How to Build an Emergency Power System

An introduction to electricity
If you know the ins and outs of electricity feel free to skip this section. For the rest
of us mere mortals Ive written an introduction to electricity and concepts that are
important to us. To help us understand a bit, Ill compare it to water going through
a hose. Warning: This is a simplistic but sufficient explanation!
Theres three things that are important for us to know about:

Current
Electrical current measures the rate of flow of electrons in a circuit and is
measured in Amps. In our water analogy, its the flow rate of the water.

Voltage
Voltage measures the amount of electrical potential. In our water analogy, its a
measure of how much water pressure you have. For most applications, voltage
doesnt change much. Common voltages for emergency power systems are
220/240, 110/120, 24, 12, and 6.

Power
Power is how much electricity youve used up. When you see Watts or VA
referred to on an appliance tag, its talking about Power. In our water analogy,
think of the total volume of water transferred.

Ohms Law
A fine gentleman named Georg Ohm discovered a relationship between these three
measures. Nowadays we call this Ohms Law. Simply put, the equation is P = VI.
In non algebraic terms, it means that Power = Voltage * Current. The main thing
to take away from this is that for any given load, as you reduce voltage your
current goes up.

Putting it All Together

If you have an appliance that uses 1100 watts of power at 110V it will pull 10
Amps of current. If you run it off an inverter hooked up to a 12V battery, it will
pull 91 Amps. YOWZA!

In our water analogy, think of your common 1/2 garden hose. The water pressure
(Voltage) doesnt change. If we grab a stopwatch and figure out how much time it
takes us to fill a five gallon bucket, you get a rate of water flow (Current). If you
swap that hose out for a 1 diameter hose and measure the fill time now, youll
find out that your water flow rate (Current) has changed even though pressure at
the spigot (Voltage) and the size of the bucket (Power) havent changed at all. If it
doesnt make total sense yet, thats ok read on, well have some practical
application down below! If it STILL doesnt make sense after that, then ask in the
comments or email me and Ill clarify.

First, we need to think about what we want to use power for

Lights, heat, cooking, tv, fridge, power tools, all that stuff, right? Nope, you need
to pare it down. Think about what you need to have power for vs what is just nice
to have power for. Heat, for example, isnt a great use of stored power. Lighting
can be, but you can also get light from lanterns, candles, and the like. Cooking can
be done on a propane grill, camp stove, rocket stove, and other such things. Heres
what I would use power for.

Short Term Appliance Usage

For short to medium term emergencies youll want to be able to keep your fridge
and freezer going every few hours to keep stuff cold and frozen. You may want to
wash a load of clothes from time to time. Or you want to use the Kitchenaid to
process some food. You get the idea. The key here is to remember to be frugal with
appliance usage because these things can eat up power like theres no tomorrow.

Rudys Tip: During an emergency you can run your freezer or fridge for a few
hours a day and things will keep nice and cold as long as you try not to open it too
much. Chest freezers are far better at staying cold, and so are full freezers. The
amount of time you need to run your fridge will vary based on the weather. If its
summer in Arizona you may want to forget this plan completely!

Lighting
I wouldnt suggest running standard incandescent lights off of an emergency power
system. Using LED based lights can significantly reduce your overall power usage.
Look for bulbs and fixtures that are designed for RV use. Using candles and
lanterns for lighting is also a good idea.

Charging Batteries
Youll want to keep batteries charged up as best you can. You DO have a stash of
rechargable batteries, right? These can be used in lots of different things.
Flashlights, radios, GMRS type walkie talkies, you name it. Dont forget to charge
IPods, portable video game units, etc to keep entertainment options open.
Rudys Tip: Some batteries cant be safely charged on cheapo inverters. Some
chargers require a proper sine wave to function. Most inverters have a modified
sine wave. More about this later, but keep it in mind

Tools
Using power tools can seriously improve your effectiveness when youre working
around the house. Using a circular saw to cut plywood to protect your windows is
far more efficient than using a hand saw. Well worth the power usage. Be prudent,
but smart.

Components to an emergency power system

There are three main components to an emergency power system that we need to
consider:

Power Source
During a grid up situation we obviously have grid power. If the grid goes down,
our power can come from our power storage system, a generator, solar power, or
any combination of the above. Since the power storage system cant replenish
itself, we need a power source that can fill up the storage system and ideally also
be used for a power source directly.

Solar cells from

o Solar Powered Homes
o Livestock Wells
o Road Signs
Home made wind turbine from
o Wood deck or fence boards and a car wheel can be used for a prop.
o Bicycle gears and chain to transfer energy from prop to alternator.
o Alternator to generate energy from movement.
Home made water turbine

Rudys Tip: For me, a good generator fits the bill here. I dont have enough sun
year-round to count on solar for anything but extra candy on top. Things I look for
in a generator are remote start, efficiency, and either diesel or propane operated.

