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Scenario at my home: In my home, refrigerator, washing machine etc and other heavy duty appliances(16A current) and lights and fans are connected to the same power line. It was a mistake done during house construction and we realized it much later. Because of this I can't use a backup power supply like Inverter when grid power goes off as the inverter can't supply enough power to run refrigerator or washing machine.

I am looking at options to solve this problem. I want to use an inverter to just run lights/fan when grid power goes off. Refrigerator should not get power during this time.

I thought of getting it rewired so that light/fans and refrigerator are on different power lines. But this is difficult.

So I am looking at options. Any help is appreciated.

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  • Is everything on the same circuit breaker?
    – drtechno
    Commented Oct 4, 2019 at 14:11
  • Where are you on this planet? Are you manually flipping a switch or moving a cord over to change over to inverter power, or does the inverter kick in automatically when the power goes out?
    – ThreePhaseEel
    Commented Oct 4, 2019 at 23:12
  • Yes, everything on the same wiring and same circuit breaker.
    – Shashi
    Commented Oct 4, 2019 at 23:56
  • Nothing is connected to the backup power now.
    – Shashi
    Commented Oct 4, 2019 at 23:58
  • 2
    Odd that you want to power lights & fans when the power goes out, not refrigeration to keep your food safe.
    – FreeMan
    Commented Dec 7, 2022 at 12:37

2 Answers 2

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You could look into home automation techniques. Appliances can be controlled with WiFi, Bluetooth, powerline communication, or even a wired control connection with low-voltage control wiring routed on wall surfaces. There is a lot of general information available on the internet. Look at this Wikipedia article and follow links to other articles you will find in the article. There is also a lot of home automation product information available on the internet. If you want to design something yourself, search for do-it-yourself (DIY) articles about home automation.

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  • Of course, this presumes having power to the computer running the home automation, and power to all the network equipment in order to tell devices which should be on and which should be off. Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
    – FreeMan
    Commented Dec 7, 2022 at 12:38
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You can put the things you want to have a power backup on a new subpanel fed from your existing panel. Then you can equip the new subpanel with the generator feed with the proper lockout features to prevent backfeeding.

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