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Power failures pick the worst time, without fail
- Thread starter TorontoBuilder
- Start date
Johnwa
Ultra Member
We had an elevator drop in the Standard life building in Edmonton about 25 years ago. I didn’t hear much detail, no deaths but there was at least one broken leg.
And way more expensive than Sooke.
Traffic has become really bad in Sooke due to road improvements and a huge increase in population with an infrastructure not capable of dealing with all that. But it's a beautiful area.
Jebus. Only 3-5 here, a little east of you.
But seriously, don't you all come here to retire in Victoria. It's an ugly rainy nasty hellhole. Terrible place. Stay away. Yes, you. Really.
Not to mention the man eating snakes and crows that will grab you children, dogs and cats and take them away to eat them. Very dangerous place where we live.
Just guessing that was the older instant brake system. You rode those old elevators with your knees bent going down cuz if they slam the brakes on with a power failure, it's an instant stop which would feel like dropping and hitting bottom but really isn't. Someone with weaker legs could easily break them.
Averaging 2-3 outages a year that are prolonged (>4 hours). Generator takes care of that. Eastern Sk
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
Been there done that and Sooke still has it beat. I heard that there are three families a day moving to Sooke. All on two lanes. Construction doesn't help but there is just too much on too little. Mid afternoon on is stop and go and the last few miles can take times measured in hours. On top of all that excavating dump sites in Victoria are virtually non-existent resulting in a new one opening in Jordan River, west of Sooke resulting in 100+ round trips a day of dump trucks and trailers.
I heard it's called progress.
TorontoBuilder
Sapientia et Doctrina Stabilitas
I dont recall a single power failure in the years I lived in sk.
I do recall the pipes freezing in the Regina airport and bursting right at christmas though
Martin w
Ultra Member
My power was off for 8 hours today… ugggh . I have three phase in the shop and one phase was still on . I ran an extension cord to the house to power the fridge and freezer. Other than that I was down for the whole day for production in my shop! At least my beer was cold tonight.
TorontoBuilder
Sapientia et Doctrina Stabilitas
cold beer softens the blow for some people. I'd be irate AF
Power went off here about 6:30PM. Still not back. So I'm using this:
A 2S2P 24V (Valence U27-12XP x 4) which is 144AH x 2 == 288AH at 24V.
They are connected through my control system to two 1.5kW inverters so at the moment I have 3kW available (with a spare not wired into anything). That works out to best case maybe 25A at 115VAC.
Plugged into that is the Telus WiFi Hub, My ASUS Router, my laptop, our floor lamp where we sit, the Denon Stereo, Telus WiFi TV box, and the TV.
My clamp on ammeter says about 13A DC so I have about 22 hours max. Early night tonight and that stuff all gets switched off so almost no power used after that.
I really need to set things up so the fridge, freezer and furnace run off this backup system.
A 2S2P 24V (Valence U27-12XP x 4) which is 144AH x 2 == 288AH at 24V.
They are connected through my control system to two 1.5kW inverters so at the moment I have 3kW available (with a spare not wired into anything). That works out to best case maybe 25A at 115VAC.
Plugged into that is the Telus WiFi Hub, My ASUS Router, my laptop, our floor lamp where we sit, the Denon Stereo, Telus WiFi TV box, and the TV.
My clamp on ammeter says about 13A DC so I have about 22 hours max. Early night tonight and that stuff all gets switched off so almost no power used after that.
I really need to set things up so the fridge, freezer and furnace run off this backup system.
Oh. Forgot to mention that there are 3 DeltaQ 650W chargers that if all connected into a 20A circuit then a generator with a 20A 115VAC circuit will easily charge the batteries and supply the load. It's a constant on system so when AC is connected the DeltaQ chargers supply both the load and charge the batteries. The Valence BMS tells my control system what to set the charger voltage at so the batteries get the correct charging current.
slow-poke
Ultra Member
Can you share some technical details of the system in the picture above?
Hardware?
Cost?
Battery life expectancy?
Are those inverters parallable on the secondary?
Assuming the main breaker box is isolated from the utility, and the overall load is kept below the inverter(s) rating, and only a handful of the branch circuit breakers were closed for ease of power distribution around the house, would those inverters be okay with the impedance of the distribution via the panel?
Knowing what you know now after assembling this, would you do the same now?
I have a generator but it would be nice to have a silent backup for short outages. I don't imagine our power reliability is going to improve any time soon.
Our neighbor a few doors down has a serious backup generator that runs on natural gas about the size of van looks like it would be for grocery store or hospital. Middle of a snow storm and simultaneous winter power outage and his heated driveway is steaming away, Christmas lights on. Power outage? Oh we didn't notice.
