I hope you guys have some great ideas to prevent the thing that happend to me today.
Today I returned home after (if I say it myself) a well deserved vacation. We went out from the Netherlands to the Ardèche (France) and had a great vacation.
During the vacation I noticed that my garden lights where “still on” after three days and where not responding. So I guessed something happened and I had a power outage in the garden. Nothing to worry about, I thought.
After my return home today I entered my kitchen an saw (and smelled) that the power outage also struck my kitchen. After inspecting my breakers I saw that the earth leakage circuit breaker (for dutchies: aardlekschakelaar) was off. There fore cut the power in the garden, the kitchen and two bedrooms.
I didn’t had a clue that my garden and my kitchen where on the same earth leakage circuit breaker and killed the power to my fridge and freezer. The result: see the picture.
My question rising from this event is: does somebody have a good idea to monitor (notify?) such a power outage and maybe have a brilliant idea how to control such an outage away from home so I don’t ever have to deal with this mess again?
Thanks in advance for your ideas!
Edit; in this moment I cannot think of something myself. Searching for power outage I cannot find a similar question
The simple way would be to have HA report when a device is offline. I have several automation when a device does offline. I also use Network UPS Tools to tell when my HA machine loses may power. Lastly use Health check to tell me when my HA machine is down.
Here in the US there are smart circuit breakers that tells you when a breaker has been tripped and allows you to trip it back on or off.
Well known hassle for me, disturbances in power supply…
First step, replace your residue current breaker with one that recloses automatically (safe and certified in europe). Also add some smart device to every important line, so you see if it’s offline(or get notified).
1.) Fix the electrical problem and isolate that refrigerator on its own circuit.
2.) Put some sort of HA current sensing device on the refrigerator and work out an automation that notifies you if the circuit goes down. It sounds like in your situation, it would not be able to remotely fix the problem but at least you would know and if you are on vacation, again, make plans on getting someone to your house to check things.
Others that my have more experience with them may comment but looking things up there are options like these for breakers where you want to monitor and control things when not home at the time if you don’t have anyone that has access to the home that you trust to flip a breaker back on:
You could combine this with smart plugs and or relays to monitor the status of the more important things you need to have power restored whilst having the networking and HA instance on a UPS to allow time to notify you when issues occur.
For a fridge as well you can look at trying to add in a temp sensor that is able to be read when the door is closed to monitor the temperature thresholds.
For general power monitoring of the whole home, clamp based systems like the Shelly 3EM are an option.
That is indeed by far the cheapest option: a thermometer in each important compartment, alerts on them and a neighbor or friend in the neighborhood with a key…
You can add door sensors too, a smart plug to measure power is a possibility but also a risk if it turns off or breaks. If power cuts out, the plug won’t report anything either.
Hence the HA instance and networking gear being on an UPS, your automation for notification is if x device has been turned off and no power draw is detected for x time send alert.
I’m no electrician but I don’t think the earth leakage breakers should trigger if you have a power loss? At least mine does not. I would consult with an electrician. Sucks with all that spoiled food, I bet it smelled funky!
An UPS can be of some help alerting you, but remember you need to have everything HA needs to communicate connected to it (router, switches and so on).
The earth leakage breakers go off when water enters outside electrical systems. That causes the outage, not the other way around. The outage should be a warning sign to have friends check your home.
That, and make sure the fridge/freezer does not contain too many things before a vacation.
RCCB is the most important component of electrical system, I wouldn’t pick some China Export certified one from aliexpress.
For reliability, for safety and for insurance reasons.
The one I linked from Gewiss is expensive, around 150eur, but if you open it up and teardown, it doesn’t feel too much.
For the rest, I like to use, hack and abuse uncertified chinese devices from AE.
That’s only one of the reasons. Faulty appliances can be another. Also normal leakages can add up and do it, water heater, dishwasher, laundry machine, air conditioner, oven etc all have few mA leakage, some less, some more.
But the worst is disturbances from grid, it’s out of your control. I had RCD tripping 70 times one evening. The whole neighborhood had. No rain, no lightning, regular voltage level…
Thank all of you for your replies, I guess I will implement some sort of power metering from te fridge and look into a UPS. The temp sensor in the fridge is also nice buit I don’t like drilling into my fridge
The autotest on the earth leakage circuit breaker is also very nice and I found a certified one for my country, but its very expensive (+/-€350) and I think it wil auto short the breaker every set time. Which will cause its problems of its own.
Normally someone will come over in the vacation and water the plants an check on the house, this time it was a bit unlucky and most of my family, my spouses family and lots of friends in the neighborhood that I trust where also on vacation. I guess sometimes shit just happens
Oh, and this coming Wednesday a electrician is coming to, hopefully, find out what the problem is/was and also switch the wires to another earth leakage breaker (not on the same one as the garden)
