The Combined Backup System

To me, getting the system up and runnig is the best part of all of this process. Seeing the system come together gives a person a feeling of accomplishment and independence. Seeing that you have the ability to live without the power company is part of what survivalism is all about. No matter if it is the weather, some other natural disaster, war, depression, or a whim of our government to shut off your power, you still have the ability to live comfortably. I set up one system but have since moved and am working on setting one up here at our present residence. Depending on whether you live in city or country, there are some things that you may or may not be able or want to do. This will be kind of a generic model of setting up your system. First, you need to list everything electrical in your home. List them in order of importance for a survival situation. Living in the country, my list starts with my well pump for water followed by my furnace. Having just a crawl space under my house, I am building a small insulated lean-to shed against the house near the outside entrance to the crawl space. This will house my gas powered generator for short term outages. This is temporary until I get all of my solar and wind generators in place at which time they will replace the generator. At the present I am not quite ready to do so. This outside lean-to will allow me to move batteries in and out as they they need changing for charging. I am not sure I will need to move them as at my present location, unlike my past home, I may be able to put both my wind generator and my solar panels near enough to the house not to have to move batteries. I will probably have six batteries. One set of four wired in parallel and a set of two wired in parallel. The fuse block and volt and amp meters will also be located in the lean-to with the batteries. I will also have a volt and amp meter to tell me how much charge I am getting, allowing me to switch back and forth between wind and solar. I also have a battery condition tester with which I can test the condition of various batteries and will know when one needs to be replaced. The four battery set will be hooked to an inverter(s) which will be used for powering furnace, pump and appliances. The two battery set will be used to power such things as radios, tv and other items that can be powered directly by 12v power. Having a pop-up camper, we already have quite an array of 12v equipment.