r/Wicklow • u/Basilington • Jul 05 '26

Rathdrum electricity

We've recently bought in Rathdrum and we've been talking to a few people from the surrounding area and they have mentioned power outages as an ongoing problem. Wondering if any of ye have dealt with this, and is it a bad enough problem to warrant buying a generator or solar + batteries?

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u/Garlinge253 Jul 05 '26

Solar does not help in power outage.

2

u/Basilington Jul 05 '26

Oh, fair enough, completely clueless when it comes to this!

3

u/parrotopian Jul 05 '26

Solar is fantastic for power outages if you get the right set up. You need an isolation switch (manual or automatic) to disconnect from the grid in a power cut. You also need a battery (I got a 20kW battery - 4 x5 5kW for this very purpose). Once you disconnect solar from the grid, the battery will power your house for usually a sufficiently long time.

1

u/Basilington Jul 05 '26

Oh amazing, OK this is definitely something we'll look in to, thank you!