After a series of Russian missile and drone strikes on Ukraine's critical infrastructure in the spring of 2024, it became clear that we needed to prepare for prolonged power outages. Assuming that the situation would only worsen in the fall and winter, the editors and authors of Mezha, like most Ukrainians, began to plan for their energy independence or at least energy resilience. In this material, we decided to tell you what exactly we have purchased or done to ensure the efficiency and at least minimal comfort in our homes during long power outages, which in some cases already last 6-7 hours in a row. Perhaps in the comments, our readers will share their own solutions and experience in solving energy problems.
Taras Mishchenko, editor-in-chief of Mezha
I was already partially prepared for the summer power outages. Since the fall of 2022, I have had the minimum set of equipment, which I am now going to expand to become more energy independent.
And I started with the ability to work at home during power outages, so one of my first purchases was an uninterruptible power supply for the router. Going through the possible options, I opted for the Italian brand TECNOWARE Era Plus DC 9VDC/12VDC with a built-in 8800 mAh battery, and I was impressed by the fact that it was a ready-made solution. There was no need to buy a separate cable for the router, the UPS itself was connected to the outlet, and the router was already connected to it. Thus, when the power was on, the uninterruptible power supply simultaneously powered the router and charged it, and there was no need to switch anything manually. The only thing is that it lasts up to 5 hours, so with longer outages, it has to be recharged from a charging station.
Now I don't find this particular model on sale anymore, it may have been discontinued, but there are similar ones from a lot of Chinese brands. Now I'm thinking about replacing the Era Plus with something similar, but that would hold a charge for at least 10 hours.
As a charging station, I chose the Bluetti EB3A, a basic 268Wh solution with up to 600W of power, which is enough to recharge a laptop and smartphone, power a router when a separate UPS is running low, and watch TV. In the latter case, you can count on 4 hours, but often this is enough to watch a movie or a football match. Several times the light was turned off just as the washing machine was completing the rinse cycle, and given that the water was no longer heating up at that moment, the Bluetti EB3A calmly allowed the washing to finish. In general, for more than a year of use, I note that for my money it turned out to be an excellent solution if you need to close the basic tasks described above.
However, such a basic set may not be enough next winter, so the family decided to approach the problem more thoroughly and ordered a Deye SUN-6k-SG05LP1-EU 6kW, 1f, 48V inverter and a Deye SE-G5.1Pro-B battery (LiFePO4 51.2V 100Ah), which will allow them to use the lighting in the apartment, finally make the refrigerator work, and charge laptops and smartphones as needed.
Another advantage of this system is that it automatically switches power to the battery when the power goes out and back on when it comes back on. That is, there is no need to switch anything manually. In addition, the system itself is scalable, and if necessary, you can buy another 5 kW battery of the same type, which will significantly increase the ability to use electronics in the house.
Of course, in an apartment building, this doesn't solve the problem of heating and water supply, so we are currently working with our neighbors to order a project to install backup batteries with inverters that we can use in conjunction with solar panels in the future.
Oleg Danylov, editor of Mezha
I started preparing for possible long-term power outages back in the fall of 2022. It was then that I bought what I thought was a large 30,000 mAh Baseus Bipow power bank with a maximum power of 15 W (now there are already similar models with a power of 20 W and even 30 W on sale). Plus a Kemper gas torch (it seems like it's just some random Chinese brand) for standard collet gas cylinders of 220 g and, of course, a dozen cylinders for the torch. The thing is, I have an electric stove at home, so in case of a power outage, I can't do without the burner.
Back in 2022, neither the power bank nor the burner was needed. The burner is still waiting for its time, because as it turned out, planning breakfast/lunch/dinner for the day ahead according to the outage schedules is easier than lighting a burner. But the power bank is already working, albeit as a table lamp together with the Xiaomi ZMI LED 2 USB LED lamp. It seems that in this mode, the power bank will last about six months.
In early June 2024, it became clear that "we need bigger guns". Of course, my colleagues advised me to switch to a laptop, but I've tried working from a laptop many times, for example, on business trips, and I don't like it. I want to work and play on my own desktop PC, and it needs a lot of power.
Taking advantage of the fact that Serhiy Svitlychnyi was choosing a charging station, I simply "fell on his tail" and bought the same one - Anker PowerHouse 757, also known as Anker SOLIX F1200. In fact, we often do this, it's strange to have the best specialists in the country in the newsroom and not use their advice and expertise.
The Anker PowerHouse 757 weighs 20 kg, has a capacity of 1229 W⋅h, a total output power of 1828 W, two standard 220 V sockets, 2 × USB Type C, 4 × USB Type A and a car cigarette lighter socket. No unnecessary Wi-Fi control, Bluetooth, or additional buttons. Except that it can also work as a lamp (enough to illuminate a large room).
