Power cut

Hi, Yesterday we had a power cut, for approximately 1hr 30mins. The effect of that was that my house lost all power, then when restored, the draw was from the grid and not the battery. That however now seems to have sorted itself out a day later. So...

1. Can a system with 4.6kwh solar, 8.2kwh battery & 3kw inverter be retro fitted with breakers etc to power a home in a power cut without sending power back to the grid (via panels) ?
2. Is that behaviour expected after power cut, the battery system effectively seeming to catch up ?
3. Anything I should have checked etc ?

Hi Dean. Basically, the GiVenergy inverters are grid-tied, i.e. not suitable for "off grid" applications, except:

1: Yes, there is an EPS (emergency power supply) output, but it needs to feed circuits totally isolated from your grid supply, and with a specific earthing arrangement.

2: Yes, pretty much so. The inverter needs a grid supply to work normally, and whne interrupted form that, takes a while to reset. Think the max output of the EPS is c3kW.

3: not that I can think of, bearing in mind the answers above.

Hope this helps?

wilfleek On item 1, a PV inverter cannot be connected to the EPS output of the GivEnergy AC unit to provide power from solar panels when the grid fails. Panels connected to a GivEnergy hybrid inverter will continue to generate when the grid fails.

You can use a contactor to auto flip the house to EPS, but GE warns of overloading the inverter. Many people have a seperate EPS circuit which powers things like heating, internet, lighting and some emergency sockets.