Suicide leads are not legal there but its commonly accepted that people do it anyway.

Well we just lost power and I have made a suicide cable. Typing on my computer with my lights on .... and I haven't epsteined myself yet! Did flick the main isolating switch to give the linesmen outside a break :)

Have been pretty selective about what loads to allow. The fridge seems to be too much for the 2kw inverter.

The car battery is rated 580CCA and while not scientific the rule of thumb apparently is to divide by 7.5. This equals 77.3Ah. Inverter is pulling 34A so hopefully a couple of hours at least.

Also I wouldn't have a car battery sitting on carpet.

So then, isn't the solution to wire your solar panels correctly to a couple of car batteries, with cabling suitable for a powerwall when they become more affordable and with greater life expectancy. In the meantime, you would have enough capacity to run selected (led) lights, a laptop and modem and charge the phones during a power cut.

OK – this isn’t hard – it’s just not widely understood in NZ.

It’s probably better understood by RV users – who live with ‘on-board’ and ‘shore-power-only’ circuits.

The key is splitting your house circuits into ‘normal’ and ’24-7’.
As an ‘On-Grid’ house, it’s unlikely you want to afford having all your circuits ’24-7’.

So, the normal circuits will die with the grid… the 24-7 ones feed from something (hopefully) more reliable - ie: battery, solar, generator, hamsters.

I’ve just had this wired into my new house build – with complete acceptance by my sparkies.
We’ve wired a main switchboard and a secondary one for 24/7 (lighting, water pump & server).
There’s a 3-position switch for the secondary board: Grid / Off / Other.
Currently the Other is a 7KW generator – in the future it will be a Solar/Battery/Inverter-Charger.

This imitates an extremely standard solar install I did on a camper in 2016 (in Arizona). The solar controller fed the battery, the inverter-charger did the smart switching between shore-power and solar use – with a preference for solar. The inverter-charger drives the loads with solar/battery or grid power – with no risk of back-feeding the grid from the solar.

The same brand of inverter-charger is available in NZ (for 50Hz 230V, obviously) – I haven’t afforded one yet, but they’re entirely legal (in use worldwide & NZ approved). Cost is very much related to output.

I’m sure you could run such a Solar setup with just a 12V motorcycle battery – but personally I’d get a car battery or a couple of Golf Cart batteries to give at least some resilience to clouds. If there’s no grid (shore) power available, then when the solar/battery output falls below your demand (consumption on the 24/7 circuits), the inverter-charger just drops you. So you have a blackout – which is what you were trying to avoid. Do the math. My camper install ran 4 big 6V golf-cart batteries and gave us 3 rainy-day capability. The house will eventually have a 48V bank.

freitasm: I am told by a concerned sparky this is photo evidence that can lead to trouble if anything goes wrong.

Good news is nothing went wrong... street lights came on an hour later, unplugged everything then hit the main isolating switch and all good. The inverter has overload protection and at 2kw would not be able to exceed current limits of the 2.5mm cable that will be used on that circuit (16A breaker at the board).

Zeon:

 

freitasm: I am told by a concerned sparky this is photo evidence that can lead to trouble if anything goes wrong.

 

Good news is nothing went wrong... street lights came on an hour later, unplugged everything then hit the main isolating switch and all good. The inverter has overload protection and at 2kw would not be able to exceed current limits of the 2.5mm cable that will be used on that circuit (16A breaker at the board).

 

If energy safety received a complaint about this, there is photographic evidence, doesn't matter if anything went wrong or not, the crime has been committed.

General rule - if you are going to break the law don't post photographic evidence in a public forum.

Yea, I wouldn't have posted that on a public forum..

@gregmcc:

 

@Zeon:

 

freitasm: I am told by a concerned sparky this is photo evidence that can lead to trouble if anything goes wrong.

 

Good news is nothing went wrong... street lights came on an hour later, unplugged everything then hit the main isolating switch and all good. The inverter has overload protection and at 2kw would not be able to exceed current limits of the 2.5mm cable that will be used on that circuit (16A breaker at the board).

 

 

If energy safety received a complaint about this, there is photographic evidence, doesn't matter if anything went wrong or not, the crime has been committed.

 

General rule - if you are going to break the law don't post photographic evidence in a public forum.

 

Privacy Act principle 11: 

 

Principle 11 states that an organisation may only disclose personal information in limited circumstances.

