Does a smart meter cut power whilst it does an update ?

It’s interesting stuff! And pretty complicated because having a UPS means having to do additional maintenance to look after it properly - these things aren’t exactly Set and Forget solutions.

If you look at the Eaton 9PX range for example, some of those are beasts! That’s an awful lot of battery to manage...

Oh yes, the APC UPS’s I’ve had for 20+ years, has been a right pain to keep going !

From firmware bugs to deal with, to configuration issues, especially with networking cards and tempreature sensors, plus annoying things like needing your own email server if you want it to behave as it should in alerting you ( You may also need an email to SMS service as well ), to it not working right via its USB port and needing something with an RS232 port to kick life in it from time to time.

I sure would have liked something less hassle, but everything else was far more expensive.

Talking of which, sealed lead acid batteries are not cheap things either, and I’ve waited years for someone to make an UPS with anything but.

Eco-Flow may be a cheaper solution there, but I haven’t had one for 20 years yet to find out all of its issues !

Getting batteries delivered where I am, is almost impossible, and cheap batteries delivered here, even harder !

APC plug in models go up to around 975w or so, Dell do a 1,500w model, but is harder to find, the Eco-Flow Delta 2 is 1,800w apparently, though not tested it to that much yet.  But everything extra yo uplug in takes you nearer that 975w APC limit..

Interestingly, the newer APC models, the fan is on 24/7, whilst the older models the fan only comes on at 80% load, and its a very loud fan ! ( Hence at the moment, I’m a fan of the older model. )

The Eco-flow has the fan on all the time, but fan speed is variable, so as your load goes up, so it becomes louder…

I don’t think I’d want one in my bedroom.

The Eco-Flow uses LiFePO4 / LFP battery types, which should be safer than lead acid ( Less concern about thermal runaway, which I nearly had once, the batteries got so hot you couldn’t touch them and took 3 days to cool down once off, no wonder the batteries come in a big steel box ! ) and last longer. ( Sealed lead acid last anything from 3 years to 10, depending upon it seems the brand and how gentle you are with them, eg. lots of long powercuts, not so good. )

The eco-flow isn’t so fast to switch to battery power, as some YouTube video tests show, some computers/etc. can’t manage and shut off too quickly.  So far testing here, nothing seems effected, but still more things to test that are not yet plugged in ! ( New W11 PC’s for example, I’ve yet to finish building to replace the W10 ones. )

Price wise, reconditioned Eco-Flow units is about the same as a second hand APC + new batteries, with about the same capacity.

The Eco-flow do come with the added benefit of being able to plug some solar panels into them.

But I suspect you need planning permission for those solar panels !

Anyone know ?

Yeah, that sounds like the eco-flow unit you’ve got might be an Offline UPS - these do take longer to switch over when there’s a power loss event. That’s why I prefer recommending Line Interactive for non-critical stuff and Online for critical stuff.

Solar panels are probably fine if you’re using those portable ones that you can just pick up and put away when you’re done using them - it’s only fixed ones that’d require approval.

For my future use case though… I’m gonna need the beast UPS units cuz servers use a lotta juice.

Mmm.. so if I get 30,000w of portable solar panels, and tie them with velcro to something heavy, no planning permission required ?

Last I read was even if you have solar panels on a vehicle, you need planning permission if you use them to power something inside your home. ( This could effort Vehicle to Grid if your vehicle has solar panels on it. )

My interest is, after moving in, will need power straight away and fossil fuel generators are quite expensive to run, so a few solar panels would be helpful. but I get the impression you can’t even have one outside if its powering something inside the home.

If a few are helpful, why not have more than a few and run everyrthing you need for a bunch of Eco-flows each with a few solar panels attached to them, eg. one eco-flow per room say.

Eventually build say, some greenhouses and hang them off those inside, since the cost of a greenhouse isn’t that much more than the cost of frames to just hold just solar panels, and you end up with something more useful at the end of the day.

Heard you don’t need planning permission if the solar panels are floating on a pond, but if you want to build a new pond, you need planning permission. ( I wonder, does that mean old ponds automatically don’t need planning permission, and if so, how old do they have to be to qualify ?

So many rules and regulations to be aware of, and quite hard to find out about them all I find.

Maybe consider using all that heat from the servers to warm your house. :-)

My eventual aim is to be off grid, pondering a 12v DC system, with DC to AC converters for those things that need AC to work, since I hear there are no regulations that need an expensive electrican for if you are dealing with below 50v DC.

Plus the issue of finding quality tradesfolk who know their stuff, since I’ve been hearing for decades stories from folk about someone doing a bad job, and the only real way to spot it, is to know enough yourself !

At which point, you start thinking, I could do that, if only I was qualified !

Better instead to find solutions that don’t require you to spend several lifetimes getting qualifications in everything you want to do within your budget, since we can’t all afford to just hire someone to do something every time something needs fixing/updating.

Like earlier, I could have called a professional to fix a lose door handle, waited 3 months for them to arrive, and charged me £300 or more.

Or I could take it apart myself, see what I had to do to fix it, which involved a screwdriver a hammer and a handy granite step, along with a bit of oil.
 

IHD is back working this morning 7.30am, so it appears you just have to wait a couple of days and do nothing.

So that means, we get on average a powercut here every 6 days, so 4 days a week it will be working !

Let me try that experiment, and move the IHD to a non-UPS socket and see what happens next time there is a powercut.
 

I wish I could use those servers to warm my flat! But they’d be incredibly inefficient (and noisy!) for that purpose - and they wouldn’t be at my flat anyway. It’s actually for work stuff that’s potentially coming down the line at some point in the future.

But yeah, the remote monitoring on older units is definitely… Sub-optimal...

That gave me a good laugh, and I completely agree—it feels like we're constantly navigating through layers of bureaucracy only for more to emerge!

I once saw a YouTube video about a man who purchased rural land in America and built his own town from the ground up! He mentioned that much of what he learned came from connecting with like-minded individuals and figuring things out for himself. As you've rightly pointed out, if you have to wait for a tradesperson to assist and deplete your finances, you can at least try to tackle things yourself or learn from others first!

Just discovered my IHD has a battery compartment, so naturally I stuffed a AAA in there.

Power cut last night, its still trying to reconnect like before the battery.

So I should have left it out !

Will do that next time.
 

The IHD battery is more for when you want to unplug the IHD and wander about the house with it, switching things off and on and seeing how your usage changes on the IHD.