Most home cellars, whether a converted under-stair cupboard, a dug-out room or a row of wine fridges, rely on a cooling unit to hold a steady temperature. A summer outage that stops it lets the room warm by the hour. A single warm day does not ruin a collection, but repeated swings, corks moving and warm bottles do cumulative harm. The bottles at risk are usually the ones you have been saving.
Cellar cooling units and wine fridges are steady loads that suit battery backup well. The battery and 15 kW inverter run in UPS mode, so the compressor carries on without a hiccup, and the fuel cell recharges the battery from stored hydrogen for as long as the store lasts. Hydrogen keeps for weeks without losing charge, so it is ready when a summer storm brings the lines down.
How it works →
Round-trip efficiency is 30% or less. The system charges on cheap off-peak power or from wind or micro-hydro, but most of that energy is lost on the way through, so the cellar should run on the grid normally. The system is designed for the days the grid is not there. It is quiet, with no engine, so nothing rattles next to a cellar where vibration is the last thing you want.
There is no engine. Pumps and fans run but the equipment is designed to sit outside, away from the cellar, so there is no generator-style vibration near the bottles. Placement on your property would be planned in the pilot to keep it well clear of the cellar.
Cellar cooling is a modest load, and the hydrogen store keeps for weeks. It is designed for multi-day outages, but exact runtime depends on storage and your other loads, which would be sized in the pilot.
No. Round-trip efficiency is 30% or less, so stored power costs more than grid power. Its job is to keep the cellar steady when the grid fails, so the bottles you have been saving stay at the temperature you chose.
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