Tag Archives: Household Power System

The Basics of a Household Power System

Battery

The Basics of a Household Power System

The electricity flowing to your plug outlets and light switches is a result of organized electron movement. This is alternating current, which changes direction 60 times a second.

Electricity comes to your home through power lines running down the street. The voltage at this point is too high to go directly into neighborhoods, so the energy goes through power transformers before reaching your house.

Whole-Home Battery Storage Systems

As many Californians learned during the recent utility-imposed blackouts, backup power systems can be a great way to ensure household comfort and safety during extended periods without grid electricity. Whole-home battery backup systems offer more than just peace of mind; they can also help reduce energy costs and carbon footprints. And with the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) currently in effect for solar + battery storage through 2023, homeowners can save $10 – $30K in electricity costs over the lifetime of their system.

Depending on how much you use, a single whole-home battery backup system may be able to provide enough power to keep your refrigerator and freezer cool for up to 24 hours during a blackout. But larger appliances such as air conditioning, 240-volt EV chargers and electric stoves require more than 30 kWh to run continuously for a day.

That’s why it’s important to assess your home’s energy needs before selecting a battery backup system size. It’s also critical to understand that battery storage capacity and power output capacity are not the same thing. While the energy stored in a battery is measured in watt-hours or kilowatt-hours, an inverter or all-in-one battery backup solution such as EcoFlow’s portable power stations convert the battery’s DC electricity into AC household power to run appliances. Energy management software helps you decide when to charge and discharge your home’s electricity based on real-time data, helping you optimize your energy storage system performance and reduce electricity bills.

Partial-Load Battery Storage Systems

In a partial-load battery storage system, energy stored in batteries is used when solar panels cannot meet the household’s power needs. This is typically because it’s after sundown, cloudy or during a grid outage. These systems do not provide backup power, as they’re only able to support the appliances downstream of their backup gateway (for example, a home’s lights, fridge and other electric loads).

Like all energy storage solutions, these systems capture electricity from the power grid or from renewable sources, store it as current and then release it Household Power System at a later time. By doing so, they help stabilize energy flow and increase power quality to make up for dips and peaks in supply and demand that occur during normal grid operations.

Most solar customers choose to pair their PV systems with battery storage because it can help them save money on their utility bills, both by reducing the amount of energy they pull from the grid at time-of-use rates and by protecting against PG&E’s increasing frequency of blackouts during fire season. However, for many of these same customers, deciphering the different ways that their hardware can be configured and operated is a daunting task. This blog series helps demystify battery storage for residential customers by exploring some of the ways in which this technology can be used and some of the hardware requirements that may be needed to operate it.

Backup Power Systems

In general, backup power systems provide instantaneous, uninterruptible energy to support critical processes and operations during outages. Depending on the type of equipment, these can range from systems that will power devices for 30 to 60 minutes (such as telecommunications systems and computer systems) to systems designed to protect life safety and vital operations (like hospital equipment).

Onsite backup power is becoming an important investment for many businesses and large facilities. For example, companies that rely on data and IT systems may experience significant economic losses during outages. Some facilities, like hospitals, have a higher level of impact on society during a disaster, and they must ensure that life safety equipment is operational in the event of an emergency. Onsite backup power systems are an ideal solution to mitigate the risks of these situations.

For homeowners, whole-home battery backup systems are available that will automatically engage Household Power System when the grid fails and power the house for up to 96 hours. Generac’s PWRcell system, for instance, integrates solar and smart battery storage in a single unit and uses an automatic transfer switch to seamlessly disconnect from the grid during an outage.

The United States’ aging grid is frequently tested by events such as hurricanes and cold weather that can cause power outages. These outages have increased in frequency and duration over the past decade.

Smart Meters

One of the most basic parts of any household power system is the meter itself. For generations, electro-mechanical meters with tiny spinning dials stood outside homes, allowing a utility worker to read them each month and note how much electricity was consumed. Today, that work has been replaced by smart meters, which allow a home’s energy use to be automatically sent to the utility via wireless technology.

Using the same technology that powers the internet, smart meters can also send that information to a monitor in a home or an energy management system, providing households with greater control over their energy use. That monitor, often referred to as an in-home display (IHD), shows households their usage in near real time, helping them save money and reduce the emissions that contribute to climate change.

Smart meters can also connect to smart appliances such as electric vehicles and heating systems, helping them access pricing data so they are charged at lower rates and have less impact on our aging grid. The technology behind these devices may vary from country to country, including Wi-Fi, power line communication or a hub that interfaces one or more meters with the head-end network using a variety of technologies.

Though smart meters are increasingly common, many states and territories have varying policies on their rollouts. That’s why it’s important to check if your supplier has them and, if not, make sure you can switch without losing any smart functions.

