March 6, 20179 yr Howdy everyone, We have put our house in the market as we're moving to a bigger place, but the last few days have seen our area having quite a few power outages (things tripping City Power says). I'm worried that having a power outage before or during showing buyers the place (as they tend to come after work or some-such) will have a negative effect on the "experience". Would it be worth my time and money to put in an inverter with a basic battery bank to keep the lights on? (i.o.w no solar, just grid and battery) And how quick can such installations be performed generally speaking? Gracias. -- Hein.
March 6, 20179 yr Not that easy. Unless you want to fit a changeover switch in the DB for the light circuits. Lights live and neutral is taken out of the board, fitted into a change over switch. One side is Eskom, other side is a UPS. Light go off, switch over to UPS. If you make the UPS a fixture, sell it with the house. Alternative is to go big and put the DB onto a UPS, and that is a small fortune.
March 6, 20179 yr I ran my lights and a separate circuit for the TV, Explora, and home theatre system on a Mecer 2440Va UPS with 2 x 120Ah Shoto Deep cycle's for more than three years before I decided to upgrade. The UPS itself is cheap. I think I saw them for R1500ish on Geewiz.co.za. It's a 24V system so you'll have to get 2 batteries to connect in series (size will depend on the load and grid downtime) but I guess 2 x 65Ah cheapies will do. The only thing is to get it to legally feed into your DB. My light circuit was taken of the Grid db completely and connected to the UPS. The UPS in turn was connected to a standard plug outlet. From the UPS (which had 3 three point plug outlets) I basically laid an some 2.5 twin and an earth wire with a PVC plug box. My TV, Explora and home theatre was connected to that. Not sure if any of this was completely legal (seeing that I did not install a EL on the UPS output side) of course but it worked fine. During loadshedding the battery status never went down more than one block (it had 4 blocks to show battery strength) I gave the system to my father in law and it's still working perfect after almost 4 years. Such a system would cost you no more than R3500 (without installation of course) I would get it installed and sell it with the house. It could actually increase the value... http://www.geewiz.co.za/mecer-inverters/5309-mecer-2400va-1440w-inverter-battery-charger-ups-intelligent-fan-optional-solar-charge-controller.html
March 6, 20179 yr Author Cool, thanks for the suggestions. I'll try to make a plan that will keep the lights on :-) -- Hein.
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