On 10 Jan 2004 19:06:06 GMT, wrote:

Andy Hall wrote:
UPS. Admittedly, the ones in a UPS ought to be rated for deep discharge,
which a car battery isn't: but even living where he does, Dave's not
likely to run his battery flat all that often.

This can be addressed if you use leisure batteries. They are able to
stand somewhat more abuse than the regular car batteries.

I would suggest that's "different sort of abuse" rather than "more
abuse". If you tried starting your car from a 'leisure' battery it
wouldn't last long I don't think.


Well yes, I did mean it in the context of being able to be deep
discharged......



..andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

In article , Set Square
writes
In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Toby wrote:

Just what sort of power would be need to keep the CH
going for a couple of hours? I would assume it's less than 100w flat
out.


Measurements on my system suggest about 120 watts - pump 70, boiler 40 and
3-port valve actuator 10. With a 100% efficient inverter, you'd need 10 amps
at 12v to support this. A (say) 70 amp-hour leisure battery should keep you
going for (maybe) 5 hours continuous. In reality, the boiler and pump will
keep going on and off on their stats - so the battery will last longer than
this.

And you can always run a lead in from your car to top it up::::
--
Tony Sayer

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 16:01:09 -0000, "Set Square"
wrote:

The generators in question both essentially generate DC and use inverter
technology to produce AC. [I presume this is easier than generating AC since
it doesn't require accurate speed control].

I think the issue is more to do with matching power to load, a
synchronous genset will be running at either 1500rpm or 3000rpm
depending on the poles of the alternator, it is only optimally matched
to the load at 75%ish of its max power. The inverter set can vary
speed to match the load better. If this gains more in thermodynamic
efficiency than the ~10% electrical losses of rectifier and inverter
then fuel cost will be lower, also the engine life will be extended.
From my experience of selecting a genset to match peak loads I found
the average load was 1/5 of peak.

I suppose you could build much the same with an ex military battery
charging genset, 24volt battery and a couple of inverters (1 near sine
wave for sensitive equipment , 1 cheaper modified square wave for less
fussy stuff) in parallel. The battery could be automotive as it would
only handle peak loads or until the genset came up to speed. Float
charge the battery and have the genset start using the same inputs
either Dave P or yourself suggested. The Honda i series is neat
though.

AJH

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
tony sayer wrote:

In article , Set Square
writes
In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Toby wrote:

Just what sort of power would be need to keep the CH
going for a couple of hours? I would assume it's less than 100w flat
out.


Measurements on my system suggest about 120 watts - pump 70, boiler
40 and 3-port valve actuator 10. With a 100% efficient inverter,
you'd need 10 amps at 12v to support this. A (say) 70 amp-hour
leisure battery should keep you going for (maybe) 5 hours
continuous. In reality, the boiler and pump will keep going on and
off on their stats - so the battery will last longer than this.

And you can always run a lead in from your car to top it up::::


Or go for a ride in the car with the heater on to keep warm. May be more
efficient!
--
Cheers,
Set Square
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On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 10:20:39 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman wrote:

I've just finished doing something similar to mine, although I've
used a car battery and invertor as the standby source.
snip
I'd be happy with comments from others on any improvements.

Change the car battery for a "leisure" type battery. Generally car
batteries do not take kindly to deep discharges, a few cycles and they
are dead or have a dead cell.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 16:01:09 -0000, Set Square wrote:

I can put the generator in a suitable location (maybe in the
conservatory - not sure yet)

Erm, exhaust fumes?

The smaller one (900 watts) appears adequate *unless* SWMBO decides
she needs to use the microwave - in which case we shall need the
1600 watt model.

I'd look at the plate on the back of your uWave. It maight be a 600W
or 800W on thefront but that is the RF power inside the box. Our 800W
(category E) actually takes 1240W...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:31:19 -0000, Toby wrote:

One point with the sort of UPS for PCs such as the APC ones, are
they won't power something from cold.

You can, I've done it with mine (SmartUPS 700i). However APC don't
recomend this cold start for some reason.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

The smaller one (900 watts) appears adequate *unless* SWMBO decides
she needs to use the microwave - in which case we shall need the
1600 watt model.

