it's also single (split) phase instead of 3 phase, so it's carried over fewer conductors as well. I assume a UK 100A supply would be 3 phase. So a 120/240 200A US split phase supply can deliver 48kW, while a 230/400 100A 3 phase UK supply could deliver 69kW (nice). A 63A 3ph EU supply could do 44kW, so basically the same capacity as our supply, we just need 3x as much copper to carry the power.
100A was really common in the US when natural gas was being supplied to homes too. As more areas move to no NG, and cars charging at home now too, 200A is way more common.
Here in the Netherlands power outages are rare. Sometimes they are announced when maintenance is done but other than that not even once a year, maybe once in 5 years. Hence no one has/needs backup power except for my Proxmox cluster and Synology NAS systems. Those run off a set of 2 7Ah 12V lead acid batteries with a small AliExpress UPS type charger. 200A even on 110 V is an insane amount. I have 40A single phase on 230V and that has never tripped in 25 years. That 200A is still 2.5 times what is normal here.
I've had one power outage in Germany in span of last 14 years, not a single maintenance outage. The joke I like is "Synchronous grid of Continental Europe is my UPS". For the Amps, my house has fairly new power feed from when overhead wires were replaced with underground cabling, 3 phase 50A _each_, set for capacity for life and small manufacturing business.
Your power outage count is insane! There are warzones with more reliable power. Does your utility not maintain its infrastructure? One per year in Ontario is annoying enough. I need to redo my panels which are a 52-year old mix of aluminum and copper. I am definitely going to include the BrulTech product when I do so that I can make some intelligent decisions regarding solar and battery backup. Thanks for the suggestion.
The US government statisticians treat 5min as different statistics, so my utility told me than 5min, or any single outage over 10 hours, and they have given one credit this year. The most recent long outage was 28 hours in August, where a wind storm (not a tornado, just higher than normal winds) left >10% of the utility customers without power. The truck performed very well powering the house for the whole time. The utility eventually committed to tree trimming this fall (which they did, and the short outages have improved dramatically going into winter) and also replacing things in Q2 of 2025. The utility (DTE) is a state regulated monopoly which operates the HV transmission network in the midwest (ITC), MV distribution network in eastern Michigan, all of the large power plants in eastern Michigan, and is also publicly traded and extremely proud of their industry-leading dividends, which they have always issued going back 50 years.
@apalrdsadventures thanks for the details. Ontario has its own power problems but distribution is not really part of it. It's more about the politics of cost. It sounds like Michigan regulators need longer sharper teeth and the appetite to use them.
@@apalrdsadventures At least here in Finland a large part of the "local grid" is buried. The "large" grid of 110kV, 220kV or 400kV is mostly on poles obviously but the local 20kV (sometimes there's also 1kV) is now mostly buried after a frenzied decade of digging and burying and you've got transformer enclosures dotted around from which buried 0.4kV continues to homes and buildings etc. As the lanes of poles are maintained and trimmed of trees, there aren't many reclosure events due to trees falling and with the local grid being buried we don't have much "squirrel caught between phases" incidents anymore.
The line to my house (120/240 split phase) is buried to the transformer across the street, and 13.8kv from the transformer is buried to the end of the street, then it goes above ground from there (still at 13.8kv) and everything from there is above ground. Newer developments are usually buried, but of course they will never bury existing lines. Most older streets have a 4.8kv or 13.8kv single phase feed above ground with a pole between every other house (behind the house), a transformer at every 4th pole, feeding 120/240 overhead to the house. These have problems with small trees ripping the lines off the side of the house when they fall down. The MV lines also fall a lot in storms, right in people's backyards. Usually they will connect each street to a different phase of the network, so it's not possible to get 3 phase.
@@apalrdsadventures That's interesting to hear. Over here they've been replacing the existing lines as well. It's been covered with the basic rate of electricity transfer cost. That cost includes the basic rate and transfer fee depending on usage. As you can imagine some operators have been taking advantage, Caruna for example which is a large national grid operator and was sold to investors.. Transfer operator depends where you live so basically a monopoly, energy "supplier" I can choose. My local grid is owned by the city so even the elevated rates for the extra work is more reasonable than the rates other grid's charged more than a decade ago. Where I live the over head 20kV feed was replaced couple of years back. The local grid operator deals with the street and park lighting as well so they've been upgrading the light poles at the same time they've been burying the 20kV lines. It's been interesting to see the work.
