Using battery power to go off the City's power grid

sirnui

... a few key things that a powerful battery/inverter system offers over the average 15A wall outlet. It’s separated from what can be a noisy grid ...

And replaces it with a potentially noisy inverter.

The inverter will have noise of its own so it comes down to the lesser of two evils for noise.  Even in the suburbs where I live, the data is telling me my Giandel inverter has slightly better AC Total Harmonic Distortion than the wall AC.  I use to own a power conditioner that showed AC THD.

It can offer more dynamic power (from a large bank of capacitors?) ...

Greater than the dynamic power available from your local electric utility, which uses banks of capacitors at the substation? I don’t think so.

Those substations are not a few feet away from the audio system.  Any power reservoir from the susbstation needs to travel many feet and it will have to go through transformers and the house wiring and electrical outlets likely rated for 15A.  The audio system is not seeing anything close to what the substation can offer for power.  But in my case with the Giandel 5000W and using the High Current terminals, my ceiling is not limited to 15A.  Doing the math, 5000W / 120V = 41.67A.  Now, max power is not really what I'm going for but it's beneficial to have wires and circuits that were designed to handle that kind of power.  This can come into play during moments of sudden and quick power draws.  I once had Kii Three active speakers hooked up to the battery/inverter system.  They were not class A monoblocks but not once did I feel the power was lacking when I turned up the volume.

... it can offer a better AC sinewave (better THD) to power supplies that were designed with perfect AC sinewaves in mind.

A good power supply doesn’t require "perfect AC sinewaves."

I didn't use the word "require".  I generally believe if dirt goes in, then dirt comes out.  If a clean AC sinewave goes into a power supply, then clean DC power comes out.  If a jagged AC sinewave goes into a power supply, the DC signal out would likely have artifacts(noise) from the jaggedness of the AC sinewave.

I have an academic background in EE.  I have a BS and MS in Computer Engineering.  I don't share this to say I know everything about electricity because I don't.  I share this because the decisions I've made regarding how I deal with power in my audio system is helped from this EE knowledge or whatever is left of it.  I don't do EE for a living.  But above all, I try the gear and nothing beats actual experience.  Theory is nice but actually applying theory is better.

sirnui

Any power reservoir from the susbstation needs to travel many feet and it will have to go through transformers and the house wiring and electrical outlets likely rated for 15A. The audio system is not seeing anything close to what the substation can offer for power ... I have an academic background in EE. I have a BS and MS in Computer Engineering ... Theory is nice but actually applying theory is better.

Electric power can be distributed over hundreds of miles with minimal losses.

The line feeding my house originates at the substation as a 12,470/7,200 volt wye circuit. That is a very common distribution scheme in the US, and it’s a big step up from the old delta circuit that my utility previously used. Either way, you don’t want that 7,200 VAC anywhere near your system.

My audio system uses dedicated, derated 20A lines and my utility - which is not a very good one, by the way - has no trouble delivering power on demand. If there is any doubt about your utility’s ability to deliver sufficient power, a "beast of burden test" will settle it. You would need a massive bank of batteries and capacitors to come even close to delivering the power a proper utility offers.

@sirnui    , thank you again for all the detailed information you are writing

I have tried Shunyata’s top of the line conditioners (Everest on down) on a battery/inverter and it makes a big difference. I have also tried Puritan conditioners and they make a noticeable difference as well. Value wise, the Puritan conditioners are hard to beat but I’ve found Shunyata TOTL to be better than Puritan TOTL. I can recommend both.

Yes , the Everest and Denali have very good reputation as line conditioners  , and they are very effective at avoiding pollution between components of the audio system which is by the way some time a stronger pollution than from the AC line .

Cost wise the puritan is 1/3 of the Denali and 1/5 of the Everest therefore hard to beat .

In fact you have now If I understand well two separated battery inverter system 

- One for DAC ,preamp ,Amp  with Shunyata Typhon 

- The second one for  Lumin streamer , switch etc...