I'd look at the plate on the back of your uWave. It maight be a 600W
or 800W on thefront but that is the RF power inside the box. Our 800W
(category E) actually takes 1240W...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail


which is about what he said isn't it ?

i.e. he'd need a bigger model

Nick

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 16:01:09 -0000, Set Square wrote:

I can put the generator in a suitable location (maybe in the
conservatory - not sure yet)

Erm, exhaust fumes?

Well, I'd do it with the widow - or even door - open. More likely, I'd put
the generator outside - but I'd then need to keep the electrics dry if it
rained.

The smaller one (900 watts) appears adequate *unless* SWMBO decides
she needs to use the microwave - in which case we shall need the
1600 watt model.

I'd look at the plate on the back of your uWave. It maight be a 600W
or 800W on thefront but that is the RF power inside the box. Our 800W
(category E) actually takes 1240W...

My microwave is rated at 650watts cooking power - but when I measured the
actual consumption with my plug-in meter it was just over 1200 watts. That's
why I said I would need the 1600 watt generator rather than the 900 watt
version.
--
Cheers,
Set Square
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On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:13:09 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 15:31:19 -0000, Toby wrote:

One point with the sort of UPS for PCs such as the APC ones, are
they won't power something from cold.

You can, I've done it with mine (SmartUPS 700i). However APC don't
recomend this cold start for some reason.


Perhaps it's a matter of the application. According to their
configurator, if you run this one at 300W (420VA), it will go for 10
minutes. In terms of a PC, this is probably not long enough to do
much work if you've started from cold.

One of the common philosophies of UPSes is to give time to perform an
orderly shutdown when the power fails. APC provide software to do all
this across multiple machines for example.

Perhaps this is more of a customer expectation setting exercise on
APC's part.
..andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:40:16 -0000, Nick Smith wrote:

The smaller one (900 watts) appears adequate *unless* SWMBO
decides she needs to use the microwave - in which case we shall
need the 1600 watt model.

I'd look at the plate on the back of your uWave. It maight be a
600W or 800W on thefront but that is the RF power inside the box.
Our 800W (category E) actually takes 1240W...

which is about what he said isn't it ?

i.e. he'd need a bigger model

Yes but probably not big enough. If 900W serves the demand without the
uWave you only have 700W "surplus" with the bigger genny. As uWaves
are only about 60% effcient from their RF rating even a 600W jobbie
will draw 1000W...

More of a heads up than anything else, but an easy mistake to make.
Not sure what sort of load a uWave presents either, I suspect very
inductive.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 23:36:50 -0000, Set Square wrote:

Well, I'd do it with the widow - or even door - open. More likely,
I'd put the generator outside - but I'd then need to keep the
electrics dry if it rained.

Under an upturned wheel barrow with the handles supported on a couple
of garden chairs? Have the barrow facing into the prevailing wind
direction to minimise rain blowing under.

Also I suspect the smell might penetrate rather deeply into any soft
furnishings. Are these little Hondas 2 or 4 strokes?

My microwave is rated at 650watts cooking power - but when I
measured the actual consumption with my plug-in meter it was just
over 1200 watts. That's why I said I would need the 1600 watt
generator rather than the 900 watt version.

But your probable other load is 250 x 2 for the freezers and 150 for
the CH = 650W. You only have 400W "spare" on the 1600W when it's
driving the uWave. I guess you could switch the freezers off use the
uWave and then (hopefully!) remember to switch them back on again...

Not to mention that all those loads are probably pretty inductive,
that always brings in some derating of a genny.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

In article ,
PoP wrote:
The next thing is whether to fit a battery charger to the system.

Might be a lot cheaper and easier to use a UPS rather than a genny.
That way you've got battery backed up CH 24x7 and never need to worry
about switching over.

If I add a 'permanent' charger then effectively I've got an UPS. With a
capacity of approx 0.5 kwh. I don't know what you'd expect to pay for one
ready made, but my costs are *well* under 50 quid so far, given that most
of the bits are either secondhand or new via Ebay.

