Thread: POWER or the Joy of Living Remote.

Waiting for Gav to chime in with some good advice.

Welcome to the real world.

Originally Posted by jonesfam

Now, if you lived in the real world (what we call the rest of Australia)

You are wrong, there. City folk live in fantasy land.

If lengthy power outages are common, install a backup generator. You would only require a MTS although, if outages are really common, an ATS might be the go.

I find it very hard to believe that solar panels are not available that operate fine in 40 plus temps!
We recently quoted a full off grid system for a house on a bush block in Vic we were looking at.
8kw of panels and new gen battery ( of some kind) and a diesel genny - all networked.
We had it specced so that the genny would rarely be needed - other systems utilise the genny more frequently.
So many configurations out there.
The quote came in at around 60k. Sounded steep to us but a second quote confirmed that this was the in the ball park - it would have done the job. We didnt go ahead with the purchase anyway.
This was a system to run a 3 bedroom house with 2 people,all the usual mod cons, and all that is required to be warm in winter and cool in summer and have capacity to have family stay and not need to worry about system capacity.

We are talking very hot, 48 degrees day after day & a big load.

We have 9 accommodation units each with A/C & 3 separate hot water systems.
There are 9 A/C's in my house another 12 in the Roadhouse & 4 more in the A/Managers house.
A large 3 phase drive in freezer, a large cool room, 15 various drink fridges & display freezers, another 4 hot water, lighting, fuel pumps, a massive networked computer system & all the other usual stuff.

In summer we really do pull some power.

Jonesfam
PS I have no idea how people lived here before we had A/C?

As with most remote communities the power costs are usually subsidised by the rest of Australian consumers, If you had to pay for your power "At Cost" I would imagine that you really would have something to complain about.
In your situation where you are using a lot of power I imagine that a decent solar system with a backup genset would be a viable option and to go off grid But retain the option of using the grid in case your system fails, If that is possible.

FWIW I used to live only about 5 hours out of Sydney but we could've been on the moon as far as services go.

Yes, we had mains power but it came as a radial feed from 150km away northwest, so any storm in between would take out several communities of up to 3000 people each.
Being a radial feed it couldn't be patched and re-routed, and we'd be without power for up to one day.
That meant all the businesses were out, and no one had a backup genny.

One time a lightening strike tripped the three phase breakers on the pole just up the road, a Country Energy tech I knew pretty well only lived a little over 1km away yet it took 24 hours for the breakers to be reset.

I feel for you.

BTW, Mum is in Alice and has panels on the roof.
I'll ask if they were told that they don't work above 40*?

In 79 the powerstation was a 150 kva Rolls Royce and was replaced with two 8- 92 GMs ,pics of cooling day tank ect 2nd pic is the high tec load bank used for commisioning complete with all PPE


AM Sorry better late than never

Originally Posted by Ancient Mariner

In 79 the powerstation was a 150 kva Rolls Royce and was replaced with two 8- 92 GMs ,pics of cooling day tank ect 2nd pic is the high tec load bank used for commisioning complete with all PPE


AM

8-92...music to my ears. No pics btw.