I just got a EG4 6000xp with a 14.3kwh EG4 PowerPro Indoor battery for 4600$ to the door. It’s an off grid inverter which only feeds the sub panel but I can AC Charge or DC charge. Also have a Lilygo RS485 ESP32 devices which connects to the 6000xp and brings me full control on Home Assistant
I got 2 EG4 6000XP and two EG4 wall batteries for my father's house (my childhood home.) He's a retired electrician and is installing it himself. I've had them up and running though already on battery. I sized it at two since he is at the end of the line and regularly has outages during storms and uses a 10Kw generator to power the house. The 6000XP, while an off-grid inverter can operate in UPS mode where it mostly bypasses and has a 10ms (IIRC) transfer time to go on battery. The 6000XP has a 50A grid breaker built in so it's maybe not quite what he wants (60A) but it might still be able to power all his loads. He would know.
Have you looked at the Victron Multiplus units? They’re not online double conversion inverters but they’re switching fast enough to practically function as one. I’m looking to build a backup system using these when I start redoing the electrical in our house. I need three for our three phase system here in Europe though. They’re expensive, yes, but Victron is some of the best stuff you can get out there.
Well I normally associate more than one or two unplanned power outages per year to you living in some poor country you don't really want to live in by choice! The last power outage here in Austria of more that somewhat a 30 min period must have been around 10 years ago on a storm that somewhat lasted for 12 hours. Also residential power lines are normally in the ground.
go off grid solar inverter.. without solar :-) (this is cheapest+best compared to anker, ecoflow "packaged" solutions) EG4 3kW for $674(each up to 12 units parallel) add 48v batteries up to desired outage duration and you should be good to go.. I'm assuming all your loads in the backup panel is 120v.. Another consideration is used solar inverters.. since they are readily available you can pickup multiple after you find one you like. People with solar upgrade their solar stuff and then are stuck with the old equipment.. and since you only need 3 or 4 kw... How much is your power cost there?
Victron and Pylontech Victron have great inverter/chargers. the can fail over from grid to island in 20ms, just like a UPS. Theyr current devices use 12, 24 or 48V on the DC side. But there are new 600-800V DC Products getting lunched in a few weeks (even Rack mountable). Pylontech produces 48V batterys, with a victron compatible BMS. They now have a new Product Line of 48V Batterys that can be wired in series to get 700V for the victron HV Systems.
I have been looking at the eg4ll batteries and painting with a victron quattro inverter. Nice thing about that is you can add more storage as the wallet allows. I have 10kw of pannels to put up.😅
It would be nice to size your inverter to only your actual load but code doesn't work that way for automatic switchover. NEC has rules which are basically 3VA/sqft plus 1400VA per kitchen circuit plus whatever your hardwired appliances need. Regarding equipment I would definitely go with a 48v off-gird/hybrid inverter. You already know about the Sol-ark and EG4, some other names are Xantrex (now Schneider) Conext and Outback Power. If your utility has incentives for backfeeding the grid during peak times you will definitely want a compatible system.
You can use 220.87 for an existing feeder if you have at least 30 days of data. My utility is pretty anti-solar, they don't want to offer backfeeding at all but are forced to allow it. Since they only credit at the energy rate (not including the distribution rate), it's still a pretty bad deal.
@@apalrdsadventures I can't believe I had never heard of 220.87 before. I was toying with the idea of backup power at home but IIRC the calculated load was around 65 amps, right above the 60 amps most equipment is capable of.
@@apalrdsadventures Thank you sir! I found it! I just dealt with a two day outage and almost lost all my fridge/freezer contents so was thinking about a whole home backup vs just sprinkle UPSes around the house to the major things... But gathering the knowledge by way of circuit monitoring is exactly where I'm mentally at now. Thanks for the good review of the UPS in the last video... think it could power an average modern fridge?
The Emporia Gen 3 Smart Home Energy Monitor with 16 50A Circuit Level Sensors is only $200 and does a similar thing with an app and webapp without the need to host it.
That last comment "could have easily been 3-4 breakers for the load". Be happy that it's not! I [rent] a home with pretty old electricity. Thankfully the wires themselves are OK, but the isolation is terrible. I have a UPS in literally every room of the main living areas to mitigate the problems that poor isolation causes.
200A is like for a small factory use in Europe 😄
US electrical supply is at a lower voltage, you cant directly compare the current
@@seanrabenaldt you can, just double the amperage vs europe
its basicly a 100A supply that is UK at least pretty common now
@@popeter doing math isn’t directly comparing 🤪
it's also single (split) phase instead of 3 phase, so it's carried over fewer conductors as well. I assume a UK 100A supply would be 3 phase.
So a 120/240 200A US split phase supply can deliver 48kW, while a 230/400 100A 3 phase UK supply could deliver 69kW (nice).
A 63A 3ph EU supply could do 44kW, so basically the same capacity as our supply, we just need 3x as much copper to carry the power.
100A was really common in the US when natural gas was being supplied to homes too. As more areas move to no NG, and cars charging at home now too, 200A is way more common.