--
*Being healthy is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

In article ,
Set Square wrote:
Dave - I was very interested in your solution. Does your inverter
produce a sine wave or a square wave output? If the latter, do your
boiler electronics seem happy with it? Have you done anything to
eliminate spikes? How is the CH supply earthed when powered by the
inverter?

It's basically a Vellerman kit from the likes of Maplin with a few mods.
It produces a near perfect 50 Hz sine wave when feeding my CH. It would be
an expensive solution (perhaps) if bought direct from Maplin as I estimate
the parts cost at about 70 quid if bought retail - high for a 160 watt (or
320 from 24 volt) invertor. However, I bought all the bits from Ebay -
although it took several months to gather them all together. I intend it
for other use than just a CH back up, though.

--
*You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

In article ,
Andy Hall wrote:
But Dave's already got the guts of a UPS, in the form of his inverter
and car battery. An off-the-shelf cheapie UPS won't have the runtime
he's getting - lots more stored energy in a 50AH car battery such as
the man says he's already using, than the smaller lead-acids which come
with your UPS. Admittedly, the ones in a UPS ought to be rated for deep
discharge, which a car battery isn't: but even living where he does,
Dave's not likely to run his battery flat all that often.

This can be addressed if you use leisure batteries. They are able to
stand somewhat more abuse than the regular car batteries.

The battery I'm using is a spare for my old Rover bought secondhand from a
scrapped car for pennies. I can also adjust the 'drop out' voltage of the
invertor to anything I choose, so could set it at a safe(er) amount for a
car type battery - reducing the time it would run for, of course. A good
make 50 Ahr car battery can be bought new for about 50 quid and has a
three year warranty.

--
*There's no place like www.home.com *

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

In article ,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
I've just finished doing something similar to mine, although I've
used a car battery and invertor as the standby source.
snip
I'd be happy with comments from others on any improvements.

Change the car battery for a "leisure" type battery. Generally car
batteries do not take kindly to deep discharges, a few cycles and they
are dead or have a dead cell.

Since I've already got a near new battery for pennies, replacing it with a
leisure one wouldn't be cost effective. If I discover it's not reliable
enough for my purposes, then of course I'd consider the correct thing.

--
*Stable Relationships Are For Horses. *

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 22:40:16 -0000, Nick Smith wrote:

The smaller one (900 watts) appears adequate *unless* SWMBO
decides she needs to use the microwave - in which case we shall
need the 1600 watt model.

I'd look at the plate on the back of your uWave. It maight be a
600W or 800W on thefront but that is the RF power inside the box.
Our 800W (category E) actually takes 1240W...

which is about what he said isn't it ?

i.e. he'd need a bigger model

Yes but probably not big enough. If 900W serves the demand without the
uWave you only have 700W "surplus" with the bigger genny. As uWaves
are only about 60% effcient from their RF rating even a 600W jobbie
will draw 1000W...

More of a heads up than anything else, but an easy mistake to make.
Not sure what sort of load a uWave presents either, I suspect very
inductive.


Perhaps I should have made it clear that I wouldn't run the microwave at the
*same time* as everything else. I would at least turn the freezers off for
the relatively short time needed to operate the microwave.
--
Cheers,
Set Square
______
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In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 23:36:50 -0000, Set Square wrote:

Well, I'd do it with the widow - or even door - open. More likely,
I'd put the generator outside - but I'd then need to keep the

electrics dry if it rained.

Under an upturned wheel barrow with the handles supported on a couple
of garden chairs? Have the barrow facing into the prevailing wind
direction to minimise rain blowing under.

Also I suspect the smell might penetrate rather deeply into any soft
furnishings. Are these little Hondas 2 or 4 strokes?

They're 4 stroke.

My microwave is rated at 650watts cooking power - but when I
measured the actual consumption with my plug-in meter it was just
over 1200 watts. That's why I said I would need the 1600 watt
generator rather than the 900 watt version.

But your probable other load is 250 x 2 for the freezers and 150 for
the CH = 650W. You only have 400W "spare" on the 1600W when it's
driving the uWave. I guess you could switch the freezers off use the
uWave and then (hopefully!) remember to switch them back on again...


Yes, I wouldn't run it all concurrently - see my previous post.


