit won't work.
Probably want to be looking at a Tesla power wall for integration reasons. Most other battery units will give emergency sockets and be power limited.
I have Solis hybrid inverter and puredrive batteries. I have lighting circuits on the back up plus 2 sockets in the upstairs cupboard. I will just run extension leads as required to the boiler etc.
Alternatively you could go jackery but you'll have to ensure it's manually fully charged when ever your expecting power cuts and you'll be power limited.
Anyone have a battery backup? Were not interested in solar panels.
🤷♂️
In this case - genny.
Honda ex650 or Eu series (1000, 2000)
The ex is the quietest generator ever made - beautiful things. Good condition ones can be found on eBay. Old school though so not perfect sine wave / not great for delicate electronics.
EU1000 - nearly as quiet but with sine wave output.
Will hold their value very well so can be sold on for minimal lose / cost of ownership.
Still want electric.
Not sure how much power the boiler and routwr use bit shouldnt be much. We also have a sewage pump that is 300 Watts and usually runs one a day for about 20 seconds.
A nattery to power the above for 24hrs is what im after connnected to the CU too as the pump is wired directly to that.
Get an EV and a V2H 2 way charger. Use the car as your battery storage.
One of those Anker powerhouse boxes could work. Has the benefit of being portable to use away/camping too if wanted. No idea how/if you'd get it to power a boiler though.
Generator would be the cheaper option by far. And they really are very quiet now. Won't even hear the more modern ones if you have the back door shut and leave it running in the garden.
Camping stove and a hot water bottle with a headtorch and a book?
Listen to what Trail Rat said. Tesla would be the easiest as it’s designed from the outset to do exactly what you’re after. Powerwall + Gateway. You’ll probably also need modifications to you electrical panel and then have it all signed off by the DNO even if you’re not exporting. <br /><br />Not sure why you’d go to all that trouble and expense and then not go the final mile and put solar in. You’re already paying for a substantial part of the package with the battery, gateway, inverter and wiring. The panels would be another…20% and would pay for themselves inside of 2 years.
What kind of budget are you willing to put on this?
Bare minimum setup and a few rough calculations:
Router is ~20w, so 0.02kW x 24h = 0.5kWh.
Biggest load on a heating circuit is the pump at 60w, so let’s allow for 100w for 1 hour, so 0.1kW x 1h = 0.1 kWh
Sewage pump for 1 minute is 0.3kW x (1/60)h = 0.005 kWh
So 0.6kwh battery needed.
An anker portable powerhouse 555 1kwh is £500. (Cheaper brands are available).
Budget £1-200 to have a sparky move the boiler and pump circuits onto plugs near the consumer unit so you can plug them into the portable battery when needed.
That’s the cheap way to do it without more extensive modifications, changeover switch, and permenant battery install.
Automatic changeover or happy to move some plugs about?
I also think you are underestimating your essential loads. Lighting in the hallways/stairs? Fridge/Freezer? If you've got the router on, then it sounds like you are going to want to charge a laptop/phone?
And if you want a changeover in your consumer unit then your loads will be much higher as everything plugged in will be operational so you'd have to be very strict about turning off standby items and not using extra lights. (What's the point of automatic changeover if you've got to go and turn off numerous items). And what would pop if someone used the toaster...a fuse or your inverter?
It's either big budget battery/changeover setup, a manually plugged small Genny or Jackery self contained unit, or you might be able to get a second hand computer/Comms rack UPS but you'd have to permanently plug your three essential items into the UPS as it wouldn't cope with whole house loads.
So 0.6kwh battery needed.
I think you're a little out there... Figures I've seen for a gas boiler are closer to 200w when running but startup load could be 3 x that.
Same with the sewage pump.
Not only that you cannot drain a battery to zero without causing irreparable damage.
Not sure if it still the case as well but jackery used to have li-ion cells which means a pretty limiting amount of charge cycles. I bought a pack for my van with LiFePO4 cells instead.
Typical base load for a house with Wi-Fi and fridge freezer is 150-200W. Running the inverter and battery will take another 150W. Boiler is 200-300W. Laptop is 50-100W dependent on what it’s doing. Lights depends on what they are, but even with LEDs, it quite easy to get to 100-150W with down lighters. So you’re looking at around 0.75-1kW per hour to be on the safe side.
Tesla Powerwall is 13kW, but only 10.5kW of that is usable at load. So you’ve got around 12-15h of power assuming the sewage pump/etc doesn’t consume too much.
That will cost you around £9k - £11.5k
looking into buying an EV with V2L isn't a bad idea (MG4, Ioniq5 etc). obviously you'd have to know the power loads and do the maths around it, but you can make big savings with fuel costs (14000miles pa in an ev can be £300 pa using a smart tariff).
