Blog posts tagged with 'automatic changeover switch'

Life can be strange. We live in a world where we rely upon electricity for so many things. How would you charge your phone without it? Run your laptop? Cook meals? Drive a hybrid or electric car? Watch TV? Phone a friend? Keep the food fresh in your fridge or freezer? Have light in your home at night? You couldn’t do any of that, and more, without electricity.

And yet, what is strange is that we are at a point where for one reason and another, our electricity supplies are likely to go down at some point this winter, and maybe for days or weeks at a time. Yesterday, October 17^th, was the 35^th anniversary of the greatest storm we have ever seen in Britain which this writer remembers only too well, having been without electricity for 13 days as a result! And now, climate change seems to be bringing more severe storms to add to our woes of gas supplies being threatened by a certain Russian gentleman.

No wonder so many people are considering buying a generator to provide the necessary electricity when the mains go down. We have had a lot of enquiries recently for new generators for sale in the UK at Blades Power Generation.

Many Different Sizes

In fact, we have new generators for sale in the UK of many different sizes, since the size that you need is dependent upon the amount of power that you need to generate. So, you may only need a relatively small generator to run things in your home, but if you need to power a factory that is a different matter entirely. In fact, it is almost more important to power your business because otherwise it comes to a grinding halt.

You will also need to invest in a changeover switch to switch from mains to generator when the power goes down, and the reverse when it comes back on again, of course. You can use a manual changeover switch, but this has certain disadvantages, so an automatic changeover switch is far superior.

When you have a manual changeover switch you have to switch off the mains, go to the generator, fire it up, then switch to the generator. And of course, the same the other way around when the mains power comes back on. This can be difficult at the best of times, and impossible if you don’t happen to be on the premises. As you might guess, an automatic changeover switch does it all for you, so you will only be without power for seconds until the lights come back on.

You can hardly open a paper or switch on the TV news these days without seeing all the doom and gloom. What is, in one respect, fascinating about the cost of electricity and heating this coming winter is the fact that it seems to go up by a few hundred pounds every day. Only a couple of weeks ago the energy price cap was going to be £3,200 or so. Then it went to £3,500. Then £4,250. And then at the weekend, it was quoted somewhere as £5,500!

No matter which set of figures you believe, one thing is for sure, and that is that energy bills are going to skyrocket over the next few months. This is why more and more homeowners are considering buying a generator because there are two main advantages. First, you have a standby power unit if the electricity goes down – which does seem as though it is becoming more likely. Second, it may well now be a very considerable amount cheaper to generate your own electricity rather than use the usual supplier.

Of course, you do have to take into account the cost of buying a generator in the first place, and to a large extent that will be decided by the amount of power that you need to produce for your home or business. That is a subject for another day.

You Don’t Necessarily Need A New Generator

However, you don’t necessarily need to buy a new generator because you can find used generators for sale in the UK. It is very similar to buying a used car. Very often businesses that use generators will need to upgrade and get a larger one as they expand, and so they trade in the old one. As one of the foremost generator suppliers in the UK, at Blades Power Generation, we always have a stock of used generators for sale in the UK that customers have traded in with us.

You will also need a changeover switch for when the power goes down, and you can get a manual one or an automatic changeover switch. If you have a manual switch, it means that when the power goes down you have to fire up your generator and then switch over to it.

An automatic changeover switch does this, well, er, automatically! So, when the power goes down it will fire up your generator and – boom! – the lights are back on in a matter of seconds.

It’s a fact that today we rely more on electricity than we have ever done before, and not only that, but we are going to be relying on it even more in the future as the world moves towards electric vehicles.

At the same time, it seems that climate change is also having an effect, with more violent storms in Scotland and the North-West having brought power outages recently - in some cases for two weeks!

So, it is important to keep the lights on. It is vital if you run a business which relies on electricity to power plant and keep machinery running. You cannot afford to have your factory come to a grinding halt because of power outages. OK, if you are watching TV at home and the power goes down, that can be annoying, but it is not like interrupting workflow. Even so, more people are looking to buy a new generator in the UK for their homes today.

If you are considering that you might buy a new generator in the UK, then you need to talk to us at Blades Power Generation: it is what we do. We have generators of all sizes, from those for small usage in the home to much larger models that can keep the power running in your factory and prevent the productivity losses that would otherwise occur.

You Need A Changeover Switch

If you have never installed generator before, you will need a changeover switch. This is a legal requirement as it prevents the mains power coming into contact with the generator when the mains come back on, and it also avoids the generator back feeding the mains, which would put the lives of electricity workers in danger.

There are two types of changeover switch – either a manual or automatic changeover switch. If you have a manual switch, it means that you have to switch from mains to generator – and back again – manually. In turn, this means that somebody has to be on the premises in order to do it.

An automatic changeover switch, as you might guess, does it automatically, which means that you will only be without power for a few seconds while the generator fires up. 

More people today are investing in a standby generator for their homes because of the possibility of power cuts. If you live out in the sticks somewhere, you may find that you have power outages on a regular basis, and this can range from being a minor inconvenience to something far more serious, depending upon what sort of equipment you have and use that requires electric power.

For instance, you might have a family member dependent upon a power wheelchair, a ventilator, or communication devices that rely upon electric power, so if you are unable to charge them it can be a serious issue. OK, if the power goes down for a couple of hours it may not be too serious a matter, but if it goes down for a day or even more, then it is a big issue. Even if you only have a power outage three or four times a year,that is three or four times too many.

This is why more people are buying generators so that they can always have a supply of electricity, no matter what. However, when you have a generator, it is a legal requirement that you also have a transfer, or changeover, switch. You can install either a manual or an automatic changeover switch.

An automatic changeover switch is always preferable because - believe it or not – when the power goes down your system will automatically start the generator and so you will only be without power for a matter of a few seconds until the generator kicks in. If you have a manual changeover switch it means that somebody has to manually switch from the mains power to the generator. That may be OK if someone is on the premises and can do that, but if you are away from home for a couple of days and you have something such as a tropical fish tank, those fish are, unfortunately, not going to last until you get home.

With an automatic transfer switch, you have no such worries. You can have an automatic transfer panel with mains detection or without. If it has mains detection, it will detect the power failure and send a signal to the generator telling it to start. Once the generator has started, it will send a signal back to the automatic transfer switch to tell it that it is ready, and the transfer switch will then disconnect from the mains and connect to the generator.