Batteries are Cheap, Backup power is expensive

What about a generator that comes on automatically if your power goes off? Or is the lag time too slow? 

I have a Cyberpower UPS 1350VA that keeps my low wattage modem and router running for well over an hour.  (Of course my laptop has its own battery.)

That is enough time for me to start and hook up my "portable" gasoline-powered generator in the garage which supports my network equipment, refrigerator, TV, and a couple lights.  I had to refill the gas tank 3 or 4 times per day.

I had a neighbor who had a natural gas-fired Generac system inserted into his power input wiring that automatically kept his whole house powered up, but that was expensive.

PS - My bad.  The Renogy unit I quoted above does NOT include a charger.  I’m rethinking that.  It seems they did have an inverter/charger but not sure if it’s discontinued. 

Unfortunately fossil fuel power is not a great option.  The data closet is furthest away from the outdoors.   I am absolutely in love with the idea of propane powered generators though, the ability to store propane for years is appealing, so long as you can store it away from the main building, which I cannot.   Same of course for gasoline.  I have no separate shed/garage in which storage of those would be safe.   

So overall the solution for me has to fit in the bedroom closet.  

Also would love, in a perfect world where I can afford to buy an ugly ass stainless steel truck an outdoor generator.  The yearly maintenance costs alone are more than my budget. :)  Also, no access to natural gas.  This is an electric only neighborhood. 

Many pickup trucks have 120 V outlets.  Just need to add a switch on your house electrical box to flip your source to a cable from the truck.  Turn on the truck before your APC UPS runs out of juice.  (Assuming you have the truck.)

@jwei You bring up a good point.  In 2021 the Great Texas Freeze prompted a run on Ford F-150 trucks for just such a reason.  It seems they feature from 2kW to 7.2kW inverters depending on the model.  Dealers were encouraged to loan them out, I’m sure generating a lot of goodwill.  

Few things wrong with this though.  First, I have a Toyota SUV with a wimpy 120W outlet.  About enough to run a laptop charger.  I did price out putting a 2 kW inverter along with the necessary upgraded inverter, wiring and extra battery needed.  About $1,500 installed I think.  Not a bad option, but about $1,000 more than I want to spend right now.

As for a UPS... too short of a run time  and too long of a charge time.  The EcoFlow battery generators however have terrific charging speeds on 120V.  Anywhere from 1,200 W to 1,800 W of power draw allowing them to recharge fully from 1 to 2 hours.  

In my home what MUST run is about 100W.  I’m not including the fridge or an electric blanket.   At that rate with just my Delta 2 + Battery I’d be out in a day, so pulling them out to the car, or running an extension cord and charging them every day would not be entirely unreasonable. 

I think my final solution is going to be 2 x LiFePO4 batteries with a 500W inverter and battery charger.  Final cost is around $500 for 2 kWh.  This will be in addition to the 2kWh capacity I have in the Ecoflow units.  Of course, if power is out longer than that I’m screwed, and none of this will save my refrigerated food or keep my AC running.  I think I’ll be able to manage a pot of coffee in the morning though. 

@billpete  - Sorry I missed your post earlier.   Personally, an outdoor generator like a Generac or Kohler is out of my budget for now... but, assuming it was not they still have a 10-20 second transfer delay.  I would still need a very small UPS for my networking gear and PCs to ensure uninterrupted usage, such as being on a video call. 

You are on the right track though, having out outdoor generator would greatly diminish the size of UPS or battery back up I need indoors.  At that point, practically any UPS would be big enough to handle my data closet. 

Why is this posted on an audio forum?

@erik_squires

I believe underground storage of a propane tank only needs a minimum of ten feet from building or property line.  Up to 2000 gal tank.

@fatdaddy2 No Internet, no music.  This site has hundreds of discussions about networking and AC wiring.

My home's rear roof has great southern exposure. The sun is plentiful and since it is guaranteed to get hotter, it would seem that solar is the way to go - given the batteries to store the energy are not ridiculously expensive, which I assume they are.

Others here on this site - remember one guy in AZ - have installed Tesla roof tiles with battery backups, but I have no idea how much it costs and rarely see anything like that on the east coast. Oddly, I say rare, because there is a home in a neighboring town that has Tesla roof shingles. One. Home. 

I do have neighbors who have solar panels but none of them were overly excited once installed. Seems as though the utility companies promised buy back of power and then reneged, or lowered the rates of the buy back power. Another county near me refuses to remove any structured utilities (gas; oil) even after a home has been deemed completely free of needing it. Warring factions seem to be against living off the grid, yet the one side that is with the utility companies are also the guys who claim to want to live off the grid. Maddening.

