Looking for recommendations for large powerpacks with inverters

PhotoMan

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82133423#Comment_82133423

So the Sunsynk device that gets installed into a house by an electrician - does it supply power to your mains somehow or does it have a three pin socket into which you plug devices?

QrizB

So the Sunsynk device that gets installed into a house by an electrician - does it supply power to your mains somehow or does it have a three pin socket into which you plug devices?

It'll do various things for you:

• If you connect at least 150 volts of solar panels - roughly four of the large rooftop panels - it'll charge the batteries from solar. (This is the intended market - you'd normally use one of these as part of a domestic solar PV installation - but it'll do the other things on this list without any solar connected.)
• It will charge the batteries from the mains. If you have a time-of-use tariff (when mains electricity is cheaper at certain regular times of day) you can set times so it charges when it's cheaper.
• It can use the batteries to support whole-house loads when the grid's up. This, coupled with solar charging or time-of-use grid charging will reduce your electricity bill.
• In the event of a power outage, anything connected to the "load" connections will still be powered from the battery.

The simplest option would be to add a double socket below the device that's connected to the "load" terminals and you can plug into that. There are more complicated options that would switch some or all of your domestic circuits over to the "load" terminals; these would require more work from your electrician.

Bear in mind that the "load" can't exceed 3.6kW. Depending on exactly how big your house is and what appliances you have, this is unlikely to let you live normally but with care it would let you run your lights, operate your gas (or oil, or LPG) central heating and do some very light cooking.

There's a bigger version of that device - the Lifelynk XL - that has 5.2kWh of battery and a 5.5kW inverter, if you think you need more power.

Also, you can add extra batteries to either of those, if you want more capacity. It won't increase the max power beyond 3.6kW (5.5kW for the XL) but will give you more run time.

If you look at this recent thread you'll see people discussing how a home storage battery (which is what the Sunsynk is) can be used without solar PV. @lohr500 for example has a Tesla Powerwall 3 installed without any solar and has shared his numbers on that thread. He's a big user of electricity and it's saving him serious money, but you'll also see examples of how other people (who use less electricity) are saving with smaller batteries.

And it's not just about saving money. Most domestic batteries include some sort of UPS or EPS output, like the "load" terminals on the Sunsynk products I've been using as an example. You get to save money when the grid's working and then have the benefit of the battery (and any solar PV you might have installed) during outages.

QrizB

Having said all that, I think we come back to the question from the previous page:

So, what is it you need?

Work out what you're trying to achieve - what loads you want to support, for how long, and under what conditions - and we can give you some suggestions of how you could do it.

Keep in mind that space heating with direct electric heaters is a huge electrical demand and it takes much less electricity to run a central heating boiler. If you're all-electric, a small heat pump is still a much better bet than a fan heater.

Similarly for cooking, it's easier to stockpile fuel for a gas stove than an electric one, but if it has to be electric then a single induction hotplate or a crock pot is more manageable than a full electric cooker.

Lighting, on the other hand, is almost trivial now that LED lamps have replaced incandescent ones. I can light my entire house with 100 watts, when 30 years ago that would have been a single bulb.

JKenH

I have a Poweroak EB240. It won’t run a 2.2kW heater as its maximum output is 1kW. However I have successfully used mine to run a 2.0kW and even a 3.5kW A2A ASHP but not both at the same time. I also have used it to run my central heating boiler* for a few hours a day for several days, charging it up again overnight on cheap rate overnight electricity. If you have a long term black out that’s no help but if we have scheduled power cuts then it can be used to keep the house warm to normal standards.

*I asked my electrician to put a plug on the power supply to the CH pump to facilitate this.

knightstyle

IMO you need something like this and a big propane cylinder. Gorilla Power GP5500E-DF 5.50kW Dual Fuel Generator