 

For instance, an organisation may disclose personal information when:

 

• disclosure is one of the purposes for which the organisation got the information
• the person concerned authorises the disclosure
• the information is to be used in a way that does not identify the person concerned
• disclosure is necessary to avoid endangering someone’s health or safety
• disclosure is necessary to uphold or enforce the law.

What this means is if the police or other similar organisation enforcing rules came to me with that line, I would be required to disclose any information I have here about a user.

It is a fine line if people make their activities public. 

Here ya go fellas. 

The goal is to have a very small secondary system that can provide mains power during a power cut.   

1) A couple of deep cycle batteries are kept charged up by a standard smart charger. When they are charged up, it will keep them topped up by staying in a constant float mode.   

2) When a power cut occurs, the solar panels are manually disconnected from the main inverter, and on to a small solar controller via the isolating switch. Something like a morningstar tristar MPPT 60A that will handle up to 600v input. Make sure the solar strings are configured for less than 600Voc and the solar controller is configured or stunted to only charge the batteries at an acceptable current. Eg for a pair of 120ah batteries in a string you only want to charge them at 10-15 amps.   

3) The solar panels will be able to charge up the batteries and provide power to the small 12 or 24v inverter. 

4) An isolating/input selector switch on the fuse board allows you to select the source of electricity for a few priority circuits. These may be the fridge, a single outlet in the office and another one in the lounge. The key being that we dont want these outlets to exceed the output capacity of the small inverter. Aside from the fridge, they would ideally be unused for anything else so you have to take appliances to the outlet if you want to use them during a power cut. 

5) The small inverter will supply power to the priority outlets. The solar panels will be able to charge up the cheap low capacity deep cycle batteries each day via the small solar controller.   

6) When mains power returns you can switch the priority outlets back to the main inverter, and the solar panels back over to supply the main inverter.   

7) If the emergency batteries have not been charged up, the smart charger will do so from the mains supply via a low priority outlet (so you dont create a loop). It will keep them topped up indefinitley until you next need them.   

For a low total cost of ownership, it would be best to use some standard sealed lead acid if they are only used occasionally.
Go with lithium like a tesla powerwall if you want to run the whole house or have it hooked up to the main inverter. But if its just an emergency system you are trying to create, for a small output to run a laptop/fridge/phone chargers, this solution should work and the sealed lead acid batteries dont cost much to replace every 5 years.  

freitasm:

 

 

 

Privacy Act principle 11: 

 

 

Principle 11 states that an organisation may only disclose personal information in limited circumstances.

 

For instance, an organisation may disclose personal information when:

 

• disclosure is one of the purposes for which the organisation got the information
• the person concerned authorises the disclosure
• the information is to be used in a way that does not identify the person concerned
• disclosure is necessary to avoid endangering someone’s health or safety
• disclosure is necessary to uphold or enforce the law.

 

What this means is if the police or other similar organisation enforcing rules came to me with that line, I would be required to disclose any information I have here about a user.

 

It is a fine line if people make their activities public. 

 

As mentioned, the setup doesn't exist anymore. The main isolating switch had the supply disconnected at the time too.

While I disagree anyone's health and safety was endangered, the reality is this doesn't exist now so any disclosure based on the above point may be in breach of the legislation....

I think you are ignoring that a breach of legislation doesn't exist only when it's continued. 

A dealer is not off the hook when they stop dealing. If evidence exists that at any point this was done, they would be on the hook.

Same here. People have been nice pointing out that you have posted self-incriminatory evidence of breaching the rules.

But yeah, up to you.

Zeon:

 

As mentioned, the setup doesn't exist anymore. The main isolating switch had the supply disconnected at the time too.

 

While I disagree anyone's health and safety was endangered, the reality is this doesn't exist now so any disclosure based on the above point may be in breach of the legislation....

 

In 5 minute using information you have made publicly available on geekzone I have been able to find your name and place of work(neither of which I will be disclosing).

freitasm doesn't need to disclose any information, you have done it all your self. 

It's illegal and unsafe to use such a setup. Even if you remember to switch the main switch off, are you sure no-one in your house will try to switch it back on. Will someone else see what you've done and try to attempt it without realising the dangers?

If you trip over the cord and pull one end out of the socket, that end might now be live.

If you didn't disassemble the cord after having made it, you now have a cord that looks complete and someone might plug into the wall. The other end of that cord is a shock hazard - so there mere existence of the cord is a hazard.