Since I have a friend with a Denali  , I will do the test  with this conditionner .

Electric power can be distributed over hundreds of miles with minimal losses.

The line feeding my house originates at the substation as a 12,470/7,200 volt wye circuit. That is a very common distribution scheme in the US, and it’s a big step up from the old delta circuit that my utility previously used. Either way, you don’t want that 7,200 VAC anywhere near your system.

My audio system uses dedicated, derated 20A lines and my utility - which is not a very good one, by the way - has no trouble delivering power on demand. If there is any doubt about your utility’s ability to deliver sufficient power, a "beast of burden test" will settle it. You would need a massive bank of batteries and capacitors to come even close to delivering the power a proper utility offers.

Shunyata Research believes in what is called Dynamic Transient Current Delivery.  Another audio forum describes DTCD in more details and I won't repeat the whole concept here.  From what I understand of it, power supplies pull current from the crests of the sinewave.  So the rectifiers are only open during a small part of the sine wave.  When the rectifiers are open, the instantaneous current that flows through to the power supply's storage capacitors can be 10 to 20 times the average current.  For example, if an amp draws 10 amps average, the instantaneous current can be 100 or 200 amps.  This doesn't blow the breakers because the average current is still below the line's rated current of 20A.  For the power supplies, it's best to get the number for the instantaneous current to be as high as possible.  Upgrading from a 15A line to a 20A line, using audiophile outlets, using audiophile power cables, are all actions that would increase instantaneous current.

The point I'm trying to make here is that one has to look at what is immediately connected to the audio system's power supplies.  This is the power cables, the power conditioner, the wall outlet, the 20A line, etc.  The quality of all those things would affect the instantaneous current.  In my decade in the hobby, I've found all of these things to be very important.  It's not just theory to me since I've proven it to myself over and over.  So I'm not really talking about total power or maximum average current.  I'm talking about instantaneous current to the power supplies which can be very different in two power delivery systems even when those two systems can provide the same average current.

So how does all of this tie back to batteries and inverters?  Here are the positives I see that can help increase instantaneous current for a battery/inverter.  The total length  of wiring from the battery and through the inverter is very short.  I'm using the high current terminals of the Giandel inverter which I believe can provide 41.67A of average current.  Generally, the higher the average current, the higher the instantaneous current.  It's difficult for me to know for sure if these qualities actually give my audio system more instantaneous current versus my previous 20A line.  Shunyata makes a device they call a DTCD Analyzer that can be used to measure but I don't necessarily want to buy one, assuming they would sell one to me.  I had to follow my ears on this one.

In fact you have now If I understand well two separated battery inverter system

- One for DAC ,preamp ,Amp with Shunyata Typhon

- The second one for Lumin streamer , switch etc...

Since I have a friend with a Denali , I will do the test with this conditionner .

For the audio system, I have just one battery and one inverter, the Giandel 5000W. The Giandel 5000W has one high current terminal and 4 normal US outlets. The conditioner is connected to the high current terminal and one of the normal outlets powers the HDPlex 300W power supply that feeds DC to the Lumin streamer, switch, etc.

I technically have a second inverter connected to the battery but it powers the HT system and is not part of my audio system. I experimented with the second inverter for the audio system but didn’t find it beneficial, at least not in the way I had things configured. I may experiment more with the second inverter in the future.

I haven't mentioned grounding recently but that is something I do with the system.  Grounding an inverter is different than grounding with a house AC line and different types of inverters may call for different ways to ground.  The Giandel manual says to ground to the car/vehicle or to earth.  The audio system's ground is grounded to  the house AC ground with a Puritan Ground Master.  I use another Ground Master on one of the isolated SPDIF connectors on the Lumin streamer and I also use another Ground Master on the ground pin of the Lumin streamer.  In the near future, I may decide to install a grounding rod outside and connect all these Ground Masters to this rod.  I think this would benefit the system.  I won't know until I try.