Does your home experience frequent power outages? Do you have equipment such as an oxygen machine that only has an 8 hour battery life on it? Are you one of the many that work from home and video conference or rely on computers to be powered? Do you just want to be comfortable and kick back and relax in your home with all the power on while your neighbors walk around with candles?
A standby generator or a battery backup system can be perfect options for you to install to not only add value to your house but peace of mind during a power outage. What are the differences you may be asking yourself? They both provide the same comfort but in a different way.
Lets start with the more conventional method, a standby generator. Imagine a Prius engine that sounds like your neighbors push mower. These type of generators will be powered by natural gas or liquid propane. If you already receive natural gas to your house, great! If you don’t that’s ok too but you will need to add the step of getting a propane tank installed on your property. If you already have these options then we are getting closer. Next we need to size two loads; first the load of gas that the generator itself will consume, and second the loads of electricity the generator will be supporting. Don’t know how to size these loads? No problem, here at Empowered Electric I am trained to do these load calculations. What I will need to do is go through the house and get all the name plate ratings of the gas appliances and electrical equipment. From those name plates and some math and code book sections we will be able to size your generator properly. Once we have an idea of what you would like to support we can pick the right size for you! Do you just want the light and plugs to work? Are you worried about being gone on a trip and the power being out and everything thawed in the freezer because there was no one home to plug in a portable generator? That information will lead us to either a whole house standby generator or a critical loads sub-panel. Installation will take anywhere from two to 3 days and then you will be well on your way hoping the power will go out from time to time. I am so proud of my work that I will be pulling permits to insure my work is up to the standards of the state inspectors at Labor & Industries who use the Washington state Revise Code of Washington (WAC) and the National Electrical Code (NEC) to inspect our work.
No propane or natural gas at your house? Or maybe you want an option that is more ecologically conscious? Perhaps you have a fear of gas leaks. Or more specifically dying from a explosion because your basement filled up full of gas after the pilot light went out on your water heater. After your deadbeat belligerent uncle who passed out from drinking too many bud lights lit cigarette fell out of his mouth into the supply vent. Igniting the the gas and simultaneously reducing your house into the largest pile of match sticks in Washington state and granting you your 5 minutes of fame on Thurston County Reporter. I have propane at my house, but its pretty much just in my main part of my house and not in the basement. So I don’t really worry about that. Anyhow, back to battery options.
Battery back-up systems with critical loads panel. The main disadvantage here is going to be the upfront cost. Its 2024 and the average cost of just the inverter is around 10 grand. That in itself is a pretty expensive option but it does have it benefits. The inverter is the conductor between PV systems, electrical utility (ie Puget Sound Energy), and batteries. Once you have that installed you can later work on a solar array investment to charge that system. Later on down the road, that inverter will be able to store the suns power in your battery system during the day and then charge your electric car during the evening. Another disadvantage initially will be the capacity of energy storage. Most systems will have between 5-12kw in power storage so you will be limited to the electrical load it can support before it goes dead and now you are back in the dark looking for your candles. Good news is that most of these systems are expandable and you can add batteries to the system as you get more money for your investment. You can expect a heat pump to fully drain a single battery by itself in about half a day. It is definitely better than a no-pump when the power is out but you are back to square one using smoke signals to get the linemen to take the tree branch off your downed power line.
The technology inside is smart, like intel inside. You can be conservative with your power and turn off everything except what you really need to run in a power outage. You could limp the battery system along for a long time if you shut off anything that was drawing more power than you want it to be. Just keep the lights and plugs going. Unfortunately, producing heat is not something electricity is very good at making. Not to mention, the reason why the power went out in the first place isn’t usually due to the best weather conditions. Heat is a hard thing to sacrifice during a blizzard or large amount of snowfall. Heck if it stays cold enough for long enough the pipes in your house could freeze. Don’t ask anyone from Texas about it, it probably never happens there. A space heater might drain the whole battery by itself in just a few hours if was left on for a few hours. But in reality these days in the South Sound, power outages are infrequent. And if they do occur the hard working men and women at the utility companies (PSE, PUD3, Tacoma Power) get it up and running within a few hours. So it will typically do what it was intended for. And it will be seamless, the batteries transfer power once they have sensed the utility voltage has fallen off so quickly that the lights don’t even flicker. A standby generator will have a 7-15 second delay until it kicks over to back up power.
I think both are great, and I would like to install both at your home. At Empowered I just want your home to be what you want to make it. It is your castle after all. In my house we wear jackets when it gets cold out and I have a lock on the thermostat. When I get home I don’t feel like doing electrical work anymore because I just spent all day doing it. So you might as well have me do it!