Does a UPS or Inverter increase electricity bill?

blaaislaai said:
Just by having no power basically; No electricity, no usage :)

6-8+ hours a day of no power eventually added up to the monthly saving. I did not change any habits

EDIT: Used to buy R1000 (at most) of electricity for the month. Now, we have to buy at least R1200 to last the month
Click to expand...
Over 80kWh a month just for the inverter? Which one is it and what battery size do you have?
 
We replaced all our lights with emergency bulbs and use the ecoflows (x2). Havent seen my bill increase other than the normal winter load.
 
blaaislaai said:
Just by having no power basically; No electricity, no usage :)

6-8+ hours a day of no power eventually added up to the monthly saving. I did not change any habits

EDIT: Used to buy R1000 (at most) of electricity for the month. Now, we have to buy at least R1200 to last the month
Click to expand...
Yes and no. The problem is a lot of devices has a huge surge when the power goes on, to keep them running, compared to using top up power when running. Each time load shedding, these items like fridges, freezers, geysers has to work hard to get started.
 
If this is on your mind

I would say most important buy an inverter with a solar charge controller built in

That way you can not just offset some of that in the long term it will generate enough to make back the costs of inverter and battery

You can even add panels in phases ,

Natutally the first few has the biggest impact ie when you cover the base load and day time load

The more panels you have, the bigger the battery has to be to really utilise them properly
 
Corelli said:
Yes and no. The problem is a lot of devices has a huge surge when the power goes on, to keep them running, compared to using top up power when running. Each time load shedding, these items like fridges, freezers, geysers has to work hard to get started.
Click to expand...
And even that should not make any considerable difference to your bill, besides the geyser, everything else is just a momentary surge which doesn't last longer than a few seconds.
 
blaaislaai said:
Just by having no power basically; No electricity, no usage :)

6-8+ hours a day of no power eventually added up to the monthly saving. I did not change any habits

EDIT: Used to buy R1000 (at most) of electricity for the month. Now, we have to buy at least R1200 to last the month
Click to expand...
Ah, 8 hours of no geyser will definitely save money.

How much of that is price increases?
 
Corelli said:
Yes and no. The problem is a lot of devices has a huge surge when the power goes on, to keep them running, compared to using top up power when running. Each time load shedding, these items like fridges, freezers, geysers has to work hard to get started.
Click to expand...
I would argue that is irrelevant
ie in fact load shedding reduces that startup spike ie your fridge would have stopped and started lets say 3-4 times to top up the coldness of the fridge and now it is forced to do one long top up once load shedding is over

So you actually have less startups thanks to load shedding

The spike is also really really short and only important to sizing inverter imo
 
the age old myth of if you switch the fluorescent light on 3 times it equals x amount of time of staying on

ok so lets take the fridge i uses lets say 150w but at start-up it uses lets say 600w
for 5seconds (being ultra generous here), so it uses 0.000833kWh for startup

you would have to stop start the fridge 30 times to match 10 min of run time
 
Last edited:
TheChamp said:
Over 80kWh a month just for the inverter? Which one is it and what battery size do you have?
Click to expand...
my round trip losses is lets say 25%

now load shedding , ie if living normal live 10 hrs of the day is 40% of the day

so i use 40 units a day so lets say 16 in shedding (40%)
16x 30 = 480 units during load shedding a month

480 units 25% losses is 120kWh in losses

so at my rate of R2.40

that is R288 more each month

now yes this is a edge case most that have my size inverter 5kw (and up) have panels already
or still try and save the cycles on their battery

i don't care i just pay the premium not to have to deal with no clean cups or backlog of washing

now yes i am aware of it, and busy installing panels to make up for that

the more battery life you have the worse it gets
ie you can't use it during load shedding if you don't have it in a battery

i have 7.5kWh battery and use just over 6kw in a 4 hrs session
ie my base load varies between 0.8kwh and 1.3kwh one gaming pc makes that difference (12700k and 3070ti while gaming naturally if he is just browsing it drops a lot or if he plays less demanding titles)
 
Last edited:
the rule of thumb is also the bigger the step up and down the more the losses

ie a 48v system will be more efficient on average vs 24 and 12v
hence why when it comes to server ups you see higher voltages ie 72v- 192v and sometimes even more

that is why a dc ups works better on modems and you get more bang for buck on wh
they lose the conversion inefficiencies of ac-dc too
 
TheChamp said:
Over 80kWh a month just for the inverter? Which one is it and what battery size do you have?
Click to expand...
Not sure about the amount of units;

It's a SunSynk 5Kw coupled with a 5.5kw Hubble AM2 1C battery

wingnut771 said:
Ah, 8 hours of no geyser will definitely save money.

How much of that is price increases?
Click to expand...
I only got the inverter setup end of January this year, no price increases (if any yet?) calculated into my total.
My geyser is only switched on 1hour a day (late afternoon), that same warm water carries 2 shower sessions for two people, evening and early morning.
 
Accepting a power factor of 1, my 3kW/3KVa inverter uses 38 W to keep itself going on standby when batteries are fully charged. Then the monthly waste would be 38x24x30= 27,4kW or 27,4 kW x R2,4 = at least R65,76.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X