Not to mention that all those loads are probably pretty inductive,
that always brings in some derating of a genny.

Ah, now that's interesting! The little plug in volt/amp/watt meter which I
have bought also displays phase angle as cos-phi (can't do Greek symbols in
plain text!). What use should I make of this information when determining
genny load?

--
Cheers,
Set Square
______
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On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:48:27 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman wrote:

A good make 50 Ahr car battery can be bought new for about 50 quid
and has a three year warranty.

When used in a car... you could lie of course. B-)

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 10:51:42 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman
wrote:

Since I've already got a near new battery for pennies, replacing it with a
leisure one wouldn't be cost effective. If I discover it's not reliable
enough for my purposes, then of course I'd consider the correct thing.

I think from what others have said car batteries don't last long if
deeply discharged frequently. I can't comment on that because I have
no knowledge of it.

But so what? The likelihood is that it will rarely if ever go into
deep discharge! Most power outages last only a short time (an hour or
two), which the car battery can easily hold out for.

If your car battery is being deeply discharged by the UPS arrangement
then my guess is that there's some sort of major disruption to the
power grid connecting to your property - and you'd be sorting that out
as the critical issue - not fannying around trying to find a battery
that is friendly towards being deeply discharged.

I have a Smart UPS on my PC equipment here - which from memory I think
holds up for 25 minutes. Now and again I hear it clicking in as the
lights go dim for a second or two. A couple of times over the last few
years it has had to come online seriously when we lost power to the
house for a considerable period of time - which was fine because it
gave me time to shut things down gracefully.

I think your decision is okay personally

PoP

If you really must use the email address provided
with my newsreader please be aware that the email
is processed with spamcop. As a result your email
to me might be treated as spam!

In article ,
Set Square wrote:
Perhaps I should have made it clear that I wouldn't run the microwave at
the *same time* as everything else. I would at least turn the freezers
off for the relatively short time needed to operate the microwave.

I'm not quite sure why you'd want a microwave to work as part of an
emergency installation. Fine if you're providing a *proper* standby
generating facility, but few would - unless they live somewhere subject to
frequent cuts. Surely some form of calor gas cooking would be easier for
emergency use - assuming you don't have mains gas and can't just use a
hob.

--
*Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

In article ,
Steve Firth wrote:
If I add a 'permanent' charger then effectively I've got an UPS. With
a capacity of approx 0.5 kwh. I don't know what you'd expect to pay
for one ready made, but my costs are *well* under 50 quid so far,
given that most of the bits are either secondhand or new via Ebay.

That Vellerman inverter is suspect though. I've never liked their kits.

Well, I do like them. They usually do what they say on the box. And in the
case of this invertor - it's fine, and looks to me well designed. Of
course it's perfectly built. ;-)
I didn't use their own transformer (an 'extra') which is about double the
cost of a new suitable toroid from Maplin. I actually found a suitable one
on Ebay for half the Maplin price. And Maplin are quite competitive for
some mains toroidal transformers.

--
*Many hamsters only blink one eye at a time *

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

In article ,
PoP wrote:
I think from what others have said car batteries don't last long if
deeply discharged frequently. I can't comment on that because I have
no knowledge of it.

It's said to be true - they certainly don't like being flattened. I
remember buying one AC Delco 'Freedom' car battery which had a three year
warranty for car use, but one year for golf buggy or wheelchair etc.

But so what? The likelihood is that it will rarely if ever go into
deep discharge! Most power outages last only a short time (an hour or
two), which the car battery can easily hold out for.

That's what I'm gambling on. If it proves wrong, I've lost little and can
simply buy a traction battery.

If your car battery is being deeply discharged by the UPS arrangement
then my guess is that there's some sort of major disruption to the
power grid connecting to your property - and you'd be sorting that out
as the critical issue - not fannying around trying to find a battery
that is friendly towards being deeply discharged.

I have a Smart UPS on my PC equipment here - which from memory I think
holds up for 25 minutes. Now and again I hear it clicking in as the
lights go dim for a second or two. A couple of times over the last few
years it has had to come online seriously when we lost power to the
house for a considerable period of time - which was fine because it
gave me time to shut things down gracefully.

