Hey guys,

What have the clever okes out there done to be notified when there's load shedding?

A decent hybrid setup automatically kicks over to battery when grid supply fails, which is brilliant! However, only the non-essential loads get kicked off, most of which we never monitor...

My issue with this is: You'll happily continue running the pool pump and other appliances which drain the battery unnecessarily. More importantly, the maid unknowingly plugs in the iron for example, which is beyond the current rating of the battery.

So, I'm thinking a 2 stage warning system:

1. An audible alarm, similar to a UPS, but which one can "push button" deactivate until the grid is back. ("yes, I hear you, grid is gone, thank you, be quiet now")
2. An indication lamp, which comes on and stays on permanently during load shedding. Even after the audible "acknowledgement" one still sees whether grid is supplying or not.

 

No 2. should be very easy, using a relay you connect the light on inverter power onto the NC portion of a relay, and connect the relay "coil" to grid supply. When grid is present, the relay is switched to NO position, meaning no light, when grid fails the relay flicks back to its standard NC position, voila, the light circuit is closed...

No 1. however, similar to No 2. above, but how to wire in a push button deactivate switch?

 

Any other clever solutions you guys have come up with?

 

Cheers, Markus

 

14 minutes ago, markus_m2 said:

No 1. however, similar to No 2. above, but how to wire in a push button deactivate switch?

Use a latching relay. You need a SPDT relay. The N/C contact powers the buzzer, and the N/O contact is fed back to the relay coil (in parallel with the "reset" switch) so that once the relay closes it powers itself.

Then you need a second relay wired to the grid that drops out when the grid fails, and this powers the second latching relay/buzzer setup.

Or.... just buy a cheap Arduino board. Use some old wall-wart transformer plugged into the grid side as a "Sensor" and feed that through a suitable voltage divider (to get 5V or 3.3V) into one of the input pins. That's your "grid" signal, it goes to zero if the grid fails. Write a 10-line sketch and upload: if grid goes out... wait X seconds (ie debounce it  bit), then activate buzzer unless the button (on another input) has been pushed yet.

Find some suitable way to power said Arduino so it works when the grid is off.

Which one? Well, what have you got lying around in the parts bin...? 🙂

 

Hmm I like where this is going. Was also looking for an easy way to indicate to the wife/house when we are on batteries and when we are on grid. Maybe as mentioned above a light to be on when we are on batteries. In my case everything in the house is powered by the inverter , excluding oven and geyser.

I remember a friend of mine had a a very unusual way. He had an old Sony Playstation that wasn't backed up by his UPS, and he had monitoring set up for his home computers. Whenever the PlayStation dropped off the network, it usually meant there was a power outage 🙂

Edit: Hence, this could be as simple as placing a Sonoff on the non-essential side and using a stock-standard monitoring package (on a phone maybe?) to ping it occasionally. You could even integrate it with home assistant.

 

Edited July 1, 20205 yr by plonkster

I have a very reliable audible alarm:  My neighbour's generator starting.

1 minute ago, Bernardf said:

I have a very reliable audible alarm:  My neighbour's generator starting.

Hah! Yes, I used to do the same thing, but unfortunately the neighbour's generator had a mechanical failure during the last round of outages. The other option is to look for the other neighbour's WiFi AP. When that disappears, I know the power is out 🙂

 

47 minutes ago, plonkster said:

Hah! Yes, I used to do the same thing, but unfortunately the neighbour's generator had a mechanical failure during the last round of outages. The other option is to look for the other neighbour's WiFi AP. When that disappears, I know the power is out 🙂

 

On a more serious note, my easiest way to see loadshedding is the fact that the normally bright colourful lights on my Geyserwise control panel are dead. But it still requires me to go and check it, so I definitely want to look into some sort of buzzer system.

Just connect one (non essential) lighting circuit to the grid..

This also helps you to know when the power comes back on (which is also good to know!)

 

21 hours ago, markus_m2 said:

My issue with this is: You'll happily continue running the pool pump and other appliances which drain the battery unnecessarily. More importantly, the maid unknowingly plugs in the iron for example, which is beyond the current rating of the battery.

Why is the pool pump on your backed up circuits? 

