Uninterruptable farmhouse lighting

JohanF

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Hi guys,

this is my first posting in this forum. I've been looking around the forum, and found a lot of very interesting discussions but could not find anything quite answering my questions- please redirect me if any such thread do exist somewhere here.

My situation is such: I have a farmhouse which is on grid power, but in summer we have quite a lot of interruptions in the service due to thunderstorms. Usually these interruptions last not more than about 2 hours before the service is restored, but every so often it could take them almost a whole day to repair the damage. Currently we are making use of candles, lanterns and a few emergency (6V rechargeable battery) lamps.

My idea is to disconnect the lights circuit from the mains power and install a 12V battery with a mains charger and an inverter to supply 220V uninterrupted current to the lights circuit. Counting all bathrooms, passages etc., the house has 15 ceiling fitted lights (all CFL globes ranging between 11 - 18W) and 2 x 36W (1200mm/4 foot) fluorescent tubes in the kitchen. I worked on a maximum simultaneous use of only 6 lights for about 5 hours a day x 18W = 540 Watt Hr./day. I plan to replace the kitchen light with 2 x 18W fluorescent LED tubes and budget for another 4 hour per day usage of those - bringing my total Watt Hr./day up to 684.

My first question is what you think of the idea? Should I rather try replace all the lights to 12V LED lights? What about the kitchen then? (- I don't really want to compromise on the amount of light - in other words I don't want my family to complain that the new system doesn't have the same quantity and quality of light as they were used to.)

Secondly, if you think my plan is worth implementing, how big should the inverter be? Are there any loss inside the inverter or should a 800W inverter be capable enough? Can one go for the cheapest inverter for that output rating or would it be advisable to rather buy a pure sine wave inverter?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Johan
 
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pyro

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

Welcome to CPF!

IMO the best solution ist to buy a genereator and a way to get the power in to your house grid.
Then you can also run your fridge, TV and maybe even a microwave and don't have to worry how long your battery lasts.
The generator may come in handy in other situations as well.
 

FRITZHID

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

I agree with pyro, a genset would be best, however... UPS and stand alone inverters have their place as well. There are many pros and cons to each. I live in hurricane prone Florida and I use a combination of grid/genset & UPS power as well as a separate 12v LED emergency lighting setup for when all else fails and that will run for aprox. 78hrs as current setup. Its recharged by both the mains & genny, as well as a solar charger, so in theory, as long as I have some daylight, I'll have some nightlight.
Contact me in PM if you'd like to discuss various options.
 

Anders Hoveland

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

Unless you really like to work on home electronic projects, a cheaper, easier solution may just be to buy something like this: https://www.instabulb.tv/?linkid=16590&source=Adwords&custom=instabulb&mt=e&ap=1t1&m
(they do not put out much more light than a nightlight though (maybe 2 nightlights), you would probably need 3-5 of them for each room, plus each one takes four AA batteries)
 
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FRITZHID

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

Unless you really like to work on home electronic projects, a cheaper, easier solution may just be to buy something like this: https://www.instabulb.tv/?linkid=16590&source=Adwords&custom=instabulb&mt=e&ap=1t1&m
(they do not put out much more light than a nightlight though (maybe 2 nightlights), you would probably need 3-5 of them for each room, plus each one takes four AA batteries)

Those things are a joke, don't waste your money or time
 

Illum

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

I would lean towards the 12V to inverter side of things if lighting is a critical element in your farm. However, the upfront costs associated with it is very high.
Can you give some extra information on your farm size, the amount of lamps that *MUST* stay lit during an outage, etc, and whether those lamps are incandescent or florescent. This way we have some idea of your intended load.

If rolling outages are very often, I would invest in something more than just a genny with a yanker and wheels, more along the lines of a standby genny permanently installed on your farm with a power transfer switch. They are usually liquid or air cooled and runs on either propane or gas. Generac, Centurion, and Briggs & Stratton comes to mind
 
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FRITZHID

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

I would lean towards the 12V to inverter side of things if lighting is a critical element in your farm. However, the upfront costs associated with it is very high.
Can you give some extra information on your farm size, the amount of lamps that *MUST* stay lit during an outage, etc, and whether those lamps are incandescent or florescent. This way we have some idea of your intended load.

If rolling outages are very often, I would invest in something more than just a genny with a yanker and wheels, more along the lines of a standby genny permanently installed on your farm with a power transfer switch. They are usually liquid or air cooled and runs on either propane or gas. Generac, Centurion, and Briggs & Stratton comes to mind

Again, agreed, however the stand by gennys are very costly and have some special requirements, I have a 9kw westinghouse with manual hookup, keeps 80% of my house purring quite nicely, and I can take it off site if need be.
 
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FRITZHID

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

I think he's looking to augment his existing lighting with alt power so he doesn't have to sacrifice light output. Which is fairly easy to do.
 

Arilou

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

The easiest thing to do would be to keep your existing lighting and just buy a large UPS. It would help your battery runtime if you replaced the CFLs with more energy-efficient LEDs. Also, some LED lights and most CFL have a low power factor which will put additional demands on the inverter, so buying lights with a higher power factor may help too.

You could do a custom 12V system, but it would be a lot more work. 12V lights are going to be more complicated to obtain and install, and you'll need to make sure that the wiring you use is thick enough to handle the amperage without significant voltage drop.
 