I think your decision is okay personally

The Acorn I use doesn't suffer as much from being inadvertently shut down
as a PC - all you'll loose is your work from the last save - and on
important stuff I set it to save every 15 minutes. ie rarely. ;-)

--
*Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire *

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 12:47:44 +0000, PoP wrote:

But so what? The likelihood is that it will rarely if ever go into
deep discharge! Most power outages last only a short time (an hour
or two), which the car battery can easily hold out for.

Try telling that to the last few people to be reconnected 48hrs after
any major storm... I expect there will be a few down south on tues/wed
without power after Mondays storm (if it happens, something will but
how big?)

Power outages might only last an hour two at your location but up here
they are either a second or so as the auto recloser resets but if that
locks out then the power will be off for 5 or 6 hours. Say 1/2 an hour
for the supply company to get enough reports to indicate it is their
problem, 1 1/2 hours to get the engineers out of bed and drive in and
a couple of hours to find and fix the fault.

If your car battery is being deeply discharged by the UPS
arrangement then my guess is that there's some sort of major
disruption to the power grid connecting to your property - and you'd
be sorting that out as the critical issue

Personally I'm not going anywhere near the 11kV distribution. If my
incomer is dead I get on the phone, couple of minets job done. B-)

- not fannying around trying to find a battery that is friendly
towards being deeply discharged.

No you'd start with a battery capable of handling repeated deep
discharges. I'd like something like Mr Firth has recently outlined,
especially the wind turbine part but I'd also like to put the whole
house on it all the time thus reduce consumption from the grid or even
sell back...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 12:37:42 -0000, Set Square wrote:

Ah, now that's interesting! The little plug in volt/amp/watt meter
which I have bought ...

Was that ScrewFix? I remember the price =A320. I have one but that's
more sided to costs rather than techy things like V I phase
difference. It also doesn't like light loads (below about 50W).

also displays phase angle as cos-phi (can't do Greek symbols in
plain text!). What use should I make of this information when
determining genny load?

Donno, only did AC theory up to A level, 25 years ago and not used it
since. That's what google and the web is for... B-)

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Dave Plowman wrote:

In article ,
Set Square wrote:
Perhaps I should have made it clear that I wouldn't run the
microwave at the *same time* as everything else. I would at least
turn the freezers off for the relatively short time needed to
operate the microwave.

I'm not quite sure why you'd want a microwave to work as part of an
emergency installation. Fine if you're providing a *proper* standby
generating facility, but few would - unless they live somewhere
subject to frequent cuts. Surely some form of calor gas cooking would
be easier for emergency use - assuming you don't have mains gas and
can't just use a hob.


I guess it's simply a matter of keeping my options open. We have gas for the
central heating of course - but an all-electric cooker! I'm thinking of a
situation where power lines get brought down by ice and where it takes the
electricity board 2 or 3 days to restore the supply. [This *did* happen to
some near neighbours of ours a few years ago - who are fed from a different
sub-station from ours]. Provided the path from the house to the caravan is
not blocked by a 6 foot snowdrift, we would probably use the caravan's
cooker, powered by propane. Even so, the microwave would be useful for
thawing any frozen food we may wish to eat.
--
Cheers,
Set Square
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In article ,
"Set Square" writes:
Ah, now that's interesting! The little plug in volt/amp/watt meter which I
have bought also displays phase angle as cos-phi (can't do Greek symbols in
plain text!). What use should I make of this information when determining
genny load?

Generators (and UPS's) normally care about the VA of the load.
So for practical purposes, simply measure the current drawn by
the appliances and ignore the phase angle and power.

--
Andrew Gabriel

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 12:37:42 -0000, Set Square wrote:

Ah, now that's interesting! The little plug in volt/amp/watt meter
which I have bought ...

Was that ScrewFix? I remember the price £20. I have one but that's
more sided to costs rather than techy things like V I phase
difference. It also doesn't like light loads (below about 50W).

No, I got it from Machine Mart. It's made by brennenstuhl - and the model is
PM230.
It incorporates a 13A plug and socket, and has an lcd display - plus several
buttons to select function/mode etc.

also displays phase angle as cos-phi (can't do Greek symbols in
plain text!). What use should I make of this information when
determining genny load?

