On 26/08/2019 15:51, Martin Brown wrote:
On 26/08/2019 13:24, AnthonyL wrote:
The incoming power to our section of road failed at 3am Sunday and it
was 2.35pm (yes, just below the compensation threshold of £150) when
it was restored.

It was of course a nice sunny day - ideal for solar generation, and
both my next door neighbour and the house opposite have got panels.
Could they take advantage of the situation?Â* No way.Â* The bloody
things need electrical power to operate.

They have to drop out or be isolated completely from the mains grid and
then be provided a reference 50Hz pilot. It is possible but not common
as it is more expense and complexity for a rare situation.

Not even a cup of tea.Â* Or more seriously the woman at the house
opposite is bed bound and needs a bit of power to change the position
of the bed.

Someone in that position should have an automatic fallback so that when
external mains fails the system can be switched to internal power and a
generator set starts up (with manual intervention or more expensively
automatically start up after mains power fail). The guy who lived
opposite had such a system to support his 95 year old father in law.


Friends up the road have these. There are two big rotary switches
(those things sitting in a wall box, and are about 4 inches across).

One (I think) cuts off the DC power to the panel, the other isolates
the output from the inverter from the mains.