How to keep the battery powering house when Grids down

Hi All,

The grids been shut down in my area for the last hour. My battery is 100%, and not powering my house. How do I make it so the battery takes over when there’s a power cut ?

Many Thanks.

What kit have you got.
You need to have installed your kit with the EPS set up (Emergency Power Supply) by your installer
When the grid goes down, your inverter disconnects from the grid, so your kit does not kill anyone upstream who may be working on the grid trying to fix things.

https://kb.givenergy.cloud/article.php?id=12&oid=1

I was quoted over £1000 for EPS and it was never offered initially.

[unknown] that's crazy money, but depends on what needs doing and what sort of EPS you want to have.

If you have an AIO it should be able to support the whole house and its just a matter of wiring the AIO into the fusebox as the fusebox grid feed and fitting a bypass switch. Should be standard in an AIO install.

If you have an AC or Hybrid inverter you could well have to split the fusebox so high load circuits such as the cooker and shower are not connected to the inverter EPS output. Any sparky can do that, and then just get your installer to wire the 'low load' fusebox to the inverter EPS terminals. That's the way I got my EPS done

Danomite Unfortunately many customers assume that their battery will run the house in the case of a grid failure as it seems so obvious. I made the same assumption when my GivEnergy system was installed four years ago. I didn't ask at the sales stage and the representatives of the companies that I had quotes from never mentioned it or tried to sell me the extra. But, to be honest, there were quite a few things that they didn't mention. Thankfully power outages are very rare in my location so it has not had a huge impact. But I will know for next time, but also I know far more about the options that the various platforms now offer and will be better prepared.

A lot of people assume that if there is a power cut and they have solar panels and or battery backup, they will still have electricity in a power cut. I was one of them until I got my system installed. Luckily the GE HY3.6 has EPS built in and I was able to get a double socket added for an emergency supply in the event of a prolonged power cut.

One thing to note for Danomite is that a TT earth point will be required for the EPS circuit and this can be expensive. It cost me £500 for an earth point and double socket (and consumer unit) to be installed by locel electrician. Then the GE installer came and recommisioned the system.

Cost about £700 2 years ago for whole house manual back up.

alan_johnston I have a 3.6 hybrid Gen 3 inverter. You’re telling me I just need a grounded socket installed next to the unit and the unit plugs into socket. The socket then runs into my board?

Danomite
https://kb.givenergy.cloud/article.php?id=12&oid=1

You need a TT earth. You can then power what you want from the EPS output - subject to not overloading the EPS circuit. I adjusted the circuits in my house and put in an EPS fed consumer unit. When grid goes off, my gas boiler, lounge lights and power (TV , sky box ) , fridge and freezer and router stay on. I can watch TV and browse the web in warmth. If I want a cup of tea though, I have to use a gas ring on the cooker to boil some water

Danomite
See the document that Steve Cook linked to in the second post.
The simplest option is method 1 which requires a Consumer Unit, Socket(s) and a TT earth point. This runs from the inverter's EPS output terminals.

During normal opration, the EPS terminals are powered from the grid. During a power cut, the inverter goes into island mode and powers the EPS terminals from the battery plus any solar.
There is a delay switching to island mode and if the inverter detects an EPS overload it will shutdown for up to 5 minutes.

alan_johnston
Alan thanks for sketch.
The CU with 2 sockets shown above, I have a CU powering Lounge sockets (TV,sky box, laptops), lounge lights, fridge and freezer socket, router socket, burglar alarm and smoke detectors.
When grid goes off, there is a circa 10sec delay before EPS power cuts in (I think GE can adjust this time). In the 10s, the Sky box goes off and reboots, as does the TV, but no big deal. We have successfully carried on in some winter power cuts while the rest of the village went dark. 10 hours from a 9.5battery is easy

SteveCook Happy to hear you had lights and warmth during prolonged blackouts. Where I live, blackouts are a rarity.
That being said, 13.5 AIO battery + Gateway, handles it much quicker. There is no 10s delay, changeover is done instantly in milliseconds. More sensitive devices will reboot (like solar PV inverter) or some routers (but I do have them on separate APC UPS unit, did that years before I bought GivEnergy equipment).
My entire house is wired to a GivEnergy EPS, when grid goes down, I may not even notice it.