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We have frequent power failures in the winter. I have 4 1100cca truck batteries in parallel hooked to a 3000 watt inverter. I made a suicide cord to backfeed the furnace circuit, which has a dual pole, hot and neutral, disconnect switch. It will run the furnace for days, and also charge phones, etc. I charge the batteries with a 3 amp maintainer.
I also have a bunch of small handheld lights and a makita 18v battery adapter that gives USB power for charging phones etc.
This year I'll be installing a proper transfer switch to safely hookup my Honda eu3000is generator so i can power more circuits during the extended outages.
I also have a bunch of small handheld lights and a makita 18v battery adapter that gives USB power for charging phones etc.
This year I'll be installing a proper transfer switch to safely hookup my Honda eu3000is generator so i can power more circuits during the extended outages.
I don't have a proper setup for backup power. Instead I have labelled my breaker box with colored tabs. Red - turn off. Yellow - optional. Green - leave on.
The mains are red. Fridge, Freezer, sump pump, and furnace are green. A few lights, and computers are yellow.
I also have battery backup for my network, alarm, and sump pump.
The battery backup system only has one large automotive battery on it.
However, I have a pair of jumper cables just inside the garage door that are hard wired to the battery backup system. That allows me to use a vehicle's battery and alternator to run essential systems and charge the backup battery during extended OUTAGES as needed.
I bought a small generator on sale after the big NE US/Canada blackout. It can be plugged into my home system after flipping all the red breakers to run essential systems, and I always keep enough gasoline on hand to last a few weeks.
Someday........(LOL), I'll install an inverter system to run 120 off of 12 so I can skip the generator if needed. I might also do a small multi battery solar system or small windmill combination then too.
Or maybe not.
I'm setup to handle a few weeks without power as is. For the last 15 years, we have been fine without power.
slow-poke
Ultra Member
I did the exact same thing, and it seems to work well. When the lights are off having to think about what circuits should be on or off is not a great time.
I find I now tend to leave the yellows on now because just because the circuit is on doesn't mean anything on that circuit has to actually be turned on bathroom, bedroom lights etc, but sure is convenient when you walk to that end of the house.
The system originally started with ELCON battery chargers controlled via J1939 CAN messaging to charge Lead Acid Batteries. The batteries were recharged with an ONAN diesel genset. There was also solar panel charging. The generator was started and stopped automatically. This photo shows the big batteries and the starting battery. Under the 'table' is a power supply that was supposed to be for my CNC system to fake out solar cells. Solar controller beside that. On the 'table', two 1500W Elcon chargers, relays etc and on the far right my controller module.
When the system was changed to Lithium batteries and more reliable DeltaQ chargers some major changes had to happen.
There's a used charger on ebay for $250, new ones run over $1000.
IC Series
The IC Series are compact, flexible, user-friendly industrial chargers that optimally charge lead-acid (wet, AGM, gel) and lithium battery packs to provide the best performance for the intended application.
delta-q.com
The inverter are MeanWell TS-1000 units.
They were scrapped for something else. Not sure what. Not privy to that information. And no they can't be paralleled which is really too bad.
The problem was that the military client didn't want to go through the entire testing and certification process on the software so instead I built a module that translated CANopen messages to J1939 messages. Now from the software perspective the 3 DeltaQ chargers look like ELCON chargers.
Now here's the problem with Lead Acid and why the change to Lithium.
1. Discharge below 50% State Of Charge (SOC) and reduce the life big time so the generator had to start at SOC 50%.
2. Lead Acid batteries take forever to reach 100% SOC and draw very little current during that time so the diesel generator would run for extra hours with almost no load. They would carbon up on their exhaust system
Lithium Batteries with their Battery Management System (BMS) can be discharged to 5% SOC without changing the number of discharge/charge cycles and can take full current (70A) up to 99% SOC. Only about 30 minutes at a final conditioning 10A is required to finish charging them.
Down side of Lithium batteries is temperature. Below -20C or so the BMS won't even enable the contactor and below zero or so charging is not allowed. So those systems, when it's that cold require the generator or shore power to start producing power to heat the batteries. Once they reach 5C the chargers are enabled and the batteries brought up to 100% and the application load is enabled. Once they are charged the generator is switched off and the battery controller runs the heat blankets to keep the batteries warm enough for for load discharge.
The control for the Lead Acid evenually had these modules.
One to control the generator including decoding flashing fault lights and measuring starting battery voltage etc. (Generator Interface Module -- GIM)
Another to deal with the lead acid battery charging voltages, current, temperature etc (Battery Interface Module -- BIM)
The small grey box has 5 CAN bus channels to talk to 3 sets of Lead Acid banks/chargers etc. It was originally developed to run thse 5 CAN bus channels; one for the north side and one for the south.