Compensation for power failure

[4MyEgo]

Hi Guys

 

Just wondering and might be a little out of my league on this here in Thailand.

 

I live in the sticks in a village and love the life here, however every now and again we get the blackouts, last night for no reason, hot, sticky, out goes the power at 11pm, back on around 4am, so no use of the fans or A/C's if we really needed the A/C's, and yes I know we are approaching or are in summer now, fortunately there was a light breeze so opening a few windows cooled things and we went straight back to sleep.

 

I don't think there is much one can do about it and it gets worse in the rain season, I have enough electrical generators for when the lights go out, each generator stating that they provide 10 hours of light each, so lets say 5, more than enough x 3 using one at a time, 2 at the most.

 

What my main concern is the fridge and the food in it, i.e. we stock up, good quality food in the freezer, and lets not forget the booze, so lets get to the point, has anyone heard of compensation if the food goes off because of a blackout that say lasted for a couple of days, not that I have experienced one for that long, 24 hours yes but with the freezer remaining closed it could take a while before it defrosts and the food going off.

 

Back in Oz if this happened to you the electrical company had to compensate you, so its just a forward thought as I am not in the habit of throwing money away in case they don't compensate, if they don't then I will reduce stocking up or be prepared for the future loss'losses. 

 

Cheers

[Crossy]

Power failures are a fact of life, even in outer Bangkok where we are. A few clouds and drip of rain and off it goes, usually for a few minutes, but if it's not back on in 20 minutes it's out for the night.

 

No compensation is likely to be forthcoming from PEA/MEA, particularly for a cut of only 5 hours.  A few days maybe, but I suspect not.

 

You may be able to get "freezer contents" insurance, but even in the tropics a decent freezer will stay frozen for many hours provided you don't open it.

 

If you are that worried get a decent "silent" diesel genset and set it up so it auto-starts on power fail (there are a couple of threads here). Even our baby 5.5kVA unit will run one aircon in the bedroom, a full set of (low energy) house lights, PCs, the TV and of course the freezer.

 

With the lights and technology on a big UPS we sometimes don't notice the power has gone out (the aircon beeps when the genset starts so that's often our only real clue). We have fuel for a couple of days in stock (paranoia from the great flood when we had no mains power for 6 months) but it usually ends up in the car and gets replaced with new to stop it going stale rather than going in the genset.

[Crossy]

The problem with battery based solutions is getting decent autonomy.

 

A 12,000 BTU aircon will use about 0.4 kW hrs per hour of running.

 

A decent deep-cycle battery of 100Ahr @ 12V will store (at 50% discharge) about 0.6 kW hr. So if you have two of them in a 24V system that's about 3 hours of aircon (if you run nothing else). So 6 x 100 Ahr batteries will keep you in aircon over night.

 

At about 6,000 Baht a pop that's 36 grand on batteries alone. You can get a very decent generator for that which will power everything you need (not water heaters) and there's no issue with it going flat, as long as it has fuel you have power.

 

Batteries do have one major advantage over a genset, they are totally silent, which a low cost genset most definitely isn't.

 

EDIT Your freezer is considerably less power hungry, expect to get maybe 5 times the duration from the same batteries.

[David B in Thailand]

Generators with ATS are readily available in every province in Thailand. Even a basic Chinese made diesel generator, and a proper electrical cord from the generator can run your freezer. Blue Ice might be worth your time to buy, as any generator is going to consume fuel and make noise. Better Honda Power products Dealers in Thailand stock the Honda petrol emergency generators that are imported by Honda Power products to Thailand. I've observed some Chinese brands have zero spare parts in Thailand. The warranty is worthless on some brands since the importer just brings in boxes of products, but not really the parts. Compensation from the PEA will be an interesting subject, but they have a customer service phone line with English speaking staff. I never walk into a PEA office with questions unless I have a very good translator. The main Buriram PEA office on Highway 2074 will give accurate answers and 50 km away at a smaller PEA office the staff will have an answer 180 degrees different.  Obtaining written answers at the PEA office is crucial in my personal experience.