Donno, only did AC theory up to A level, 25 years ago and not used it
since. That's what google and the web is for... B-)

Ah, well I did it over 40 years ago - and it's sort-of coming back. I seem
to remember that watts = rms volts x rms amps x cos(phi) - where phi is the
phase angle [so that cos(phi) is the power factor (= 1 for a phase angle of
zero or less than 1 for a non-zero phase angle, as with an inductive load)]

Assuming that is correct, how do I use it to de-rate my genny? For example,
when the CH is running, it is taking 118 watts = 240v x 0.56a x 0.88
Should I multiply the volts and amps together and ignore the phase angle to
get 134VA - and treat this as 134 watts as far as the genny is concerned?
--
Cheers,
Set Square
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In article ,
Dave Liquorice wrote:
But so what? The likelihood is that it will rarely if ever go into
deep discharge! Most power outages last only a short time (an hour
or two), which the car battery can easily hold out for.

Try telling that to the last few people to be reconnected 48hrs after
any major storm... I expect there will be a few down south on tues/wed
without power after Mondays storm (if it happens, something will but
how big?)

Yes, but I live in Central London. If I lived where you do, I'd probably
have a full blown standby diesel genny by now - you've presumably not got
a space or noise with neighbours problem?

Large non portable gennies can be very cheap - relatively - second hand.
It's the 3 ish kW ones which cost a fortune.

--
*Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
Andrew Gabriel wrote:

In article ,
"Set Square" writes:
Ah, now that's interesting! The little plug in volt/amp/watt meter
which I have bought also displays phase angle as cos-phi (can't do
Greek symbols in plain text!). What use should I make of this
information when determining genny load?

Generators (and UPS's) normally care about the VA of the load.
So for practical purposes, simply measure the current drawn by
the appliances and ignore the phase angle and power.


Thanks. That's what I suspected. [Sorry didn't read your post until I had
posted another question along these lines].
--
Cheers,
Set Square
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"Huge" wrote
| The last time we were off for 96 hours.
| 24/7 kept telling us ...

Does their company name constitute false advertising?

Owain

In uk.d-i-y, Owain wrote:
| The last time we were off for 96 hours.
| 24/7 kept telling us ...

Does their company name constitute false advertising?

Nah. Just tells you how long you can expect to ring them for without
getting a useful response...

Stefek

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 18:07:45 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman wrote:

Yes, but I live in Central London. If I lived where you do, I'd
probably have a full blown standby diesel genny by now ...

It was high up the list when we moved in. A couple of the poles
supporting our (we are the only people on it) 1/2mile single phase
11kV spur are at rather odd angles and apart from the odd bit at
substations I suspect our supply is overhead from the power station to
the house wall. This includes both feeds (33kV and 11kV backup) to the
local 33kV substation that pass over Hartside (1900') enroute to the
125Kv substation to the north of Penrith.

As it happens the supply is pretty stable and I can cope with an
average of one 6hr outage a year. This is *much* better than some
people living in urban areas near major cities. Of course having said
that we'll get a big storm this winter that brings down our spur and
half the other lines in Cumbria/Northumberland/Durham and we'll be
without a mains supply for 5 days...

- you've presumably not got a space or noise with neighbours
problem?

No plenty of space and nearest neighbours would be well out of earshot
of any half decently silenced genset.

Large non portable gennies can be very cheap - relatively - second
hand.

Thats probably what I'd go for, preferably able to run on 28sec
heating oil as we have a good supply of that. Cheaper than red diesel
as well...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

Huge wrote:
"Dave Liquorice" writes:
On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 12:47:44 +0000, PoP wrote:

But so what? The likelihood is that it will rarely if ever go into
deep discharge! Most power outages last only a short time (an hour
or two), which the car battery can easily hold out for.

Try telling that to the last few people to be reconnected 48hrs after
any major storm...

The last time we were off for 96 hours.

24/7 kept telling us they were very busy and they'd get to us, but
when we got really ****ed off and started calling every few hours and
the engineers finally came, they said they'd only just heard about
us. Next time, I shall call every 60 minutes until the power is
reconnected.

