Electric or powerbank?

[Badda]

Putting in a summer house and planning to have electric in there for lights, projector/tv, maybe a little fridge etc. I wondered if anyone had gone for a massive power bank rather than running cable down?

If so, thoughts?

[OutInTheShed]

I have 12V lights and fridge on my boat.
Solar panel for charging.
12V batteries are relatively cheap.

I have some leftover 12V/solar stuff lighting my green house and a shed.
12V to 230V inverters are fairly affordable.

The all in one 'Jackery' type units seem quite pricey to me, I'd lay a lot of cable for £800!
But a powerbank is great if you want to take it off site.
No one-size solution IMHO.

[Evanivitch]

Fogstar battery, solar and micro inverter setup shouldn't cost more than a few grand.

[OutInTheShed]

Evanivitch said:

Fogstar battery, solar and micro inverter setup shouldn't cost more than a few grand.

100Ah LifePO4 battery about £180 now.
1000W pure sine inverter about £200
Victron solar charge controller about £100
400W solar panel £100
12V fridge £200?
Fuses, cables connectors and stuff add up!

Everything can be scaled up to as much as you are happy to pay.
You can get a lot of 12V stuff, like lights, TVs, laptop chargers and avoid needing the 230V inverter in many cases.

£100 gets you 20m of armoured cable, £20 gets you a spade to bury it with..... :-)

[Evanivitch]

OutInTheShed said:

£100 gets you 20m of armoured cable, £20 gets you a spade to bury it with..... :-)

And a second consumer panel and a qualified electrician to install it...

[DonkeyApple]

Badda said:

Putting in a summer house and planning to have electric in there for lights, projector/tv, maybe a little fridge etc. I wondered if anyone had gone for a massive power bank rather than running cable down?

If so, thoughts?

It's going to be cheaper and easier to run a cable from the house in the long run.

Lugging a massive power bank too and from the house to recharge it is going to be somewhat of a drag and installing solar and batteries is just plain daft.

[Turtle Shed]

I'll be building a summer house next year. Definitely going to power it with solar.

Would be a 50m cable tun, can't see that and installation coming in at much under £500.00 installed. Reckon I can DIY panels/inverter/battery for about £1k.

Would only save a few quid per month in electricty, but with a TV, fridge, lights, smart speaker and a firepit outside it would be a comfortable off-grid place to be. We do get a few power cuts where I live. (Wilds of West Somerset).

[biggiles]

Turtle Shed said:

I'll be building a summer house next year. Definitely going to power it with solar.

Would be a 50m cable tun, can't see that and installation coming in at much under £500.00 installed. Reckon I can DIY panels/inverter/battery for about £1k.

Would only save a few quid per month in electricty, but with a TV, fridge, lights, smart speaker and a firepit outside it would be a comfortable off-grid place to be. We do get a few power cuts where I live. (Wilds of West Somerset).

I'd do the 50m cable run (50m is fairly short). It will last 100 years and will always work, whereas you'll be faffing around with batteries/panels/widgets forever. Especially if you want to run a fridge, which will run a battery down very fast. You can also lay ethernet at the same time.

I've done both, and now always put in the mains cable where I can.

[dhutch]

Evanivitch said:

OutInTheShed said:

£100 gets you 20m of armoured cable, £20 gets you a spade to bury it with..... :-)

And a second consumer panel and a qualified electrician to install it...

Hang it off a 13A FCU on the livingroom ring main, radial cicuit with a 6A FCU for the lighting, no consumer unit needed. Unless its a steel building and needs TT earthing. Technically not a new circuit, and both ends terminated indoors, so within the scope of DIY if you want it to be.

Plus £200 gets you a few hours of sparks time, so you still still at £350 not a grand or more, and dont have to lug it up the garden to charge it.

The powerbanks are good, I have a mate running a a central heating burner in an oil fired steam narrowboat off one, but if you are wit 20m a cable is a no brainer imo.

[Evanivitch]

dhutch said:

Evanivitch said:

OutInTheShed said:

£100 gets you 20m of armoured cable, £20 gets you a spade to bury it with..... :-)

And a second consumer panel and a qualified electrician to install it...

Hang it off a 13A FCU on the livingroom ring main, radial cicuit with a 6A FCU for the lighting, no consumer unit needed. Unless its a steel building and needs TT earthing. Technically not a new circuit, and both ends terminated indoors, so within the scope of DIY if you want it to be.

Plus £200 gets you a few hours of sparks time, so you still still at £350 not a grand or more, and dont have to lug it up the garden to charge it.

The powerbanks are good, I have a mate running a a central heating burner in an oil fired steam narrowboat off one, but if you are wit 20m a cable is a no brainer imo.

There's no way you're getting a habited building through Part P as a spur. A shed or garage, sure. Just by putting a radial circuit in is straightaway going to undermine that

[dhutch]

Not sure a 'summerhouse' is much different to a well used potting shed or garage/workshop?

Ideally I would suggest sticking a new 20A rcbo in, but but a 13A fcu spur is likely more than enough. Certainly as much as you would get out of most portable power banks.

Or just stick a plug on the end!

(Or stop being tight a pay a spark £200)

[DonkeyApple]

dhutch said:

Not sure a 'summerhouse' is much different to a well used potting shed or garage/workshop?

Ideally I would suggest sticking a new 20A rcbo in, but but a 13A fcu spur is likely more than enough. Certainly as much as you would get out of most portable power banks.

Or just stick a plug on the end!

(Or stop being tight a pay a spark £200)

Under building regs such a room is supposed to be Part P compliant. Hardly a big issue but also not essential as you'd just unplug the garden room for the purpose of any sale if someone did wish to just run a basic spur etc.

Either way, it's going to be cheaper and easier than lugging battery packs around of going full Wonga EDF on a shed.

[MattyD803]

Has the OP even mentioned the potential cable run length? That will make a big difference to what we think is the 'best' solution....

I'd always go mains personally.....but at say 50m+, I might start looking at my options.

[OutInTheShed]

biggiles said:

Turtle Shed said:

I'll be building a summer house next year. Definitely going to power it with solar.

Would be a 50m cable tun, can't see that and installation coming in at much under £500.00 installed. Reckon I can DIY panels/inverter/battery for about £1k.

Would only save a few quid per month in electricty, but with a TV, fridge, lights, smart speaker and a firepit outside it would be a comfortable off-grid place to be. We do get a few power cuts where I live. (Wilds of West Somerset).

I'd do the 50m cable run (50m is fairly short). It will last 100 years and will always work, whereas you'll be faffing around with batteries/panels/widgets forever. Especially if you want to run a fridge, which will run a battery down very fast. You can also lay ethernet at the same time.

I've done both, and now always put in the mains cable where I can.

I run a fridge on my boat from solar panels for days at a time.
A 12V camping fridge can be quite low draw, mine averages about an amp at 12V, i.e. roughly 24Ah or 288Wh per day.
You can look up what a small 240V fridge from Curry's uses.
Yield of solar panels is obviously much less in Winter.
The sizes of solar panels and batteries you'd want is a mess of guesses, unknowns and debatables.

If you want 100% reliability 365 days a year then mains wiring has a lot more edge over solar, compared to someone who is happy with a compromise which is fairly dependable in the Summer.

I may be buying a house where there's a handy shed with no power.
It's not far from the house but digging a trench for a cable would be as awkward as you can imagine. A clump of trees, a driveway and a near-vertical rockface for starters!
Seems to fall clearly on the 12V/solar/battery side of the divide, but I may want to run a dehumidifier there in the winter!
The TV might be the sticking point, unless you're only wanting live broadcast and have a strong signal, you might want a network cable.
Other stuff will vary a lot for different people's use.

[Badda]

Thanks all for the thoughts, it’s much appreciated.

On balance, wiring seems the way forward as I suspected.

[Evanivitch]

dhutch said:

Not sure a 'summerhouse' is much different to a well used potting shed or garage/workshop?

In regulations, it is yeah. The fact some people choose to hide in a shed doesn't change that the primary purpose of a shed is storage and a potting shed is that very-low energy demand of... potting.

Start sticking fridges and the like and very different usage.

[RizzoTheRat]

Badda said:

Thanks all for the thoughts, it s much appreciated.

On balance, wiring seems the way forward as I suspected.

If you're going to run a cable, consider running ethernet at the same time, and if you're doing that consider running ducts instead of just cables, so you can replace the cables in the future if needed, or bung an extra one through the ducts.