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Post by SA Hunter on Sept 26, 2017 23:50:53 GMT 10
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2017 14:44:05 GMT 10
Hi, I teach electrotechnology to electrical workers, and my focus is power generation, especially for power plant operators. I usually tell my students at the start of a class that it is a good idea to have your own power generator at home!!!! There have been so many times when the Australian power grid has almost fallen over but has just managed to hang in there it even surprises people in the industry. What I would point out to people is what we are seeing happening now is that the Eastern Australian power grid is being pushed to run closer to its limits than ever before, this can only mean less reliability of supply during events.
We are fortunate that our power grids do not suffer from solar flare activity like they do in the USA because our AC grids are more North South than East West... But we are getting into a situation in which policy uncertainly in the energy market is stopping investment in pretty much anything renewable or Fossil and that is a bad thing, because we approaching the problem that we just do not have enough generators for demand any more. As a country industry needs a reliable cheap power grid and we no longer have one, so no surprise industry is going elsewhere.
Depending on how you perceive lack of electricity as an issue, you can grin and bear it and be no worse off than anyone else with torches and candles. Or you could buy a little inverter to run off the car to power a few small items while leaving the car engine running... Or you can go down the path of generator ownership, or even solar an battery supplies with an inverter. Each of those items gets increasingly more expensive in the order they appear. Keep in mind fridges and freezers need power about every four hours to stop the contents spoiling.
If thinking about generators for home consider diesels do not like running lightly loaded for long periods otherwise they glaze up their bores and have oil consumption issues, where as petrol generators don't suffer to the same extent. The Newer inverter generators can give you 50cycles per second without the need for the engine to be running at high speed, and can actually save on fuel be slowing down the engine when the load is low while still putting out the right voltage and frequency which is nice.
Just to give you and idea of generator size most fridges and freezers need about 1000 watts of starting current, an electric kettle draws 2500 watts.... While any cooking of air conditioning needs a minimum of 3500 watts.... Lights are only ever a couple of hundred watts at the most. And should you get very ambitious an electric hot water unit takes 4000 watts.
Happy prepping
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