As it is, this year is the first year that our electric has gone off fairly often. Usually just for a few minutes, but probably nearly 10 times so far this year. The storms are much stronger and I see this as a losing cause for homes that are part of the grid. Every homeowner should be looking at some battery solution to endure what is coming. 

I’m lucky because my home has natural gas, so we have a whole house generator. To take care of the outage during the swap over during a power outage, I use APCs  on my router and satellites. 

"My home's rear roof has great southern exposure. The sun is plentiful and since it is guaranteed to get hotter, it would seem that solar is the way to go..."

@goodlistening64 ,

Actually, the warmer it gets, the less efficient solar panels are. Optimal temperature is 77 degrees Fahrenheit. After that, they lose efficiency. If that's what you're talking about!

I had a large pole barn building built in the back of my property. I used a Ecoflow Delta Pro with the two extra batteries to completely power the building. I have Internet, security cams, power tools, and soon some audio equipment. Can’t wait to fire up my old 15” Tannoy floor standing speakers. I put up four 400w ground panels and it works like a champ. Building was wired into an electrical box. Then I just had to plug the portable Delta Pro into the box. Totally off grid. I couldn’t be happier.

"no internet, no music"? I feel sorry for you guys.

@rsa777 That is a pretty sweet setup honestly. 

Actually, the warmer it gets, the less efficient solar panels are. Optimal temperature is 77 degrees Fahrenheit. After that, they lose efficiency. If that's what you're talking about!

True, but the more decentralized our power delivery systems are the more resilient they are.   Having a lot of little power stations, including home units, is less likely to collapse during strain than having a few giant one's.  Less fossil fuel and nuclear reliance, plus more jobs.  

Still, I can't say solar is as cheap as I'd like it to be.  I keep hoping to see a massive jump in efficiency.  While batteries are hugely better than they were 10 years ago the solar cells are not. 

"no internet, no music"? I feel sorry for you guys.

@fatdaddy2 OK, boomer. 

No internet, no lots of other things besides music, too. But I can understand @fatdaddy2 's point, so I guess I rate an OK Boomer, too.... 

@larsman  - All snide comments aside, many audiophiles care about battery back up systems for one reason or another.  Either in case of a power outage or as a way of getting cleaner and more stable power than they can get from the power lines. 

Whether that’s to run a turntable, streamer or SACD player power still matters.   There’s currently an active thread about buzzing while on audio power so clearly the topic is relevant to many here. 

The main reason for starting this thread was to point out just how incredibly expensive a UPS was for some of this.  Of course, it's not as expensiave as an F-150 truck, but still,  I was not aware until very recently how much better your average battery generator was or a DIY solution.  I think the DIY solution I'm doing is like 10x cheaper per minute of runtime than the average UPS.  

@erik_squires - I know, I get your point, and it's a good one. 

As somebody who lives in an apartment and doesn't drive, to me 'UPS' is a delivery service and 'F-150' is some kind of fighter jet  

@erik_squires I like the idea of the generac, being all electric at our place as well. I don't have one either and we live in tornado alley of MO, not the worst part of MO but NE MO. I'd like to have the generac but it is expensive. I think they do offer some kind of payment plans though, just haven't looked into it. We've lived here for the last 12 years and have only lost power for a few hours, once. Another time or two, off for less than an hour. Not bad considering all the above ground power lines and trees. Seems like a recipe for disaster. We also get a lot of ice storms but have yet to lose power in one. 

Anyway, I hope you find the solution to your problem. It's not a simple or inexpensive one. Seems like you can solve the short term one easily enough but the long term one gets trickier. There are a lot of smallish gas and diesel powered generators that might serve you there. Might be cheaper than modding your SUV, not sure. Good luck. Post what you find. 

I do like the solar solutions but they are not cheap and the same lag time would apply.

@billpete 

Oh, me too! 

We have at least 2 significant power events / month here and that’s in good weather!  By that I mean the power goes out long enough to reset the microwave clock.  

We’re also subject to yearly events of fiber cables being cut which take out almost all our cell and Internet providers at the same time.  I just can’t have enough back up systems! 

Solar power comes in various flavors.  Depends how they are used.  Some use them as strictly back up power, to charge batteries until things go out, and others use the Solar power continuously during the day, no lag.  

Erik 

Eco flow has one on sale for > 50% off ($2K now) that looks like it may take care of your whole home.