Here in the Netherlands power outages are rare. Sometimes they are announced when maintenance is done but other than that not even once a year, maybe once in 5 years. Hence no one has/needs backup power except for my Proxmox cluster and Synology NAS systems. Those run off a set of 2 7Ah 12V lead acid batteries with a small AliExpress UPS type charger.
200A even on 110 V is an insane amount. I have 40A single phase on 230V and that has never tripped in 25 years. That 200A is still 2.5 times what is normal here.
I've had one power outage in Germany in span of last 14 years, not a single maintenance outage.
The joke I like is "Synchronous grid of Continental Europe is my UPS".
For the Amps, my house has fairly new power feed from when overhead wires were replaced with underground cabling, 3 phase 50A _each_, set for capacity for life and small manufacturing business.
Interesting! I'm curious and looking forward to a/your next update!
Your power outage count is insane! There are warzones with more reliable power. Does your utility not maintain its infrastructure? One per year in Ontario is annoying enough.
I need to redo my panels which are a 52-year old mix of aluminum and copper. I am definitely going to include the BrulTech product when I do so that I can make some intelligent decisions regarding solar and battery backup. Thanks for the suggestion.
The US government statisticians treat 5min as different statistics, so my utility told me than 5min, or any single outage over 10 hours, and they have given one credit this year. The most recent long outage was 28 hours in August, where a wind storm (not a tornado, just higher than normal winds) left >10% of the utility customers without power. The truck performed very well powering the house for the whole time.
The utility eventually committed to tree trimming this fall (which they did, and the short outages have improved dramatically going into winter) and also replacing things in Q2 of 2025. The utility (DTE) is a state regulated monopoly which operates the HV transmission network in the midwest (ITC), MV distribution network in eastern Michigan, all of the large power plants in eastern Michigan, and is also publicly traded and extremely proud of their industry-leading dividends, which they have always issued going back 50 years.
@apalrdsadventures thanks for the details. Ontario has its own power problems but distribution is not really part of it. It's more about the politics of cost.
It sounds like Michigan regulators need longer sharper teeth and the appetite to use them.
@@apalrdsadventures At least here in Finland a large part of the "local grid" is buried. The "large" grid of 110kV, 220kV or 400kV is mostly on poles obviously but the local 20kV (sometimes there's also 1kV) is now mostly buried after a frenzied decade of digging and burying and you've got transformer enclosures dotted around from which buried 0.4kV continues to homes and buildings etc. As the lanes of poles are maintained and trimmed of trees, there aren't many reclosure events due to trees falling and with the local grid being buried we don't have much "squirrel caught between phases" incidents anymore.
The line to my house (120/240 split phase) is buried to the transformer across the street, and 13.8kv from the transformer is buried to the end of the street, then it goes above ground from there (still at 13.8kv) and everything from there is above ground. Newer developments are usually buried, but of course they will never bury existing lines.
Most older streets have a 4.8kv or 13.8kv single phase feed above ground with a pole between every other house (behind the house), a transformer at every 4th pole, feeding 120/240 overhead to the house. These have problems with small trees ripping the lines off the side of the house when they fall down. The MV lines also fall a lot in storms, right in people's backyards. Usually they will connect each street to a different phase of the network, so it's not possible to get 3 phase.
@@apalrdsadventures That's interesting to hear. Over here they've been replacing the existing lines as well. It's been covered with the basic rate of electricity transfer cost. That cost includes the basic rate and transfer fee depending on usage. As you can imagine some operators have been taking advantage, Caruna for example which is a large national grid operator and was sold to investors.. Transfer operator depends where you live so basically a monopoly, energy "supplier" I can choose. My local grid is owned by the city so even the elevated rates for the extra work is more reasonable than the rates other grid's charged more than a decade ago.
Where I live the over head 20kV feed was replaced couple of years back. The local grid operator deals with the street and park lighting as well so they've been upgrading the light poles at the same time they've been burying the 20kV lines. It's been interesting to see the work.
I just got a EG4 6000xp with a 14.3kwh EG4 PowerPro Indoor battery for 4600$ to the door. It’s an off grid inverter which only feeds the sub panel but I can AC Charge or DC charge. Also have a Lilygo RS485 ESP32 devices which connects to the 6000xp and brings me full control on Home Assistant
I got 2 EG4 6000XP and two EG4 wall batteries for my father's house (my childhood home.) He's a retired electrician and is installing it himself. I've had them up and running though already on battery. I sized it at two since he is at the end of the line and regularly has outages during storms and uses a 10Kw generator to power the house.
The 6000XP, while an off-grid inverter can operate in UPS mode where it mostly bypasses and has a 10ms (IIRC) transfer time to go on battery.
