An emergency home backup power system is a great solution when there is a power cut in your area and you need to charge your phone, use a hairdryer, watch a new TV series, etc.
As you have understood, this device is intended to be used when you have no electricity. So, the first thing you need to do before buying such a system is to write down a list of appliances you want to be able to use when there is a power outage. When you do it, go to each device you mentioned and look on the back or bottom for what is called the service tag. There, you will find essential information for choosing an inverter of the right size. First of all, look at the voltage which can either be 110, 115, or 120vac. Some appliances require voltage between 205vac and 240vac. For them, you need a special backup power system.
The next thing you should look for on the tag is Amps. Usually, it is mentioned like this: 6.0a or 6.0 amps. So, now you have to follow the formula Volts x Amps = Watts and get the main figure you need for finding a perfect power system. For instance, if the voltage is 115vac and the device has 6.0 Amps, you will get 690 watts after counting. At this point, you are ready to select an inverter.
What Inverter Should You Choose?
The most popular type of backup power system is a 1750 watt. The thing is, such devices are widely used for charging a car battery and this amount of power is perfect for most vehicles. When you are trying to connect an inverter to your car, you need to keep it as close as possible to the battery. Many people use jumper cables to hook up the power system with a vehicle. But this is not the best choice. It is a much better idea to use a ring terminal that fits properly over the inverter post.
If you are going to buy a power inverter for home use, you have to know that there are two main ways to use it. The first option is to hook up two 12 volt batteries to one inverter in parallel. In this way, you will get enough power to run say a refrigerator off for about two days, though it fully depends on the size of the batteries. In such a case, you need to have at least one back-up battery for the system for the situations when the power failure is longer than your battery time. By the way, I advise you to use a pure sine wave inverter as in this case, you can use the power that is produced by your local utility company.
The second option you have is for complete home power back-up. Such an inverter consists of three main components: an inverter itself, a charger, and a transfer switch. Its power can vary from 1500 watts to 5500 watts. To choose such a system, you also have to consider that the battery chargers that come with the inverters range from 70 amps to 150 amps and will charge the input DC voltage of the inverter (12V, 24V, or 48V). Overall, this system is much more complicated. On top of that, it does not have standard sockets, which means you are going to call an electrician to set it up.
How Does the Emergency Home Backup Power System Work?
The principle of operation of an inverter/charger is that the inverter will operate when the power is off, and the charger will charge and maintain the batteries when the power is on. Since this is a three-stage battery charger with smart charging capabilities, you can leave the batteries hooked up to the device at all times without risking your safety. By the way, the system comes with an internal transfer switch, so you don’t have to do anything when the power goes out. All the devices you have selected will be connected to the back-up power source automatically. In fact, you will not even notice that the power cut happened.