Powervault and Givenergy works with Octopus Agile tariff so could potentially earn it's living rather than just as a powercut back up. in fact Octopus Agile probably works best with a battery when the battery can smartly fill in the price peaks and top up in the price plunges
If you are just wanting something to use for a few hours pa there are companies that sell packs for charging EVs that have run out of juice, the sort of thing that the AA might carry in their vans these days. maybe google ev portable battery I'm sure many of them will have a plug hole or the company will also sell a home version
I do this with Fox solar + batteries, but have only had one power cut in my (rural) area longer than 6 hours so it's only had one chance to work in anger. It's wired in UPS mode and permanently supplies the boiler, a couple of double-sockets, and a single lighting circuit downstairs.
The router is on a separate £50 UPS because the headache of moving the master socket or getting power to that side of the house vastly exceeded the ease of clicking "Buy Now" on Amazon. If I need to I can just run an extension lead across the house to the UPS to recharge it.
You can significantly extend the runtime of an oil boiler on battery by knocking the pump speed back from 3 to 1, or fitting a constant pressure model. Mine draws about 200W when on (boiler / pump / controls).
You might need to consider alternative earthing arrangements. When grid power is available the inverter earth is bonded to the house main earth, but is isolated when in UPS mode to become an IT arrangement.
I was going to suggest that the cheap solution, to cope with shorter outages, would be a separate UPS for each appliance you need to keep running. As Flaperon says, these are pretty reasonable off Amazon.
But I was assuming you had a gas boiler, and of course it would be oil if you’re out in the sticks, so there’s a pump to run not just a controller.
In my admittedly limited experience, alternatives like generators always make sense beyond a few hours due to battery cost.
Listen to what Trail Rat said. Tesla would be the easiest as it’s designed from the outset to do exactly what you’re after.
If's only an order of magnitude over the OP's budget...
Total overkill if all he wants to do is run a boiler and a router.
From an implementation POV a genny is probably simplest, put the a plug / socket on the boiler so you can plug it into an extension lead and run of the genny.
Or buy a computer style UPS - however, these are normally only designed to power servers long enough for them to do a controlled shutdown, rather than just crashing randomly. If you want to power CH (say 150W) for 24 hours, you'd need quite a beefy server UPS, 2 KWh batter maybe and that will be over £1k.
Sorry if I’m missing something. If you’re not running heaters why are you keeping a boiler running?
We have power cuts at our Irish house, (usually one or two at least a year hours but can go to a day or so) boiling water, cooking and heat comes from wood burner. Get a kelly kettle or a camping stove for that element.
We don’t have a power back up for the sewage system but have never had an issue with it.
Phones we have small anker power pack - but we don’t have a signal indoors anyway:) . Internet access is 2/3/4g off the phone network (outside in the garden)
Our neighbours have to keep their medicines chilled - they have a petrol generator. We live somewhere very very quiet and you can’t really notice it.
And candles, lots of candles in the house!
And head torches.
Our boiler is gas (lpg) not oil.
Basically there has been a few times where the power has gone out for enough time to cause a lot of inconvenience. We just need to be abke to access the internet for communication regarding the power outage, and need to be able to run hot water for showers etc. During our working days its non stop so theres no time to mess about with anything.
Id forgotten about the fridge/freezer.
Budget of about 2k. Can do some wiring myself but woukd need an electritian to do a transfer box if we go down that route. Putting the boiler and pump on plugs next to the CU is a good idea. Can probably do that myself.
The boiler has a fused switch on the wall so could easily be changed to a plug and socket.
For that budget then a generator seems like a no brainer with a UPS on the router giving you a short period of no-break power.
Transfer switch, generator starter on a relay that starts it when power is lost, job jobbed.
You could make it less automated for less cost, tbh I can't see what's so important that you can't take 10 minutes to sort yourself following a power cut. Very few people are that indispensable and if they are they aren't trying to do this on a £2k budget.
Honda EU2200 - no brainer, stick it outside in a shed/garage etc.
Don't confuse these with the noisy crap £300 Chinese POS's or fake knock off Honda clones. I used to have a hobby/sideline tinkering with small generators and these Honda's (and the older Ex650's) are wonderful pieces of engineering.
Hot water tank and use your mobile phone network to connect to the internet.
Showers in a power cut ... Off a battery.....
A budget of 2k will get you little more than the change over switch and earthing in place if your getting a spark in (which you should) if your going down that route
A generator and plugs on appliances + managing 24hrs without a shower is more than likely the right answer for a 2k budget.
Hot water tank and use your mobile phone network to connect to the internet.
Says in the OP no phone signal...
Also no space for a hot water tank.
Showers in a power cut … Off a battery…..
Showers are not electric. Just need the boiler to work.
A generator and plugs on appliances + managing 24hrs without a shower is more than likely the right answer for a 2k budget.
