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ЖLife in a private house is calm, comfortable and measured, but you need to think about amenities in advance.
Even if the housing is not located in the middle of the forest, where there is no access to public power grids, but in a village, a summer cottage or a green suburb, homeowners still need to take care of protection against blackouts and power surges.
Somewhere failures happen periodically, somewhere weekly, but each accident is an inconvenience, a violation of the usual order, and sometimes a loss of income if you work from home.
How to secure your home? Usually, homeowners consider several options, of which the main ones are the purchase of an electric generator or an energy storage device.
These devices are completely different, but both help solve the problem of lack of electricity.
Generator
These are devices that convert mechanical energy into electrical energy, depending on the fuel used, there are four types.
Gasoline generators
Relatively inexpensive, they work quietly, they are easy to take out to the country due to their compactness.
Such generators differ in power and tank volume and can work for several hours without interruption, which is especially important in case of a sudden power outage.
Among the shortcomings – the high cost of gasoline and its high consumption. At the same time, among gasoline generators you can find models that are equipped with inverters, which means that they can ensure stable operation of even sensitive electrical equipment.
Diesel Generators
Great option for stationary use. Compared to gasoline, they are more powerful and reliable, the power supply can last longer, and the cost of diesel fuel is lower than gasoline.
However, such generators are noisier and more expensive; moreover, they require special treatment and operating conditions.
Diesel generators do not work well at low temperatures, so they need to equip a special room in the house or purchase a heat-insulating container, and in severe frosts it is necessary to check if the fuel in the tank has thickened.
Gas generators
For those lucky ones who have a gas main connected to their house, this is a good solution to the problem of backup power supply.
Of course, such a generator can also be connected to a cylinder, but this is not very convenient.
Gas generators have many advantages: they are quiet, economical and easy to maintain.
The disadvantages include the high cost and the need to call specialists to connect the installation.
There are also combined types of generators operating both from a gas network and on liquid fuel.
The cost of such models approaches the cost of gas generators.
Launch methods
Generators differ not only in the type of fuel, but also in the way they are started – manual or automatic.
Of course, autostart is preferable: the device itself switches the load if the external power fails, and vice versa. In addition, manual start is a rather time-consuming operation.
Generators are good when there is a main network, and interruptions and outages do not happen very often.
Based on them, it is quite possible to create an autonomous power supply system, but this is unlikely to be economically profitable.
One of the serious disadvantages can also be considered a slow start of the generator – from a few seconds to minutes, while for some equipment a start exceeding a fraction of a second is critical.
The problem can be solved by purchasing a UPS – an uninterruptible power supply, but the costs in this case will increase.
Accumulators – batteries for the home
Unlike generators, storage tanks do not produce electricity. Their task is to reserve electricity for use when the main network is turned off.
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In addition, storage devices can even out the load schedule by accumulating energy at night, when consumption is minimal and the tariff is low, and giving it back during the day.
Drives automatically adjust the frequency and stabilize the voltage, reliably protecting appliances in the house and guaranteeing uninterrupted power to any equipment.
A modern drive, as a rule, combines many devices in one case:
- battery,
- controller if the drive is used in conjunction with solar panels;
- inverter;
- intelligent control system.
The transition of the device to offline mode when the public network is turned off takes a fraction of a second, which the user will not even notice, and all connected equipment will continue to work in normal mode: the lighting, the computer, and the gas boiler will not fail.
Drives, which in fact are powerful batteries, form the basis of an energy storage system that is appropriate both in an apartment and in a country house.
They can be used anywhere as a backup during emergency shutdowns or provide a completely autonomous power supply along with solar panels.
The advantages of storage and solar stations are the absence of harmful emissions, noiseless operation, instant switching from the main network to the backup one, environmental friendliness and safety.
In addition, accumulators are much more simple and easy to maintain than generators of any type.
Drives in Europe and the USA have already become familiar appliances, like a refrigerator or a washing machine. There is a growing demand in Russia, especially during a pandemic, when people try to be away from the city.
Today in Russia the most famous and affordable brand of drives is VOLTS Battery.