The battery and transfer switch.

https://us.ecoflow.com/products/delta-pro-transfer-switch?variant=54491796635721

DeKay

@erik_squires 

You're right, there are a lot of ways to utilize solar and I don't understand half of them. There are a few places around who bought into it to run their whole house. I'm not sure it's the way to go here in MO just yet. It costs a lot to set up. I'd never live long enough to get it back. My wife has a cousin in TX who says he got his money back in 5 years or so. I don't think that would happen here. I was talking with a friend who got his going and it didn't sound good to me at all. It did not provide enough to run his A/C in summer and when he produced more than he needed, the electric COOP paid him about 10 cents on the dollar for what they bought back. I don't think he saved any money at all by doing it. I think he lost money. The numbers were not good.

My wife is always saying we should go solar or even wind. Either proposition is outrageously expensive. We have a pretty good sized house, all electric. I can burn wood but I found it to be a lot more work than it was worth. I might have saved $200 a year on the electric bill. In the big picture, that is not enough to warrant all the work or the mess created by the wood. When we first moved here, I added a wood furnace, cost over 4k by the time I had it installed. It accomplished nothing, was poorly installed and could not keep up with our duct work. I would have had to have a whole separate system of duct work installed. I sold it after a couple winters and lost over 2k. Only benefit was getting in better shape at 60 years old cutting a lot of firewood and hand splitting it all with an axe. A lot of work and I did manage to tear my rotator cuff in the process. So much for getting in shape. :)

I'm afraid we'll be stuck with terrible electric bills for the duration. We considered downsizing to a smaller home but I decided that I'm too dang old to do that again. Decided to make the best of what we have here. Things could be worse I suppose. Hope you find what you need. 

@billpete  - Yeah the economics keep changing.  Costs of power generation have dropped  a great deal recently, making selling power a bad idea, but now with climate change and AI's demand for power it may make home power generation more worthwhile. 

One point that hasn’t been addressed is that makes a UPS more expensive than a stand-alone battery/inverter set up is that the UPS is able to take over within Miliseconds, allowing most electronics to continue running seamlessly. That’s actually not trivial to do. 
 

If you really just want cheap battery backup nothing beats lead acid - parallel a dozen car batteries and hook up a 2kW or 4kW 12V inverter.  I did the math recently and in terms of energy-per-dollar lead acid is still way ahead. And they can easily be maintained with a cheap trickle charger. 
 

That said, we have a system with solar (roof and ground based installation for around 20kW total) and several Tesla Powerwall batteries - with us enough to keep us going indefinitely without grid power. I also have an ancient trailer-mounted 60kW diesel generator (enough for a small city block) for long periods without sunshine. The diesel in my fuel trailer will last a good while with a good fuel stabilizer. And I use it occasionally for vehicles so I cycle through it. (The generator eats about 35-40 gal/24 hrs, so with any 400 gals on hand we’ll be ok for a while)

 Now, to tie it back to Audio, I don’t hear a difference between grid power and solar/battery power.  I do have isolation transformers for my system so that might help.  When the generator is running I don’t hear anything but generator noise though …

@erik_squires

I use battery backups on all my electronics because they have good surge protection and when the power flickers, they protect expensive equipment from damage.

I have a backup generator that kicks on automatically after 30 seconds of outage, but generally whole house generators have relatively dirty power, so the battery backups continue to provide low voltage protection as well as surge protection.  If you want to spend a bit more money, you can use true sine wave battery backups.

The only downside is the batteries do need to be replaced in all of them from time to time, but if you’re a little bit handy, 3rd party batteries can be had for a fraction of APC replacement battery costs.

Having your own power is an interesting idea and I love it except for one thing: You are now responsible for fixing it when your home power generation  fails. And while you can hire people to do that for you, in an emergency, those people may not be available for weeks.  So you need to think about the maintenance of voltage converters, batteries not first year or second year, but when it’s 10-15 years old.

Hey @phildebrandt - Make sure you compare usable power.  LiFePO4 batteries can be used for almost 100% of their amp hours (Ah) while lead acid 50%. 

If you have the room, I can see lead acid beating out LiFePO4 for $/usable watt hours. 

Great point @erik_squires ! I hadn’t thought about that limitation when I did the calculation. That was for an old EV Restauration project (a 1910 Baker Electric) and I ended up with a stack of golf cart batteries that nicely took the place of the original Edison batteries.  I would need to look at it again. 
 