Need to be able to shower. If i get back from a ride or run and the powers out. I need a shower before work the next morning.
I know a generatore is the cheapest option but still want a battery for the essential things for 24 hours.
Anybody else getting an Andy and Lou vibe about this thread?
2k will get you a proper sized power bank from anker,bluetti,jackery etc. swap the spur on you’re boiler for a plug and socket and make sure you put a 3amp fuse in the plug and chuck some extension leads round when the power goes out
2k will get you a proper sized power bank from anker,bluetti,jackery etc.
Tha ks, ill have a look at those now.
I'm curious as to what you have planned if the power cut is a bit longer than usual.
Maybe you could get a Genny and put it really far away and then run out to it with your power bank, sit in the dark and cold for a few hours while the bank charges, then run out and get it and replug everything in.
About 15 years ago I employed 4 people at my office at home.
We scanned documents and made them available to our clients on our own server.
We had a 48 hour turnaround on the scanning and the documents were accessed continuously so our poor power supply was an issue - we had frequent power cuts which obvs caused issues.
I was reasonably close to getting a biggish diesel generator, changeover switch, etc but never got round to it. Good job really as shortly afterwards the power company replaced some aging gear nearby and the power cuts went away!
OP: I don't understand why you're so anti a generator?
A battery is limited power and when that gone you're screwed.
A generator would give you power for, effectively, an unlimited time.
If I didn't have mobile signal at my house I'd change provider to one that did work there.
You could even have a second SIM in your phone or just a spare phone.
We used to sell the EcoFlow power banks they seemed pretty good.
Maybe something like a Delta Pro would suit. If you’re not into doing a permanent solar install you could have a portable panel. If the power cut lasts through the night plug in the panel for a bit of top up.
Need to be able to shower. If i get back from a ride or run and the powers out.
Gas camping stove, pan of water, and one of those Hozelock garden sprayers as a shower?
Pretend you are camping, but in the luxury of your home.
Sat phone/starlink terminal for internet access.
If the power cut is sizable then what's the actual chance that your internet connection will even be up.
We lived on a street which had regular, like 3-6x every year, power cuts. Often for a half day or so, sometimes a few days.
Everyone had a pressurised water tank, a woodburning stove, a camping gas cooker and a generator. It. Just. Works. You could really easily stay warm like this for days.
We didn't have a woodburner so had an old school gas heater on wheels and a 6kg bottle of gas.
Most of the generators lived in the sheds, and were just wired back to the house.
A few of our old neighbours have now upgraded to solar with battery - apparently they all retain thier generator 'in case'.
It seems OP that you've made up your mind, but it does seem your going to end up spending a lot of money for a system that when a longer power cut happens your left still cold and dark quite quickly.
2k will get you a proper sized power bank from anker,bluetti,jackery etc. swap the spur on you’re boiler for a plug and socket and make sure you put a 3amp fuse in the plug and chuck some extension leads round when the power goes out
Even the biggest Anker power banks are 1kWh for £1000 (and not yet released). Max discharge is 85%, so you've got 0.85kWh. the OP will be through that it less than 2 hours never mind 24h.
Whichever way you look at it - Batteries are around £500-£1000 per kWh. If you want it automated (to kick in in the event of a power cut, that's about £2k.
Would this sort of thing not to the trick? https://singletrackmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/bluetti-ac180-take-a-bit-more-home-away-from-home/
Would also be handy for camping etc, rather than just on the occasions the power goes off at home? Well within your budget.
a generator or big UPS will do what you need. But will cost you
A big home battery system could pay for itself with the use of off peak tarrifs and do what you need, plus the rest of the house.
Add some solar, it will add more cost, but pay for itself even quicker.
Seeing that you have an LPG boiler, have you considered running an LPG generator?
We have a Pramac generator in an acoustic cabinet. It wasn't the cheapest option, but at 10kWh runs the essentials, keeps us warm by powering the oil boiler and allows me to keep working and pay for the genny & the fuel!
Hannah - Its the same basic problem though - these aren't designed as a house battery backup. Their capacity will be drained in less than 2 hours if you try to use the router, boiler (2 pumps - oil and water), sewage thing and a laptop. Our boiler running both pumps is 350w, out router and fridge are 75-110w (compressor), laptop is 50w-100w.
Fridge, router, laptop are 115w-225w. That 4-8 hours. Now thrown in 15 mins of showering and 15 mins of sewage effimijob and you're now at 2-5 hours. Boil a kettle = down to 1.4h. It's simply an energy subtraction problem. realistically, you'd need something twice that size and remember the OP stated that his real budget was the lower end of the "1000-10000" number.
You'll certainly be able to get something for £1200-£1500 that will act as a UPS, but it's not a house battery and it's not dynamic. You'll need to run around and connect everything and dependent on the powerbanks maximum draw, you might be out of luck for powering some things.