The Household Power System

Battery

Household Power System

The Household Power System

Electricity flows to the appliances in your house from power lines running along the street. Before reaching your home, these wires pass through a meter box where an electric meter records your power usage.

Your home’s service panel contains a main switch and individual switches (circuit breakers) that control the flow of electricity to different circuits.

Electrical Wiring

Unlike the electricity that flows from battery-powered devices, which only has one direction of flow, household power alternates directions 60 times per second. That’s why we need a grounding system to keep electricity from flowing back toward the source.

This circuitry begins with a large metal box Household Power System with a hinged cover called the service panel, fuse box or (in older houses with fuse-controlled circuits) breaker box. It contains a main switch that shuts down the flow of power and switches (circuit breakers) that control power to individual circuits.

Each of these circuits distributes electricity to lighting fixtures, receptacles (aka outlets) and appliances. Its hot wire has black, red or some other color insulation; the neutral wire is white or bare. The neutral and ground wires connect to separate bus bars in the service panel.

Older homes may have aluminum wiring, which is less flexible than copper and can cause fires at connections between wire and devices (switches, outlets, light bulbs) or splices. This hazard has been mitigated since the introduction of an aluminum alloy that reduces conductor expansion to prevent fires, but not enough to eliminate them completely.

Electrical Outlets

An electrical outlet, or receptacle, lets you plug devices and appliances into your home’s power system. It’s where electricity comes in from the grid and then exits back out into the circuit.

Residential electricians install outlets in wall spaces around your house for you to use. They typically accept three-prong plugs and include a round third hole for the grounding wire that protects you from electric shock.

These electrical outlets are the most common type you’ll see in most homes. They support a standard 110 volt circuit and are ideal for most household devices and appliances.

This type of electrical outlet has a built-in breaker that can shut off the power to prevent dangerous arcing in the socket. Arcing can be caused by overheating appliances, hammering nails through the wiring, or rodents chewing on wires.

This type of electrical outlet is often found in bathrooms, kitchens, and laundry rooms. It monitors the current that goes into and then returns from a device Household Power System or appliance plugged in and trips the circuit if it senses that the returning current is too high.

Electrical Circuits

The power that flows through your electrical system is alternating current; it goes back and forth between the power source and your household items 60 times per second. There are two wires that carry this energy: a hot conductor and a neutral one. The hot conductor powers switches and outlets in your home, and the neutral conductor carries electricity back to the service panel. A third, or grounding, wire adds critical protection against electric shock and fire.

Most residential electricity systems have a voltage of 120 volts with a frequency of 60 Hz. Some homes may be supplied with 240-volt circuits using both the hot and neutral wires; these are required for some large appliances, such as electric water heaters and clothes dryers.

If too much current passes through a wire, it can overheat and melt the insulation. This is a serious hazard and could cause a fire or injury. The electrical system contains circuit breakers and fuses that protect the wires by shutting off power if they overheat. See The Path of a Circuit to learn how these safety devices work.

Electrical Breakers

All the wiring in your house runs through a central panel (or fuse box panel for older houses) with a dozen or more circuit breakers. Circuit breakers are rated based on how much current they can safely carry. If they ever see a current higher than their ratings, they interrupt it to prevent electrical fires.

Most of the time, a breaker trips due to overloading (too many things drawing power on one circuit) or a short circuit (two wires that have made contact). Some circuit breakers are AFCI, which protect against additional fire hazards like arc faults.

Fuses were common in older service panels, but today new homes use circuit breakers instead. Your service panel has a main switch that shuts off all the electricity coming in, and a series of individual switches (circuit breakers) for each of its circuits. Breakers that feed receptacles are usually rated at 15 or 20 amps, while larger “double-pole” breakers have higher amperage ratings for appliances like stoves and clothes dryers. When you need to reset your breaker panel, start by shutting off the single-pole breakers first, then double-clicking the main breaker on again.

Backup Power

Ms Henderson knows that frequent power outages aren’t just frustrating, but can also be life-threatening. That’s why she has a home backup system in place, to keep her lights and fridge on.

There are different kinds of home backup power systems, from a generator that runs on gas to battery-based solutions that use solar energy to create electricity in the event of a grid outage. The size of a backup power system depends on how much electricity you want to use during an outage and how long you need it to last. The key is to add up all the electrical appliances in your household and check that this peak demand is lower than the backup power capacity of your solution.

Lumin’s smart energy storage solution provides both backup power and load management all in one, using responsive technology that reacts to a variety of energy conditions across the house including grid outages, circuit schedules, demand limits and battery charge state. It also allows you to reconfigure your power backup plans on the go from a smartphone app and offers more ways to save energy costs in your house.