[hoovesupsideyourhead]

Originally Posted by Indian Charlie

I designed a whole house battery backup system for my house, if anyone is interested in doing this for themselves.

It works just like the UPS system for your computer (you do have one of these, right?). When the power goes out, protected circuits are automatically and instantaneously given power from a bank of deep cycle batteries.

The delay is not even noticeable, being around 10 milliseconds.

Running on just four (a small bank) batteries, I can get around 20 hours of backup power, and in extended outages I just hook up a generator to recharge the batteries, which is mostly done within a few hours, thus saving HUGE on your fuel bill during an outage.

Once power is back, the system automatically will recharge your batteries, so in most cases, this system is completely automated and hands off.

One of the beautiful things about this automated system, vs the Home Depot automatic backup generator is the running cost. Those automatic generators that run on propane, with the price of fuel these days, cost over $100 a day to run during an outage.

The only real negative is that you can't run really high load devices on it, such as an electric range, electric dryer (gas is no problem), electric heaters, that sort of thing.

I was thinking of marketing this, but don't have the money to invest in it anymore. If anyone would like to build one for themselves, let me know and I can tell you all the stuff you'll need to get.

great idea ..generac is popular around here. runs on natural gas it kicks on as soon as the power goes out.