Power Storage System

This isnt an absolute requirement, but its definitely a recommendation. You
should have a way to store power for later use. Generally speaking youre looking
at a bank of batteries with an inverter to convert DC to AC and a charger to top off
the battery banks from our power source(s). You need to know what you want to
drive off the storage system in order to properly size it. More about this later!

Rudys Tip: You should avoid using auto batteries for your battery banks. Look for
deep cycle batteries which will stand up to hundreds of charge cycles before losing
capacity, vs tens for a car battery. Your best bang for buck will normally be with
6V batteries designed for golf carts and the like.

Power Distribution
This can be as easy as a few extension cords and as complicated as secondary
electrical wiring in the walls of your house complete with emergency lighting. Go
as hog wild as you want here. I recommend using extension cords for most
applications, but if you have an opportunity to run dedicated wiring its well worth
having emergency outlets in every room.

Rudys Warning: Stay away from transfer switches that will switch your entire
house between grid power and your own system. Its really easy to drain your
storage without even noticing until its too late. The average house has so many
different things plugged into the house that we dont even think about or notice.
This warning doesnt apply if you are doing a major power storage system or if
youre doing whole house solar, etc, but if youre doing that then you probably
dont need this how-to! Feel free to email me or ask in the comments if you want
more information on this!

Sizing your system

First, you need to decide what youll run off of your storage system vs what will
only run when theres an available power source. For example, I would
recommend you not try to run major appliances off of your battery banks. Plug the
freezer and fridge directly into the generator and operate them that way. Major
tools and such I would recommend doing the same thing with.

That said, lets take a super simple system that my reader was asking about. She
wanted to be able to run her crockpot for ten hours a day, have some 24 hour
lighting available, and a bit of extra just in case. All run off of the battery storage
system which is replenished from a generator.

First things first, we need to know how much power these things burn up. This is
easy if were provided with the power draw by the manufacturer, but if they only
provide us with current draw we can calculate power as well.
For lighting, lets figure shell want 10 bulbs. If you buy CFLs you can get the
equivalent of a 100W incandescent bulb that only uses 23W. Fantastic. So for
lighting, your overall power usage is 230W. Realistically you wont have them all
on at once but lets be conservative and say we will.

Unfortunately the crockpot doesnt tell us how much power it uses, but it does say
that at 120V it will use 2A. Since we know P = VI, we can calculate the used
power as 120V * 2A = 240W. Fantastic.

Rudys Note: Battery storage capacity is measured in something called Reserve

Capacity and is defined as the length of time in minutes that the battery can power
a 25A load without the available voltage dropping too low.
Since we know how long we want to power these loads, we can calculate the
amount of Reserve Capacity (RC) we need for each load. The formula used for this
is RC(in minutes) = Run Time (in hours) * Wattage / 4.545 the 4.545 is a
conversion factor, just in case you were wondering.

Lighting: 24 hours * 230W / 4.545 = 1215

Crockpot: 10 hours * 240W / 4.545 = 1268
Total RC Required: 1215 + 1268 = 2483 minutes

If we go get a bunch of 12V batteries with a RC of 200 each, well need 13

batteries total. As always, we want to buffer this a bit, so call it 15 batteries. Even a
small system like weve outlined can be a large footprint and can start getting
rather expensive.

To keep these charged, well want to get a trickle charger that can keep them
topped off while on grid power and that can be plugged into our generator for top
off during emergencies. Well need to have a power inverter to convert the DC
power off the batteries into AC power that our appliances can use. Power inverters
have an input voltage (in this case we want 12V DC) and an output voltage (in this
case we want 120V AC) and are rated for certain loads. Generally speaking
inverter specifications talk about peak and sustain loads, and they are measured in
Watts. In our case, we need an inverter capable of at least 500W, better to get one
thats bigger than that.

Rudys Tip: Get a charger that is a multistage smart charger. This will prevent
your batteries from being damaged by overcharging and will optimize the speed of
charge.
Finally, youll want to size your generator appropriately. Well assume that we
want to run a fridge (600W) and a freezer (800W) off of it, charge our battery bank
(800W) for a total of 2.1kW. Buffer it a bit and you want a generator capable of at
least 3kW sustained load.

To recap, to cover the needs of this system we need a good charger, an 800W
inverter, a 3kW generator, and 15 200 RC batteries set up in a single battery bank.
Estimated street price as I write this right now is about $2500 for the major
components, not incuding wiring. Seems a little expensive to run a crockpot! But
you get the idea.

Rudys Disclaimer: This is not intended as a recommendation on exactly what you

need to build. You need to design a system to your own needs, and not to the needs
of one of my readers. Ive intentionally left out technical details and in some places
cut some corners. You should research further before building your own system
and potentially seek expert assistance. The goal of this post was to get you thinking
about it, and to prod you to decide if its something you really want to do. That
said, Im willing to talk a bit more about this in depth if its something that you
guys want let me know!