The 6000XP has a 50A grid breaker built in so it's maybe not quite what he wants (60A) but it might still be able to power all his loads. He would know.
Have you looked at the Victron Multiplus units? They’re not online double conversion inverters but they’re switching fast enough to practically function as one.
I’m looking to build a backup system using these when I start redoing the electrical in our house. I need three for our three phase system here in Europe though. They’re expensive, yes, but Victron is some of the best stuff you can get out there.
Victron Multiplus II is great.
Well I normally associate more than one or two unplanned power outages per year to you living in some poor country you don't really want to live in by choice! The last power outage here in Austria of more that somewhat a 30 min period must have been around 10 years ago on a storm that somewhat lasted for 12 hours. Also residential power lines are normally in the ground.
go off grid solar inverter.. without solar :-) (this is cheapest+best compared to anker, ecoflow "packaged" solutions)
EG4 3kW for $674(each up to 12 units parallel) add 48v batteries up to desired outage duration and you should be good to go.. I'm assuming all your loads in the backup panel is 120v..
Another consideration is used solar inverters.. since they are readily available you can pickup multiple after you find one you like. People with solar upgrade their solar stuff and then are stuck with the old equipment.. and since you only need 3 or 4 kw...
How much is your power cost there?
Victron and Pylontech
Victron have great inverter/chargers. the can fail over from grid to island in 20ms, just like a UPS. Theyr current devices use 12, 24 or 48V on the DC side.
But there are new 600-800V DC Products getting lunched in a few weeks (even Rack mountable).
Pylontech produces 48V batterys, with a victron compatible BMS. They now have a new Product Line of 48V Batterys that can be wired in series to get 700V for the victron HV Systems.
I have been looking at the eg4ll batteries and painting with a victron quattro inverter.
Nice thing about that is you can add more storage as the wallet allows.
I have 10kw of pannels to put up.😅
i just waiting for an offer of victron products, for my RV. 12kw while on battery, 23kw while on grid.
thoughts on a USP based system for a server rack on the industrial side?
I ordered a Jackery 5000 plus because its 20ms transfer panel has 12 breakers with built in CTs.
I didn't realize they have anything 120/240V, it looks like it's brand new
It would be nice to size your inverter to only your actual load but code doesn't work that way for automatic switchover. NEC has rules which are basically 3VA/sqft plus 1400VA per kitchen circuit plus whatever your hardwired appliances need.
Regarding equipment I would definitely go with a 48v off-gird/hybrid inverter. You already know about the Sol-ark and EG4, some other names are Xantrex (now Schneider) Conext and Outback Power. If your utility has incentives for backfeeding the grid during peak times you will definitely want a compatible system.
You can use 220.87 for an existing feeder if you have at least 30 days of data.
My utility is pretty anti-solar, they don't want to offer backfeeding at all but are forced to allow it. Since they only credit at the energy rate (not including the distribution rate), it's still a pretty bad deal.
@@apalrdsadventures I can't believe I had never heard of 220.87 before. I was toying with the idea of backup power at home but IIRC the calculated load was around 65 amps, right above the 60 amps most equipment is capable of.
where is the "previous video" with the power center replacement?
It's on the end of my UPS video. I added a card but forgot to put it in the description also
@@apalrdsadventures Thank you sir! I found it! I just dealt with a two day outage and almost lost all my fridge/freezer contents so was thinking about a whole home backup vs just sprinkle UPSes around the house to the major things... But gathering the knowledge by way of circuit monitoring is exactly where I'm mentally at now. Thanks for the good review of the UPS in the last video... think it could power an average modern fridge?
The Emporia Gen 3 Smart Home Energy Monitor with 16 50A Circuit Level Sensors is only $200 and does a similar thing with an app and webapp without the need to host it.
the data is locked into their cloud platform, they don't provide any way to access the data other than the apps
what about surge? is the monitoring showing the peak surge?
it reports at 5sec, so you get data averaged across 5sec. Home Assistant shows the min/max it as a bit of a colored cloud around the line.
Curious what app that is you used to draw your wiring diagram.
draw.io, the same app I use for network diagrams
Check out the Victron Multiplus line of inverter chargers.
in a feew week they will lunche some new products: 48V 5kva inverter/charger/mppt and 600-800V 15kva 3 phase inverter/charger/mppt
You might find useful "Off-grid garage" channel
That last comment "could have easily been 3-4 breakers for the load". Be happy that it's not!
I [rent] a home with pretty old electricity. Thankfully the wires themselves are OK, but the isolation is terrible. I have a UPS in literally every room of the main living areas to mitigate the problems that poor isolation causes.
6:57 wow using alot of power in bed