FRITZHID

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

UPS's, even large ones, have limitations, you need to either make sure large draw devices/equip are turned off, or set it up on a separate circuit line that only includes the items you need running during power outages. UPS systems don't like fridges, a/c, motors, ect, the startup surge often trips the internal breaker, and to get one that can power those devices requires a HUGE UPS/battery set up that costs thousands of dollars, if not 10's of thousands, and then there's the battery maintenance, a whole separate room that's sealed off from living areas, ventilation and cooling, ect..... Better to have a genny out side and tapped into the circuits you need.
 

BVH

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

+1 to What Fritz said on the genny. Back when I used to live out on a rural 10 acre property, we had outages at least once or twice a week. I know many people will not approve of this but I would manually turn off my main breaker, and then hook my 4.5KW genny into a 240 receptacle to back feed the panel. There was just myself and my wife and we were both trained and disciplined to be aware of what we could run and not run given the limited capacity of the genny. But it allowed us to run all the light we wanted, the fridge, the domestic water booster pump ect. No A/C and no electric oven and range. Ideally, we'd have had a 12KW unit and auto transfer switch to give us 100 Amp capacity.
 

SemiMan

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

It's quite doable and I think you mean 120 not 220 correct?

If you have 680 watt hours of load, I would suggest 2-100AH batteries. I would invest in a good inverter and watch out for the efficiency and static load. You are likely going to go with 1000W. It's efficiency should be 90%+ and static load maybe 5-20 watts depending on the model. That must be considered in your battery calcs which is why I suggest 2-100AH 12V units. I suggest having them in a cool part of the basement. The easiest thing to do is find a charger/inverter with a built in transfer switch. I know big ones exist (3-4KW) but not sure what is on the small end these days. If you have AGM batteries (and a good charger) you are "likely" safe to just have them sitting there in your basement. If you have regular flooded batteries (require more maintenance by you), then I suggest a box with a small vent stack for safety.


As others have said, a cheap generator puts out a lot more power and can for longer, but the battery setup is pretty easy.

Semiman
 

SemiMan

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Oh I thought I saw Florida in there. Got posts confused.

Ups units have small batteries and big ones have big wasteful inverters for small loads. Storing batteries in a hot inverter is not good either.

Semiman

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4
 

FRITZHID

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

All valid points, and as I posted earlier, each has its pros and cons, I have 2 1kw UPS inverters, 2 800w UPS inverters, and a 9kw gas genny, after lots of trial and error, I've found a hybrid to be the best solution for my needs. The inverters power vital equipment in select areas when short outages occur (thank you FPL), and the genny for the really hard times, plus there is the 12v emergency lighting system for when all else fails, which is its own system in itself, recharged by a small solar panel and wall wart PS. Its only a small handful of leds per room but plenty to navigate by. This is my 3rd house with multiple off grid options.

My total battery ah is somewhere in the vicinity of 12,000ah with a surge ability of 1000a across the board.
 
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JohanF

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Thanks guys for all your suggestions and sorry for only replying now. I'll try and reply to your posts individually...
 

JohanF

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

Welcome to CPF!

IMO the best solution ist to buy a genereator and a way to get the power in to your house grid.
Then you can also run your fridge, TV and maybe even a microwave and don't have to worry how long your battery lasts.
The generator may come in handy in other situations as well.

Thanks for the welcoming! That would be ideal to work with a standby generator, but it is a rather costly solution - not only the initial cost, but also the cost of running it. - I'm not sure what you are paying for petroleum gas, but our currency in South Africa is steadily loosing value and already we are at on $137 per litre - with the oil prices rocketing, we'll probably reach $150 pretty soon!

At the moment I'm not really concerned about the other appliances like TV and microwave - the lights are my top priority.
 

JohanF

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Re: Uninterruotable farmhouse lighting

I agree with pyro, a genset would be best, however... UPS and stand alone inverters have their place as well. There are many pros and cons to each. I live in hurricane prone Florida and I use a combination of grid/genset & UPS power as well as a separate 12v LED emergency lighting setup for when all else fails and that will run for aprox. 78hrs as current setup. Its recharged by both the mains & genny, as well as a solar charger, so in theory, as long as I have some daylight, I'll have some nightlight.
Contact me in PM if you'd like to discuss various options.

Thanks Fritz. Please see my reply above regards the running cost of a genset. Currently grid power is relatively cheap here. Here in South Africa we have lots of sunlight and lots of wind too, but while the cost of batteries is such a big factor, a generator would probably the best option to get off the grid completely or even just for a defined period till the grid power is restored. But for now lights is my main concern and I would prefer to have them on an uninterrupted supply.
 

JohanF

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Unless you really like to work on home electronic projects, a cheaper, easier solution may just be to buy something like this: https://www.instabulb.tv/?linkid=16590&source=Adwords&custom=instabulb&mt=e&ap=1t1&m
(they do not put out much more light than a nightlight though (maybe 2 nightlights), you would probably need 3-5 of them for each room, plus each one takes four AA batteries)

Thanks Anders, but this stuff won't work for me - Please note my remark in my OP:

...I don't really want to compromise on the amount of light - in other words I don't want my family to complain that the new system doesn't have the same quantity and quality of light as they were used to.

(I do actually like to work on home electronic projects);-)
 
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