Winter blackouts

Ultrasonic

barker77 said:

Ultrasonic said:

QrizB said:

barker77 said:

Just seen the news about potential electric cut offs at winter. I wondered if anyone had thought about ways to keep boilers etc going maybe with a large battery or similar?  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-PowerHouse-Portable-Generator-Emergency/dp/B08PCYF3Y4

I'm going to disagree slightly; that power pack does produce 300W of AC and might be able to run a central heating system for an hour or two.

Are you thinking of gas central heating?

Yeah just to power boiler for a few hours was the idea I was thinking 

Ah, OK, I hadn't realised that from your initial question. I'd agree with @QrizB there may be enough electrical power in the battery you linked to to do so, although I doubt your boiler has a mains plug that could be simple transferred to it? Mine certainly doesn't. Interesting if fairly expensive idea though. If I were tempted to buy an emergency heating solution I'd probably just go for a camping/caravan has heater for about a tenth the cost of the battery. Right now I'm not feeling worried about long power outages though.

Would wider power loss affect the delivery of gas to properties I wonder?

MattMattMattUK

barker77 said:

Ultrasonic said:

QrizB said:

barker77 said:

Just seen the news about potential electric cut offs at winter. I wondered if anyone had thought about ways to keep boilers etc going maybe with a large battery or similar?  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-PowerHouse-Portable-Generator-Emergency/dp/B08PCYF3Y4

I'm going to disagree slightly; that power pack does produce 300W of AC and might be able to run a central heating system for an hour or two.

Are you thinking of gas central heating?

Yeah just to power boiler for a few hours was the idea I was thinking 

If it is just for a few hours what is the point? A few hours without heating will be fine.

Ultrasonic

MattMattMattUK said:

barker77 said:

Ultrasonic said:

QrizB said:

barker77 said:

Just seen the news about potential electric cut offs at winter. I wondered if anyone had thought about ways to keep boilers etc going maybe with a large battery or similar?  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-PowerHouse-Portable-Generator-Emergency/dp/B08PCYF3Y4

I'm going to disagree slightly; that power pack does produce 300W of AC and might be able to run a central heating system for an hour or two.

Are you thinking of gas central heating?

Yeah just to power boiler for a few hours was the idea I was thinking 

If it is just for a few hours what is the point? A few hours without heating will be fine.

It could be a few hours in the middle of a much longer period of the power being off though. During my working week in winter I'd typically have the heating on for less than 2 hours per day as well actually. Not that I'm about to spend £400 on a battery.

pochase

We were also looking into this, more for keeping our work laptops and the router online.

All battery solutions in the up to £500 will not even be able to keep us running for more than a few additional hours.

Best solution if this will become a problem seems to be a good generator. for £500 to £600 you get a nice 3000W generator that will be able to run 16 hours plus. Problem for the smaller generators seems to be that they state they can not be used for more than a a few hours.

What is stopping us currently is that we are talking about a high cost, storage of the petrol in canisters will be dangerous, and storing the petrol in the tank over a long period will be a problem with the quality.

Ultrasonic

pochase said:

We were also looking into this, more for keeping our work laptops and the router online.

Won't power loss to local internet infrastructure outside of your house likely render this redundant? 

pochase

From what I found it seems that Virgin Media has battery backup in some of the cabinets, but I also have a mains powered 5G hotspot and a battery powered 5G hotspot.

MattMattMattUK

Ultrasonic said:

MattMattMattUK said:

barker77 said:

Ultrasonic said:

QrizB said:

barker77 said:

Just seen the news about potential electric cut offs at winter. I wondered if anyone had thought about ways to keep boilers etc going maybe with a large battery or similar?  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-PowerHouse-Portable-Generator-Emergency/dp/B08PCYF3Y4

I'm going to disagree slightly; that power pack does produce 300W of AC and might be able to run a central heating system for an hour or two.

Are you thinking of gas central heating?

Yeah just to power boiler for a few hours was the idea I was thinking 

If it is just for a few hours what is the point? A few hours without heating will be fine.

It could be a few hours in the middle of a much longer period of the power being off though. During my working week in winter I'd typically have the heating on for less than 2 hours per day as well actually. Not that I'm about to spend £400 on a battery.

If the power is going off for days at a time then a battery pack with zero generation ability is not going to solve the problem. Multiple day long power cuts over larges swathes of the country are pretty much societal breakdown territory, one would be better off getting a generator and a shotgun.

MattMattMattUK

Ultrasonic said:

pochase said:

We were also looking into this, more for keeping our work laptops and the router online.

Won't power loss to local internet infrastructure outside of your house likely render this redundant? 

Most of that stuff has batteries that are supposed to last several hours, with larger sites supposed to have backup generation as well, but I think 12-24 hours is the normal max without direct intervention such as refuelling at a site with a generator. 

pochase said:

From what I found it seems that Virgin Media has battery backup in some of the cabinets, but I also have a mains powered 5G hotspot and a battery powered 5G hotspot.

They do in most, but I do not know their runtimes, it will be a few hours at most though I would imagine. The mobile network will also go down fairly quickly, most sites have battery backup that can do 12-24 hours, some have generators on site as well which kick in automatically, that might give them another day, but with constant power cuts the generators will run out of fuel faster than they can refuel them and the batteries will not get a change to recharge properly. If you genuinely expect sustained power outages then you need to buy a Starlink and a suitable generator or Solar+Battery system to power it. 

Ultrasonic

MattMattMattUK said:

Ultrasonic said:

MattMattMattUK said:

barker77 said:

Ultrasonic said:

QrizB said:

barker77 said:

Just seen the news about potential electric cut offs at winter. I wondered if anyone had thought about ways to keep boilers etc going maybe with a large battery or similar?  

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anker-PowerHouse-Portable-Generator-Emergency/dp/B08PCYF3Y4

I'm going to disagree slightly; that power pack does produce 300W of AC and might be able to run a central heating system for an hour or two.

Are you thinking of gas central heating?

Yeah just to power boiler for a few hours was the idea I was thinking 

If it is just for a few hours what is the point? A few hours without heating will be fine.

It could be a few hours in the middle of a much longer period of the power being off though. During my working week in winter I'd typically have the heating on for less than 2 hours per day as well actually. Not that I'm about to spend £400 on a battery.

If the power is going off for days at a time then a battery pack with zero generation ability is not going to solve the problem. Multiple day long power cuts over larges swathes of the country are pretty much societal breakdown territory, one would be better off getting a generator and a shotgun.

And there is the middle ground of power being off for say 1-3 days where I can see a way of powering heating from a battery as shared could actually be useful.

We're getting WAY beyond the current predicted worst case in what you're describing though.

QrizB

MattMattMattUK said:

Ultrasonic said:

pochase said:

We were also looking into this, more for keeping our work laptops and the router online.

Won't power loss to local internet infrastructure outside of your house likely render this redundant? 

Most of that stuff has batteries that are supposed to last several hours, with larger sites supposed to have backup generation as well, but I think 12-24 hours is the normal max without direct intervention such as refuelling at a site with a generator.

For accidental power cuts, I think 12h is the max duration before your DNO has to pay compensation. Deliberate power rationing is likely to be for much shorter periods.

(I've mentioned before that we had a power outage in mid-December a few years back. After about 9h the DNO has found the underground fault but had no immediate way of fixing it, so rather than paying £75 to each of 200+ properties they brought along a GBFO diesel generator and wired it into the substation. For the next 3-4 weeks (including Christmas) they came past every day with a bowser to refuel it, before finally fixing the underground fault in mid-January.)