@tomrk The point about dirty generator power is very real. I think going forward I would only use an inverter generator, and I’m looking into running my generator output through one of my solar inverters (convert to 480 V DC and then let the inverter create clean 120/240V AC)

Now, inverters pollute the power with their switching frequency, typically just outside the “audible range”, at 25kHz give or take. That’s why I mentioned that I have isolation transformers to deal with that before it reaches my Audio gear

OP

I have a Renogy 1000 with 2x car sealed battery. I live in California so there are not much power outages but if the city power blew up the tranny during hot months, well there it is. I manually switch over my router, switches and Wi-Fi over to the Renogy and some lights and Fan. It works for about 6 hours straight for me experience

with today's tech, see how a Solar panel can charge your batteries and if large enough, power up your home data center

@joeycastillo  - I lived in California a long time.  The power may not go out but it's not always right... :D 

That's kind of what I'm talking about, but in my case I'm going to leave  the inverter in 24/7.  Inverter is sized at 500W, and I'll use 50W.  Batteries will stay on a charger 24/7.  No transfer times.  At most in an emergency when my Ecoflow isn't working or doing other duties It may draw 110W.  I'm starting off cheap.  I had a 500W inverter for the car/emergencies already. It was $70 or something.  I'm going to try it out for now and see how it goes.  If I win the lottery or something I'll consider something significantly larger. 

By my calculations, with 2x 100Ah batteries I should get about 40 hours of run time for Internet alone.  

@erik_squires 

I now understand how you're planning to wire this setup of yours. I think it will work. Mine is more manual. I use the Inverter when I want to be standalone. Then after nearly draining the battery, I then connect the batteries to a charger to fully charge it back. 

So, in your case, you want 24x7 power from the Inverter. in that case, you need a Charger sized to keep the battery "charge" at the same time feeding your devices.

you need to research how to determine this power rating necessary to accomplish this. or crudely, i will attach an amp meter between the battery and inverter when you have all your devices plug in and determine the amps drawn. then choose charger based on that. (give it some headroom) 

@joeycastillo For the sake of simplicity and cost I think in case of a long term outage I’ll manually enable the inverter.  

I just tried the inverter I already have and it’s a lot noisier than I expected, even at idle.  For now, I think I’ll go with leaving a smart charger on the batteries to keep them topped off and if we ever have a real outage I’ll hook up the inverter as needed. 

Perhaps a future me who is wealthy and can do all the other home upgrades he needs will provide an inverter upgrade. 

@dinov +1 Same here. I think it is a Cumings natural gas generator with 50A/120V = 6kW. For brownouts and the 5–10s between power out to generator auto-on, a few small APS do the job.

OP @erik_squires : Re UPCs, also consider battery degradation. At work I had a couple of Desktop PC-size UPCs (120 and 240V) to protect our scanning electron microscope mainly from brownouts. Batteries need to be replaced every 5-10 years. For one they cost, and in one case the batteries ballooned and I had to cut the case to get the batteries out. Between installation and full failure, the battery performance degrades, so if you really want to make sure your back-up lasts for the desired time, also factor in lowered battery capacity with time, or schedule regular battery swaps.

@oberoniaomnia  - That’s another thing.  The lead-acid batteries used in the common UPS does not have the lifespan of modern  LiFePO4.  

According to Gemini, I can get 5 to 15 years of service vs. 3 to 5 years with lead-acid. 

Generally, APC is still selling designs it came up with it seems 20 years ago while battery technology has really moved forward.  The one good thing is that in the US at least the lead recycling rate is high and environmental contamination low for lead acid. 

We finally installed a whole house generator 26KWa-Kohler- natural gas- a little more than a year ago. After the Texas "big freeze" in 2021, I swore I would not go through that again (or the threat of rolling blackouts during peak summer heat, which is brutal here). Since it takes the generator a bit to come fully online--arguably in the tens of seconds, though the switch over happens in milliseconds, that’s obviously enough of a time lag to disrupt Internet service. 

Since so much of what we have today is Internet dependent, including household alarms, security cameras, etc. (all with battery back ups), I bought a substantial Eaton sine wave 20 amp UPS. This way, the Internet signal is covered during the generator switch over. I’m less concerned about computer activity during a power outage than the security systems. (and fwiw, I had a pretty elaborate wiring scheme approved to avoid having my main hi-fi part of the same circuitry as the ATS for the generator; the hi-fi is not supported by the generator at all). One less thing to worry about  and--no, I would not be listening to the hi-fi during a power outage. 

Kohler Generators can also be set-up to use 20# lp propane cylinders 

if you don't have storage room for a back-up propane tank.