Surviving a Neighborhood Power Outage with a Victron Home Battery

Steps

1. 1

   Step 1: Receiving the grid lost notification during a neighborhood outage

   Yesterday, while sitting at a birthday party at my neighbors, I received a grid lost notification on my phone from my Victron setup. My system sits in series between the grid and my home, functioning as an uninterruptible power supply that switches to emergency power seamlessly during a blackout. When I came home, I saw that the house was running in island mode with the grid connection broken.

   Upon investigating the cause, I noticed that my bureau and neighbors also had a power failure. Normally during a power outage, all three phases in a home go out at the same time, but in this case, only one phase dropped out. This partial outage meant that many houses had power in the living room but not on the first floor, or vice versa, confirming the problem was on the street level rather than inside my house.

2. 2

   Step 2: Drawing an anonymous neighborhood map of the power cables

   Watch this part (2:00)

   I drew an anonymous map of our neighborhood to show how the power cables and distribution station are laid out. Even though I looked at the maps from the Enexis guys, I drew this from memory so do not hold it against me if I made a small mistake.

   The map shows where the distribution station sits in our area and marks our house with a red arrow. It helps illustrate how the single phase drop affected not just our street, but the entire surrounding neighborhood.

3. 3

   Step 3: Tracing the Enexis street repairs and underground cable specs

   Around 3 PM, the grid lost notification came in for our house and the entire neighborhood. About an hour to an hour and a half later, Enexis repair vans arrived to work on the distribution box, restoring full three-phase power to our street after about two hours total. Other homes in the neighborhood had to be checked at the meter box by technicians to locate the underground fault at a branch piece on the corner of the street.

   Because the repair involved excavation work, I threw an extension cord over the fence to the neighbor's party so we could keep the coffee and snacks going. The Enexis crew spent nearly the entire day and evening until about 10:30 or 11 PM repairing the underground street power cable. The main street cable consists of four 95 mm square wires carrying energy for the entire neighborhood, which is comparable in thickness to the battery cables we use for a single home storage system.

4. 4

   Step 4: Analyzing neighborhood grid limits and electric vehicle strain

   Our neighborhood dates back to the 1970s and 1980s, built without any consideration for electric vehicles. The underground power cable already operates at its maximum possible load capacity. As more people adopt electric vehicles in the near future that require many kilowatts for charging, these cables risk severe overloads.

   Plans are already underway to lay new cables in our neighborhood that are better suited to handle these high power demands. Until those new cables are installed and as electric vehicle numbers increase, the existing street cable remains heavily overloaded. This situation highlights why home batteries are so useful, turning an eight-hour neighborhood outage into a non-issue for households with critical equipment like servers.

5. 5

   Step 5: Answering Marc about generators, appliance limits, and battery depletion

   After posting about the outage on Facebook, I received many positive and negative reactions that I wanted to address. Marc van Steenhoeven commented that people should use a generator instead of a battery, questioned whether important things work during an outage, and warned that letting batteries empty completely ruins them. I explained that a generator cannot seamlessly take over power within 10 milliseconds like an inverter battery setup can.

   Furthermore, my entire house stayed up and running with television, Wi-Fi, and fiber optic internet as long as the router kept power. Regarding empty batteries, a battery equipped with a good battery management system will not drain completely; it shuts down well in time to protect itself from damage. Additionally, when the house runs in island mode, solar panels remain active to continuously recharge the batteries.

6. 6

   Step 6: Answering Harald and Rob about standby power and life as usual consumption

   Harald van der Heyden commented that 615 Watts must be my null-load power, and while it bridges an outage for a while, it is certainly not life as usual. To be precise, our standby consumption is usually around 500 Watts, and we run 3 times 5 kVA inverters with 48 kWh of storage capacity. Our life as usual usage, including the dishwasher, dryer, and induction cooking, takes between 12 and 16 kWh per day, meaning our 48 kWh setup can comfortably sustain us for over three days.

   Rob Huisman also shared that he installed a Victron system for his parents aged 79 and 78, who did not even notice a neighborhood blackout while his mother ran laundry and the dishwasher with solar panels keeping the battery level. My Victron system sounded a beeping alarm to let me know it switched to island mode, but inside the house, life continued completely unaffected just like it did for his parents.

7. 7

   Step 7: Explaining the difference between parallel and series home battery systems

   I want to clarify an important point that many people misunderstand regarding the two types of home batteries. Batteries that stand parallel to your house measure your grid usage and charge or discharge to compensate for energy consumption. Batteries placed in series with your house, on the other hand, are designed nine times out of ten to provide emergency backup power.

   In my setup, the system sits between the grid and my house, so when the grid fails, my home keeps getting power. A Home Wizard plugin battery stands parallel to the house, meaning it can charge and discharge slightly, but it can never provide emergency backup power to your home during an outage.

8. 8

   Step 8: Inspecting the old wooden DIY home battery after one year of use

   As I mentioned, I was busy recording footage for another video about my budget DIY home battery built inside a wooden case. Afterward, I moved all the components into new steel cases. This wooden battery has been in active use powering my house for a full year.

   Now that it has completed a full year of service, I am going to inspect the current condition and state of the battery. This wraps up our look at how the home battery handled a real street-wide power failure.

9. 9

   Step 9: Takeaways

   • A series-connected Victron battery setup provides seamless UPS backup power during grid failures.

   • Partial phase outages can cause localized blackouts while home batteries keep everything running.

   • A proper battery management system protects the storage units from discharging down to zero.

   • Solar panels keep charging the battery system even when the house is operating in island mode.

   • Older 1970s and 1980s neighborhood power cables face heavy overloads from electric vehicles.

   • Parallel plugin batteries cannot provide emergency backup power unlike series-installed systems.