Need Backup Power!!

[pelligrini]

Got home from work yesterday and over half my machines were down due to a power failure. A bunch of them need user intervention to get started again. I have a pair of duals that have to share the same bios eeprom. I'd like to have enough power for at least a couple of hours. Most of our interuptions are fairly short.

I've priced some UPS's, but damn they're expensive.

Jodie- when you had your light pole troubles, you mentioned broken batteries. Do you, or anyone else know to make a DIY battery backup system?

[Dustin]

It's not possible to get another BIOS? I've fried BIOS’s, and I just pop new BIOS in.

[Bruce]

Originally posted by pelligrini
I've priced some UPS's, but damn they're expensive.


I've been toying with the same problem. I've got manual intervention required all over the place. (Old machines with a bios that can't be set to start without a keyboard, etc.)

Being a resident of CA, I have only been hit with one rolling blackout :knockWood: and my best estimation based on what I read is that I won't get any more.

. . . but it never hurts to be secure.

I've been toying with the idea of building my own. There are some really affordable UPSs which have high enough VA raitings to run my stuff, but only enough batteries to run them a few minutes. I'm considering adding some deep-discharge auto batteries in the garage (with a long wire) sort of like when they do a van conversion to an RV. As long as the 12V to 120V part is big enough, it should work.

The only problems I anticipate is (a) it will probably take a LONG time to recharge, since the 120V to 12V is small (but who cares), and (b) I better be sure the incoming power is polarized correctly, because I doubt there is isolation (other than the original enclosure) and I would not want the batteries to be at line voltage.

Jodie: Is that what you did (or had done for you?).

[Dustin]

Originally posted by Bruce
I'm considering adding some deep-discharge auto batteries in the garage.

Your best bet would be to use deep cycle marine batteries. 7hrs isn't uncommon runtime between charges.

[dnar]

Hey Pell, I know I have mentioned this to you in chat, but maybe others may like to comment on this idea. Ok, UPS with large battery supply is the G.O. Now, add a solar array and solar shunt charger, and you have a UPS that is capable of staying up longer, sunshine permitting.

[Jodie]

It's a bit more complicated than that (adding your own batteries)

The battery part is easy. The tough part is the invertor.

I had a Matrix battery system - $75,000 would run my computer room for seventeen minutes. Sigh.

I build a system and learned some hard lessons:

The off-the-shelf UPS' rated to run your system for ten or fifteen minutes have wimpy invertors with wimpy heat sinks. You OC gurus should be able to beef those up, but frankly, the transistors don't hold up under those current drains for long.

I purchased a surplus invertor from the US Navy at auction. It was plenty beefy. You can certainly build your own, however.

I wanted drop-dead-absolute-guaranteed-over-built-bullet-proof security. I don't need to run my computer room for long, the generator cuts over and stabalizes pretty quickly. But there's enough there for 24 hours and they need to be REALLY deep-cycle resistant.

I used Optima Spiral Wound batteries. Expensive, but well worth it.

The invertors for vehicle use are rated continuous drain and are a good choice (especially if you watercool or beef up the heat sinks.) for your purpose.

The power supply in my single Tbird is a 8A/120v or 960watts, about, peak load. Continuous under full load on genome with the drive spinning reads 220 watts on my watt meter.

If you find a 700 watt continuous drain invertor (not peak load - atleast 2.5Kwatt peak!), the odds are good you've found your invertor.

Hope that helps! I can give you sourcing on batteries and invertors if you need... Have a look at www.batteries.com and search for: Helios 12V / 110Ah Sealed Lead Acid Battery w/ F1 Terminal They're less expensive than a top of the line optima and will serve well.

Wow - Whistler has a 2500watt continuous at amazon/buyandmore for $500. I've seen them for $700, they claim $900 regular price...

You'll need three of the 110Ah batteries at $200 each (about), that's $1000 - That's gives you 1hr 20mins for 10 Tbirds crunching. (ymmv). Now, compare that to the $100 home UPS' that will power a PII-400 for 7 mins. or about 3 mins/Tbird - you just built 300x the UPS for 10x the money... Not a bad deal! And you can add batteries in parallel, indefinitely for those ten machines... Ok, now I'm just rambling...



:rolleyes:

[Jodie]

Originally posted by dnar
Hey Pell, I know I have mentioned this to you in chat, but maybe others may like to comment on this idea. Ok, UPS with large battery supply is the G.O. Now, add a solar array and solar shunt charger, and you have a UPS that is capable of staying up longer, sunshine permitting.

Drain Drain Drain. That much power from 15% efficient solar cells is expensive!

[Bruce]

Originally posted by Jodie
That much power from 15% efficient solar cells is expensive!

No kidding. I priced some solar panels and no matter what numbers I used for sunny-hours-per-day or percent-of-rated-power-per-solar-hour, it comes out really bad -- even in CA.

Anybody know any factual information about either of those factors?

[Jodie]

I can give you the whole run-down tonight when I get home... Solar is Silly. . .