But I do understand the problem. My system switches over so fast and so silently that people don't notice. This is not too much of a problem on a sunny day, but in the evenings or overcast days it can be. But at least my pool pump won't drain the battery and the washing machine (doesn't use much) and tumble dryer (uses a bit) get no power because they're in the outbuildings and the outbuildings are not backed up.

7 minutes ago, Bobster said:

Why is the pool pump on your backed up circuits? 
 

Because the pool pump is, unfortunately, on the same circuit as some outside essentials...but I'm not too worried about that, it's a very efficient "multi-speed" pump (around 300w continuous) and will obviously run only during the day - obviously a cloudy day will call for it to be switched off.

On 2020/07/01 at 12:16 PM, markus_m2 said:

So, I'm thinking a 2 stage warning system:

1. An audible alarm, similar to a UPS, but which one can "push button" deactivate until the grid is back. ("yes, I hear you, grid is gone, thank you, be quiet now")
2. An indication lamp, which comes on and stays on permanently during load shedding. Even after the audible "acknowledgement" one still sees whether grid is supplying or not.

 

No 2. should be very easy, using a relay you connect the light on inverter power onto the NC portion of a relay, and connect the relay "coil" to grid supply. When grid is present, the relay is switched to NO position, meaning no light, when grid fails the relay flicks back to its standard NC position, voila, the light circuit is closed...

No 1. however, similar to No 2. above, but how to wire in a push button deactivate switch?

 

Any other clever solutions you guys have come up with?

Sometime back I contrived a power failure alarm using a 2P 1NO+1NC contactor with a manual control switch, a 22mm panel mount red flashing buzzer and 22mm panel mount green pilot lamp. The wiring diagram is shown below.

Working:

Position auto: mains available -> red OFF, green ON
Position auto: mains failure -> red ON, green OFF
Position 1: mains failure -> red OFF, green OFF (used to silence the alarm)
Position 1: mains available -> switch automatically returns to auto position
Position 0: red ON, green OFF (used as test)

The contactor and LED indicator lamps have been working well the last 3 years or so without getting hot to the touch. I hope this helps.

YES, love your work @Kilowatt Power, that's brilliant!

 

I use home assistant femoncms sensor for this. I have setup an automation to play a notification on my alex enabled devices when Grid power is down on my inverter.

A buddy of mine used a old Android connected to the mains. There is an app that will send you a SMS , guess maybe another trigger if the phone stops charging / grid fail. Simple but very effective. 
If you want to go one step further you could use something like Tasker (Android) - then you can have all sorts of stuff setup when the grid fails. 

Does anyone have any updates, apps, or new opinions on this? Ideally we'd like the alerts sent to a phone.

Every time we have a storm in our area the mains switch off and tonight we didn't notice until the battery switched off. The fault code was an F56 which someone else in the family suggested was caused by someone knocking a switch off today as they were working near the inverter. 

 

We're running a grid-powered Sunsynk 5kW with a Hubble 5.5kW.

1 hour ago, StepbyStep said:

Does anyone have any updates, apps, or new opinions on this? Ideally we'd like the alerts sent to a phone.

Every time we have a storm in our area the mains switch off and tonight we didn't notice until the battery switched off. The fault code was an F56 which someone else in the family suggested was caused by someone knocking a switch off today as they were working near the inverter. 

 

We're running a grid-powered Sunsynk 5kW with a Hubble 5.5kW.

If you running HA, you can setup a NR flow that can monitor grid frequency, and use the notify API to send a notification to your mobile fone.

Another HA option is to get the Eskom loadshed integration. It notifies you of impending doom. This is not the same as real doom when you mains fail, just advanced notification of what is comming. Its loaded via HACS. See the Blackouts Escan gauge

Thanks both of you. Alas, no Home Assistant, I watched Ghost in the Machine as a kid and it scarred me.

The sunsynk app that'll be coming out eventually - does anyone know if the notification will be one of its features?

I'm also looking at Home Assistant again after all. 

Just browsing quickly over the comments, it appears you could simply monitor whether your cell phone is on charge [GRID POWER IS ON] or not [GRID POWER IS OFF].

Ask chatGPT to create a single file html5, css3, JavaScript web app that will monitor your phones battery state. It must make the screens background red when the power is off and green when the power is on.

Now save the code to .HTML file and run it. Ensure your phones screen remains on. There are apps that will do that for you.

 

Good luck.