The charging station keeps my powerful desktop PC, which I built last year, 27″ monitor, ASUS RT-AX58U router, and a floor fan (switched from an air conditioner, and it's even better) running for 7-8 hours in Windows when working with text and pictures for the Mezha.Media website, or 2-3 hours in games, depending on the "severity" of the graphics.
Speaking of games. As it turned out, the energy efficiency of games does not always depend on the quality of the graphics, but sometimes simply on the skill of the developers who know how to optimize their games. For example, in Windows, my PC with a monitor consumes about 80-100 watts, depending on some internal processes of Windows 11, plus another 20 watts is required by the dual-band router, plus 30 watts for the fan at minimum speed. Euro Truck Simulator 2/American Truck Simulator "consume" 340-360 watts, Dragon Dogma 2 - 350-380 watts, The First Descendant - 380 watts, and The Crew Motorfest, which is even better in terms of graphics than the previous three games, consumes only 230 watts. Victoria 3 "eats" 190 to 320 watts, depending on the map scale from "paper" to detailed with towns, forests, and steam trains. Magic: The Gathering Arena consumes only 170 watts, while TerraScape, which doesn't seem to have any super-cool graphics, consumes as much as 350 watts. However, it should be noted that consumption in games is highly dependent on the specific processor and video card, as well as on the restrictions set by the developers, for example, on the fixed fps.
The only problem with the Anker PowerHouse 757 is that it roars much louder during charging than my Microsoft Flight Simulator gaming PC. The Anker PowerHouse 757 consumes 1 kW while charging, and it takes about 1.5 hours to fully charge (just the interval between the longest outages), with the impression that the charging station "accumulates" the last 2% for more than 15 minutes.
I took the Anker PowerHouse 757 in early June 2024, when it cost "only" UAH 36,999. Now there are almost no such stations on sale, and where there are, the price is 15-30 thousand more.
In addition to Anker, I also have an old APC Smart-UPS 750VA UPS (this line was launched in 2012), but it is only enough to smooth out power surges and turn off the computer if the Anker PowerHouse 757 is completely discharged. On the other hand, the UPS lasts for an additional 4 hours of router operation, which is also useful, especially considering that my provider has established uninterrupted operation of its own equipment even during 6-7 hour outages, although failures certainly happen.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, I purchased a 256Wh EcoFlow RIVER 2 charging station for my daughter's family together with Anker. It should be enough for their two laptops, smartphones, and router. Again, in early June 2024. EcoFlow RIVER 2 cost only 8,888 UAH, not 12,999 UAH as it is now.
In addition, I replenished my battery supply by purchasing additional Panasonic Eneloop AA 2000 mAh. You still need batteries for flashlights, gamepads, etc.
I did not install any additional lighting in the form of LED strips. I don't like bright light anyway and hardly ever use it. We'll see how it goes in the winter.
By and large, the only problem now is the elevators. It's not difficult to go up to the 10th floor, but I have no desire to do it on a regular basis. I have been walking downstairs since COVID-19. Unfortunately, our condominium has been discussing the purchase of a generator for six months to provide power to elevators, water and heat pumps during outages. Despite the fact that the HOA members have the money for such a purchase, they lack the will, cohesion and a responsible person. And it's frustrating because winter is much closer than it seems.
P.S. By the way, the first thing I bought at the beginning of the full-scale invasion was a fire extinguisher. I advise you to do the same.
Serhiy Svitlychnyi, editor of Mezha
During the shutdowns of late 2022, I didn't buy much of anything like this (except for a flashlight with a pack of 18650 batteries and a couple of power banks for my smartphone), but this spring I realized that it was time for more radical steps.
I managed to buy a charging station just a week before it went out of stock, and all the others almost doubled in price. Like Oleg Danylov, I also find it more convenient to work on a desktop, and I also do a lot of testing of video cards, motherboards, etc. - so the option of switching to a laptop was not for me, and I was looking for a charging station with the largest capacity I could afford.
As Oleg already wrote, I chose the Anker PowerHouse 757: it was significantly cheaper than the closest EcoFlow analog, the Delta 2, while having a higher capacity - and I didn't need additional functionality like smartphone control anyway. Although the ability to limit the charging speed would have been nice.
My computer has a more powerful speaker system than Oleh's, so this station lasts me a little less for writing texts and surfing the Internet - about 6-7 hours. If you add a test stand, things get much worse - depending on the power of the system, the station can run out of power in a couple of hours.