[dnar]

Not here it is not.... We use solar to power many remote sites, telemetry and emergency phones. But then again, our remote sites are all situated in places that have NO power..... Nearest power can be hundreds of miles away!

[pelligrini]

Damn!!
(that just echoed through my empty walet)
I think I will be able to live with a few more power outages, and resulting restarts. Don't know where I'd put the things either.

I may just buy a couple of cheap UPS's to cover the 2-10 second lulls though.

[pelligrini]

Originally posted by Dustin
It's not possible to get another BIOS? I've fried BIOS’s, and I just pop new BIOS in.
I just haven't got around to it.
I tried flashing the bad chip, but I never could get it to work. The two boards are identical ECS dual pro boards, poorly designed at that. Swapping the chip between the two isn't hard. It's just a pain when I pile a bunch of junk up in front of the boxes. It's even more of a pain when there isn't an open spot left on the floor for a new pile. ;)

[ohms18k]

Pell,

To make an UPS I would buy an inverter, like Jodie said that’s the real issue. Get a battery and there are plenty of charging circuits that are easy to build.

Why is solar being talked about, when all you need the UPS for is when power is interrupted, when the power is back on recharge the battery.
I can imagine how much solar power you will need to power your farm. :)

[wbierman]

Pell-

You put all the batteries in the house and move into a tent in the back yard.

[Bruce]

Originally posted by dnar
Not here it is not.... We use solar to power many remote sites, telemetry and emergency phones. But then again, our remote sites are all situated in places that have NO power..... Nearest power can be hundreds of miles away!

Solar makes sense when the cost of running the lines exceeds the cost of the solar equipment. We've got it in some out-of-the-way places too.

And the highway department uses it on many of the emergency phones along the freeway. Guess it's expensive for them to retrofit the wires.

Some folks here are touting it to help with the power shortage (You know, "Think green") but unless they decide to give me a whopping rebate, the numbers just don't work out.

They're even investing in new "peaker power plants" -- expensive to build -- operate just during the hours that folks run their ACs -- are relatively 'dirty" in terms of smog -- etc. Obviously solar would win on the latter two points -- and they still can't make it work dollar-wise.

[Bruce]

Originally posted by ohms18k
Why is solar being talked about, when all you need the UPS for is when power is interrupted, when the power is back on recharge the battery.
I can imagine how much solar power you will need to power your farm. :)

Because . . .
If you're already considering solar (for some other reason), you have to invest in batteries and an inverter for the solar system, even if you never heard of a UPS.

I've got solar panels for hot water. I bought the system 10 years ago when the government was giving big rebates. It took several years to recoperate my part of the investment, but it was a good decision. It was not designed to REPLACE my water heater, only to SUPPLEMENT it (though in the summer, I turn off my water heater entirely),

Solar electric systems are designed to supplement your electrical system, not to power everything -- even during daylight hours. (Dumb).

[Stilgar]

Originally posted by pelligrini
Damn!!
(that just echoed through my empty walet)
I think I will be able to live with a few more power outages, and resulting restarts. Don't know where I'd put the things either.

I may just buy a couple of cheap UPS's to cover the 2-10 second lulls though.

Since this little storm has been dropping rain on us. We've had a few power blips and one long one also. One lasted long enough to drop out the ups I had hooked up on two of my machines and lost ~8 hours comp. time. I am looking at getting two more mid range ups's to hook just to the case power. Shame I could not get one we had out at work we just retired. It still worked good but was getting updated. I can't remember the size but the inverter section was about the size of a mid-tower. All of it went to scrap metal.:mad: That would have been perfect for what I need.

[EOC_Jason]

You can get a used APC UPS 1000XL (newer model) or 2000 (older model) pretty cheap off of eBay... Then you can dasy chain lots of batteries that you can get cheap from surplus places... that is what I did!

Actually my dad has a ton of 12v gellcell batteries (17Ah I think) at his office that I need to bring up and test out, I think they are good but I'm not sure as they aren't charged.

[EOC_Jason]

At work we have this website where we can refurbished corporate equipment. I got bored today and sifted through the stuff, not many good deals, however I started searching the part of the site that is open to everyone... and guess what I found?

An APC SU2200NET for $100 + $27 for shipping!!!!!

Check out more about it here:
http://www.apc.com/products/smart-ups/index.cfm

They still have a 1400RM (Rack Mount) for $100 too if anyone needs that.

Here's the URL for the company. I don't think you need any password to access the world section. Just click on "Search Available Inventory" then "World".... Check out the UPS's, some are really cheap. Click on details for a model number, don't trust the wattage that they list. They also have some computer stuff too but I don't think any of them are good deals (unless you are going to build like a pentium 100 cluster for kicks)

RetroBox - http://www.retrobox.com/

[MechCD]

Actually, once you plunk down the cash for a solar supplement system, it almost pays for itself later down the road. Newer solar cells and batteries have very low maintenence, so there's not much to go wrong or fix every year.

If you are running batteries.... They can be charged and once they are charged, don't need much current or voltage... its only when they have been drained. So you would have to calculate how long your batteries would last without a charge. Once the main power came back on, the batteries would have time to charge again (less drain on batteries)