Anyone used an inverter as a mains backup?

[stonehenge]

Live out in the sticks and get occasional power cuts. Got an old generator but it's on its last legs.

Wondering if a viable alternative would be to hook up an inverter to the battery in the car.

Anyone tried this?

[AtW]

You are a contractor, right?

Hook the house up to your Lambo battery.

Sorteed.

[vwdan]

Mains backup for what, precisely? Certainly possible to use a 12v battery and inverter - that's essentially what UPS's are, but you need to define your use case very carefully.

If you're imagining keeping your whole house running, then you're going to need a lot more than one 12v battery and some serious gear

[scooterscot]

This post got me looking up generators on Amazon. For some reason Amazon.de seems to offer many more attractive options than co.uk site. No idea. Anyways, loads of options. They've certainly changed since me dad's day.

[NigelJK]

To do it properly have a look at what is done in Narrow boats. You'll need a residential battery pack and a good quality inverter. We have 5 residential batteries and an 1800W inverter. It possible to then use a battery conditioner, possibly solar (again use the proper thing, not a car one) to keep them topped up.

[Lance]

Live out in the sticks and get occasional power cuts. Got an old generator but it's on its last legs.

Wondering if a viable alternative would be to hook up an inverter to the battery in the car.

Anyone tried this?

A car battery is not much use as it’s for short bursts of high demand. You know like for staring a car.
A leisure battery from a caravan is more use.

Or why not buy a bloody UPS as that’s both a battery and an inverter? As well as the electronics to provide a constant supply during the failure rather than you having to go and rewire everything.

That way you’ll have enough light to bleed the radiators at the same time.

[Lance]

This post got me looking up generators on Amazon. For some reason Amazon.de seems to offer many more attractive options than co.uk site. No idea. Anyways, loads of options. They've certainly changed since me dad's day.

Gas Turbines - Products | Solar Turbines

A few years ago I did some sums on whether I could generate my own electricity using a gas turbine.
Fuelled with LPG.

It was cheaper than buying from the grid (that includes purchase and fuel as well as maintenance for 10 years).
The real benefit at the time was if you had a solar panel and got subsidies. My plan was to use the turbine to feed power back to the grid and clean up at around 40p/kWhr.

Only problem is that they are noisy.

[Paddy]

Live out in the sticks and get occasional power cuts. Got an old generator but it's on its last legs.

Wondering if a viable alternative would be to hook up an inverter to the battery in the car.

Anyone tried this?

A car battery is not much use as it’s for short bursts of high demand. You know like for staring a car.
A leisure battery from a caravan is more use.

Or why not buy a bloody UPS as that’s both a battery and an inverter? As well as the electronics to provide a constant supply during the failure rather than you having to go and rewire everything.

That way you’ll have enough light to bleed the radiators at the same time.

I have tried this with a car battery and it only lasts a couple of hours due to the fact that the inverter will cut out when the voltage drops just below 12v. I have a new setup with a leisure battery and a smart charger. I can get six hours run-time out of it.

I would definitely recommend a smart charger even for a car battery.

At my villa in southern Europe, the power is cut many times due to the high number of thunder storms in the mountains. Therefore, I also have a standby generator with electric start. I can run most thing from that.

UPSs don't really last for several hours.

[Lost It]

If you have the engine running in the car, the "duty cycle" will last a bit longer... Not fuel efficient though.

[AtW]

I say take off and nuke whole site from orbit - it’s the only way to be sure that lack of mains power is no longer a problem there...