Experimentally, I managed to determine that The Elder Scrolls Online is the most energy-efficient of my games: a computer with a monitor and speakers consumes only 230-250 watts (for comparison, Cyberpunk 2077 "pulls" 100 watts more).
The fact that I live on the ground floor in an apartment with a gas stove is now a plus - it automatically eliminates problems with elevators and cooking. So besides the charging station, so far I have only bought a desk lamp for working at my PC in the dark and a small fan (both with built-in batteries) - the fan is surprisingly very good at saving me from the summer heat.
In the future, if the prices of charging stations come to their senses, you can think about an additional one exclusively for the refrigerator.
Oleg Kasich, editor of Mezha
I started preparing for possible power outages last fall. Although the term "preparation" would probably be an exaggeration here, I still spent some time choosing and purchasing a charging station. In the end, the choice was made in favor of the quite popular Bluetti EB3A. At the end of November 2023, it cost UAH 8,800, but now it is offered for almost twice as much.
The model has a relatively modest total capacity of 268 Wh, but it offers a good rated power of 600 W for its class, while the declared peak power is 1200 W. That is, it is possible to power a rather power-consuming device if necessary, even for a relatively short time. So far, this option hasn't come in handy, but "let it be."
When choosing a specific model of charging station, I first identified several priority criteria. Initially, I focused exclusively on devices with lithium-iron-phosphate batteries (LiFePo4) that can withstand higher charging currents and have an increased guaranteed number of charge/discharge cycles. The latter is especially important given the frequency of power outages.
Another key parameter was the charging speed of the station. The ability to restore the charge from 0 to 100% in just 1-1.5 hours is a very useful option. Considering that the periods of electricity availability in the grid sometimes do not exceed 2 hours, fast charging is very useful.
The use of a built-in power supply was also an optional request. The configuration with an additional external power supply formally simplifies maintenance, but the practicality of use prevailed here. Moving the device with only one cable is much more convenient.
When choosing, I also paid attention to the information content of the standard display. I wanted to have fairly accurate values for charging power, consumption, available battery capacity, and predicted operating time under current load. So I immediately rejected models with battery capacity readings of 20-25% - this is a special form of mockery of curious users.
As a result, the Bluetti EB3A I chose generally fulfills its task. Lately, I've been using a fairly economical laptop, with a battery lasting for 5-6 hours of work. Longer power outages are still a rare occurrence, but in such cases, the charging station comes in handy. It also comes in handy when you need to connect an external 24-inch monitor (+15-20 W) for more convenient work with spreadsheets (hello, PC of the Month!) or watching videos on a wide screen. So in general, even a small battery capacity of 268 Wh is enough in my case for now. Of course, if necessary, you can recharge any portable gadgets, but I usually recharge my smartphone from a portable battery (power bank).
Among the peculiarities of practical use of the Bluetti EB3A, we can note the not perfect operation of the display system. When a device with a small consumption of several watts is connected to a 220 V socket, these values may not be displayed on the charging station's display. In this case, both the DC-AC inverter and the device itself operate, and the battery charge gradually decreases.
At the beginning of use, during the first 10-15 charges, there was a rather pungent smell of heated plastic or PCB varnish. After the initial "lapping" phase, we can only talk about the quality of the residual effects.
The Bluetti EB3A turned out to be quite capricious to the voltage level in the network. If it drops below 200 V, the station does not charge at all. In this case, the "UPS" icon pulsates on the screen and the process does not start. Therefore, if the mains voltage drops are not uncommon, you will have to use an additional power stabilizer to charge the station.
One of the useful features is the presence of a powerful built-in flashlight. Although it has a rather accentuated light beam, if you direct it at a light wall or ceiling, you can get a decent result of illuminating the room.
In addition to the charging station, portable batteries remain relevant. I have several of them in my collection, with capacities ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 mAh. But the most popular is the 10,050 mAh ASUS Zen Power Pro, which is equipped with an additional fairly bright LED. It's a very handy thing to have around, usually replacing a flashlight and performing flawlessly as a "nightlight" that needs to be recharged only once every few weeks. The model of the power bank is not new and is no longer available for sale. In my case, it's a souvenir from Taiwan's Computex, I think it was around 2017/2018. Well, I hope there will be a chance to refresh pleasant memories, but for now, a portable source will help to get through the dark and stormy times.
Dmytro Kuriatnyk, author of Mezha
I started preparing for potential blackouts in 2022 in advance. If you look at it this way, it was even before the full-scale invasion: I didn't have to buy power banks, as I had enough of them left over from the dock days when traveling was easier, flashlights, a simple LED lamp with a battery, and a tourist torch with a 5-liter cylinder were also already available, and festive LED lights with small solar panels came in handy. Kindle Paperwhite and portable consoles provide entertainment in the absence of light in the evening, and the autonomy of the Macbook Pro with M1 processor makes life much easier.
The first charging station was purchased in early September 2022. Since the main task was to autonomously power two laptops, phones, an optical converter, and a router for several days, I immediately rejected weaker models and chose the 720Wh EcoFlow RIVER Pro with a rated power of 600W and a peak power of 1,200W, which at that time had already begun to rise in price and cost 40 thousand hryvnias. I didn't consider the Delta series because of its much higher price, and I didn't consider competitors' models because of their slower charging speed. Just in case, I bought a 160 W portable solar panel from the same manufacturer. As it turned out, in sunny weather, it can charge the station in a little more than a day.
It was enough to work and charge gadgets for more than two days, but I could forget about gaming, I didn't even try to connect my PC to the station, the console and TV lasted 2-3 hours, depending on the game.
But I'm a conservative person and live in a private house, so I decided to buy a 3 kW generator, which could potentially cover the basic electricity needs. I wanted an electric start in addition to the manual start and a pure sine wave for the boiler. It so happened that there was only one model on the market that met these conditions - the gasoline Hyundai HHY 3050FE. With the declared consumption of 345 g/kWh, a 15-liter tank should be enough for 12-15 hours of continuous operation, but I use it no more than a few hours a day, which, together with the station, is already enough to provide basic comfort. The obvious disadvantages are a much shorter motor life compared to diesel generators and higher fuel consumption. On the plus side, it has a much lower price and greater mobility (but carrying 45 kg without wheels is still a bit of fun).
In 2023, I needed a second charging station and chose EcoFlow again, this time RIVER 2 Pro. Li-Ion batteries with only 800 charging cycles were the weak point of the previous version, the new revision has LiFePO4 batteries with 3000 cycles, slightly increased capacity, up to 768 Wh, and power - 800 W nominal and 1600 W peak.
In principle, I would have closed the question of energy independence for myself, if not for the desire to switch to solar panels in the future, so this year I decided to test the real effectiveness of such a solution in practice, but no matter what kind of panel I already had, I just had nothing to connect it to on a permanent basis. This issue was solved by the EcoFlow PowerStream 800W microinverter.
I would like to emphasize right away that this solution is not about energy independence, because the inverter does not work without mains voltage, so it is not suitable for dealing with power outages. It's more about energy efficiency for apartments, or to put it more simply, about saving money in the long run. The inverter works simply - you connect the panel to it, plug it into an outlet, and that's it, the generated electricity "displaces" the electricity supplied from the grid, and you get lower electricity bills. It is also possible to connect a station to it, which will act as a storage/additional source of electricity, but this makes sense only with more powerful Delta models.
As practice has shown, on average, a 160 W panel can generate from 630 to 715 Watt-hours during full daylight hours, i.e., if you install 2 400 W panels in summer, you can count on 3500 Watt-hours per day. In the fall and winter, these figures will obviously be much lower.
It should be borne in mind that there may be a "flow" to the city grid if the panels generate more electricity than your home consumes. Theoretically, this situation should be regulated by setting generation limits in the mobile app and/or using smart sockets from EcoFlow. In practice, I have not been able to test this yet due to the low power of my solar panel.
In general, the idea is interesting, but in our current situation, it hardly makes sense, because the return on investment will take several years. If you have the funds, it is better to consider a full-fledged solar power plant or pay attention to the usual charging stations.
Kyrylo Balalin, author of Mezha
In a sense, my path to autonomous housing has already been documented in detail in three articles on Mezha: "Questions and Answers about Starlink for Personal Use in Ukraine", "There is no magic in energy. The path to energy independence without clickbait and rose-colored glasses" and "Overview of the KSTAR BluE H5-10 autonomous power supply system for the house". However, there I tried to summarize the experience and conclusions, and this time I can focus on my own solutions. So, the object of my efforts is a private house in the Kyiv region, which is also a workplace with the corresponding requirements.
In mid-February 2022, in preparation for the inevitable, the farm received an RZTK G 3500 E generator, a certain amount of gasoline, and a battery-powered AM/FM radio. As soon as it became possible to order Starlink from Ukraine, I bought it, because it is still the only way to get almost guaranteed access to the Internet. And so I began to work actively: I had ideas about preparing for "home survival" before, but now it was time to move on to practice. The main task around which all further decisions revolve is to make a house for two people completely autonomous during any one month of the year so that you can not rely on something outside the site if you need it. Why one month? Because it's relatively easy to achieve and, under reasonable conditions, it gives you a large margin of endurance, and if a certain collapse around you lasts longer, then these are probably bigger problems than those you can survive at home...
So, the well, the drinking water filtration system, energy-efficient LED lighting everywhere, a large refrigerator, and stocks of other products that are updated on a "always-on-the-month" basis were in place before the war. So to begin with, realizing in advance that the winter of 2022-2023 could be difficult, it was necessary to diversify heating and cooking, because before the full-scale operation, everything in the house was made exclusively electric. That's how the Canrey CHC-5T gas convector and a supply of 4 standard gas cylinders (about a month and a half in winter, depending on temperature conditions) plus a portable 2-burner gas stove with its own 10-liter cylinder (also enough for the same month) first appeared.
Then we added a Blist Ambasador R wood stove with an oven and a supply of RUF and Pinikey fuel briquettes: Pinikey is easier to light, but RUF burns about twice as long. As it turned out, the oven works well, but the upper small hob is not even capable of boiling a kettle of water - good thing it was already an "alternative to an alternative" for culinary needs anyway, after regular electricity and spare gas in cylinders. The stove allows us to maintain +20-27°C (!) degrees throughout the house even in severe frosts. But it is still more expensive than electric heating, so it is used either "according to the mood" or at -15°C and below, or when there is no power supply. The gas convector remains a backup.
It was around this time in 2022 that the shelling of energy facilities began and, consequently, regular power outages. A generator and a stock of 300 liters of gasoline generally solved this issue, but not around the clock and at the cost of engine life. In order to power Starlink, charge gadgets, and have basic lighting, the first thing we took was a conventional lead-acid starter battery from one of the cars and a compact 12-220 V inverter that had been charging a laptop on road trips for about 10 years. The battery quickly changed to a separate traction gel battery, then to a LiFePo battery... And then, already during the hysterical demand, I delivered both Ecoflow River 2 and Bluetti EB3A from the United States through Nova Poshta Shopping at a price that was three times lower than the current price in Ukraine. Since they are American, both stations are charged through a 220-110 V inverter, which I have long had for kitchen appliances from the United States. Each holds at least 4 hours of Starlink and charges in 1 hour, which was enough at the time.
At the same time, a 5.5-kilowatt Easun hybrid inverter was ordered from China to power the entire house. It was accompanied by 4 high-quality (read: appropriate weight) traction gel batteries of 100 A each, thus providing a capacity of about 5 kWh. This is enough to power everything except the boiler. This system has been working for more than a year and allows me to ignore all the outages that have occurred during this time.
The generator has not been used for real needs for more than a year, only for testing purposes (although there are improvements there, too: now the RZTK G 3500 E remains a backup, and the Weekender X3500ie inverter has become the main one - it is quieter, more ergonomic and has a longer real life). In the winter of 2023-24, the BluE H5-10 test set was used instead of this system, which is described in a separate article.
Historically, I have been doing my work on Apple laptops - now it's a MacBook Air M2, which lives on battery power for up to 15 hours, and it's very relevant now, but you have to disconnect it from an additional monitor - in order to motivate myself more, I usually go to work in a chair.
Although in principle the inverter with batteries allows it, it's not right to play on a multi-monitor desktop Wintel setup while saving electricity, so the MSI Claw A1M Wintel console was born: complete with Starlink and Ecoflow, it's a straightforward "emergency gamer" set.
In 2023, I replaced the electric stove in the kitchen with a combined gas and electric stove, as it is much more convenient than a separate portable stove on the table. On the veranda, I added a stove for the cauldron and the cauldron itself for really convenient and tasty wood-fired cooking outside the grill and smokehouse. I keep a "culinary" supply of firewood, while I still have a seasonal supply of briquettes for heating. Finally, as part of the general "survivalism", although I have always had a negative attitude towards HBO (gas cylinder equipment for cars), a Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck with the ability to run on gas was added to the fleet. It is useful on the farm, and in the event of an apocalypse it will be more convenient transportation than the existing cars...
I have three realistic plans for the winter of 2024-25: to add 5-10 kW of solar panels to the existing system, replace the main batteries with LiFePo for faster charging, and "very much in reserve" to change the carburetor of the RZTK generator to a combined gas-gasoline one. On the less realistic side, I would like to have a diesel car and, at the same time, a 6-9 kW diesel generator with an appropriate fuel reserve in order to finally diversify the fuel - unlike a large amount of gasoline or gas, it will not be so scary to store a conventional ton of diesel in a buried tank... But this is a bit of Frostpunk, so we'll see how it goes.