Just had a 30 min outage here (Spalding), UPS barely troubled running Tivo,
DTT decoder, PC, router and 1 CFL lightbulb. Gas hob carried on through with
no disturbance, unlike my parents' which cuts the flame back when the leccy
goes off. Heating went off but that's no biggie, there's always a few more
layers of clothing that can go on before I start feeling cold.

--
James...
www.jameshart.co.uk

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 18:04:36 -0000, Set Square wrote:

No, I got it from Machine Mart. It's made by brennenstuhl - and the
model is PM230.

=A325.00ish inc VAT and delivery. Tempted but there is a dearth of any
real information on the net including the Brennenstuhl site. B-(

Any chance of posting up a spec sheet for it? Always assuming that
information is supplied with the unit... Nearest Machine Mart is
Carlisle (50+ miles RT) and we rarely go to Carlisle.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

In article ,
"Dave Liquorice" writes:
On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 18:04:36 -0000, Set Square wrote:
No, I got it from Machine Mart. It's made by brennenstuhl - and the
model is PM230.
£25.00ish inc VAT and delivery. Tempted but there is a dearth of any
real information on the net including the Brennenstuhl site. B-(
Any chance of posting up a spec sheet for it? Always assuming that
information is supplied with the unit... Nearest Machine Mart is
Carlisle (50+ miles RT) and we rarely go to Carlisle.

I bought one from Maplin a while back when it was on special
offer (£12 IIRC). I compared it with a true power meter,
and there are some load types for which it wasn't very accurate.
I don't seem to recall what those were now though.

--
Andrew Gabriel

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 23:30:56 +0000 (GMT), Dave Liquorice wrote:

On Sun, 11 Jan 2004 18:07:45 +0000 (GMT), Dave Plowman wrote:

Yes, but I live in Central London. If I lived where you do, I'd
probably have a full blown standby diesel genny by now ...

It was high up the list when we moved in. A couple of the poles
supporting our (we are the only people on it) 1/2mile single phase
11kV spur are at rather odd angles

Have you actually bothered to give them a bell and tell them a couple of
poles are leaning? Better to tell them and have them come and push the
poles up in decent weather than wait until a storm brings them even
further over and possibly cuts off your leccy supply.

Dave Plowman wrote:
In article ,
PoP wrote:
The next thing is whether to fit a battery charger to the system.

Might be a lot cheaper and easier to use a UPS rather than a genny.
That way you've got battery backed up CH 24x7 and never need to worry
about switching over.

If I add a 'permanent' charger then effectively I've got an UPS. With a
capacity of approx 0.5 kwh. I don't know what you'd expect to pay for one
ready made, but my costs are *well* under 50 quid so far, given that most
of the bits are either secondhand or new via Ebay.

That's about what they cost ready made, UPSs have become incredibly
cheap now.

--
Chris Green

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 07:36:01 +0000, Wanderer wrote:

Have you actually bothered to give them a bell and tell them a
couple of poles are leaning?

On the two occasions (once to lower the volts to within spec and once
to replace one of the 11kV insulators) that we have had engineers here
I've pointed the leaning poles them out. They don't seem overly
concerned and they are friendly engineers willing to chat not just
lets do the job and get outa here.

Better to tell them and have them come and push the poles up in
decent weather ...

I doubt that you could just "push a pole up" as a) there is the best
part of 6' or more pole in the ground b) you'd have a void on one
side c) you need to compress the ground on the other side. The only
solution is to plant an new pole, in a new hole. Which round here
might be fun as the bed rock is rather close to the surface in places.

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail

On 12 Jan 2004 01:28:05 GMT, Andrew Gabriel wrote:

I bought one from Maplin a while back when it was on special
offer (=A312 IIRC). I compared it with a true power meter,
and there are some load types for which it wasn't very accurate.

Well I wouldn't expect a precision instrument for =A320. B-)

I have an "Econometer" bought about 10 years ago which is pretty good
for loads above 100W or so but anything less is is decidely doubtful.
What is the minimum power this one says it'll measure?

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail