Super UPS from South Africa

Winga · May 2007

The craziest, best UPS you've ever seen: it powers my office for 2 hours (at maximum load on 2 PCs and a printer) and only cost $411.

It's public knowledge that South Africa's sole electric company is battling to keep up with demand. You only have to look at my UPS performance summary to appreciate the amount of brownouts we experience in our area of Margate.
Sometimes the brownouts last up to eight hours or more. As a result, I have collected all manner of uninterruptible power supplies which are linked to all the computers scattered around my house. This ensures Iï¿½m not left in the dark halfway through a game or a spreadsheet I spent the last hour compiling. Those of you who have experienced this know how infuriating power loss can be.

Ivan · May 2007

primesuspect · May 2007

What an awesome article. Great work, Mike!

Leonardo · May 2007

Great. I'm at work so just had time to scan the article and look at pics. This will get a detailed reading from me later! I'm already thinking about a new project for next winter. (heavy snowfall sometimes knocks out our power)

RWB · May 2007

Been looking for something like this, having a laptop is nice because of the battery, but mine only lasts like 2-3hrs, having a much bigger battery would make it much more awesome in the event of a power outage.

keto · May 2007

*if* that is, as it appears to me, a car battery (or a pair of them), I sincerely hope you have the area well ventilated. They can and do give off hydrogen gas, which, if allowed to accumulate, is highly explosive. Let me reword that, it's explosive in any quantity but DANGEROUS if allowed to accumulate. Oh, the humanity, etc.

I admit I scanned the article rather than giving it a detailed reading, so if this is covered in there I apologize for redundancy.

edcentric · May 2007

You use sealed lead acid batteries, no hydrogen venting it is all internally re-absorbed.

This is the right track for serious backup. (do you have a basement? does it have a sump pump? Does the pump run during big storms?)

We were building these for field equipment when I was working in oil and gas. We bought lightning arrestors/line filters from one source (I wish that I could remember because they were real good), inverters from another and battery charging/monitoring stuff from a third.
We had a small Li ion battery to back up the electronics and three or four big ass deep draw sealed lead acid batteries for power.
They are big and don't look pretty, but they were 1/4 the price of pre-built units and worked very well.

Thrax · May 2007

SM/IC/whatever needs more articles like this.

RWB · May 2007

keto said:
*if* that is, as it appears to me, a car battery (or a pair of them), I sincerely hope you have the area well ventilated. They can and do give off hydrogen gas, which, if allowed to accumulate, is highly explosive. Let me reword that, it's explosive in any quantity but DANGEROUS if allowed to accumulate. Oh, the humanity, etc.

I admit I scanned the article rather than giving it a detailed reading, so if this is covered in there I apologize for redundancy.

Hydrogen gas doesn't tend to accumulate unless it's in a sealed area... it's a very light gas. Imagine a hydrogen balloon?

BuddyJ · May 2007

Like this?

Rob · May 2007

It is not advisable to run any laser printers on UPS or inverters unless they are of an on-line type and have been specifically rated to handle the current required to heat the element. If you are running a laser printer directly off batteries you are likely to blow your unit. I ran the laser printer off batteries only once, and only as a means to push the inverter to its maximum in order to gauge its performance.

I would never have thought of this... My laser printer dims the lights in the room, so I can believe it.

profdlp · May 2007

That is a great job, Winga. :cheers:

TheSmJ · May 2007

Fun read Winga!

Winga · Oct 2007

Well as I hinted in the beginning of my article, the inevitable is happening and the state owned power stations we have are not able to keep up with demand. At the moment they are load sharing, where they shut down entire grids for 3-5 hours so they can rout sufficient power to the remaining grids. These are rotated so everybody gets a turn.

This electricity supply interruption is sending my folding stats to hell, but the good news is I finally get a chance to field test my UPS :)

I shut down all the other gizmos and peripherals bar the router and the 2 PC's and LCD monitors. (Since writing the article the CRT has also been upgraded to a Wide Screen 19") The UPS has been running both PC's for the last 4 1/2 hours, both of which are still folding so are using 100% of the CPU and my kid has been gaming for about an hour and there is as yet no signs of the batteries giving out.

I thought I would get this post out before it gives up the ghost and will let you guys know how how long it took before the final death knell :D

primesuspect · Oct 2007

Nice! :eek2:

Hang in there! If you can weather an entire blackout, you could probably go into business with your setup! :D

GHoosdum · Oct 2007

Wow that's impressive!

Winga · Oct 2007

:grumble: power restored before the UPS gave out. There goes my field test.
However 5 hours 20 minutes is nothing to sneeze at in my books. The Inverter had begun to beep indicating low battery and with the test I ran the last time with it on full load it beeped for about half an hour and then died. So I guess it had another 15 minutes of life left in it max.

GHoosdum · Oct 2007

I'd consider yours a successful test. It's great that the UPS didn't give out!

I'm lucky to get 15 minutes out of my UPS total with just one PC connected...

trphoto · Oct 2007

We have 10 computers at the office all on separate UPS's. we also have about 10 dead UPS's (sealed batteries are dead) laying about the office.

Is there any reason why we shouldn't buy a 300 amp/hour deep cycle battery, similar to what is used on solar installations, and take those 10 cheap UPS's with dead batteries, pull out the batteries and wire them all to the deep cycle battery. Then put a charger on the deep cycle battery. Shouldn't the deep cycle battery run all those UPS's for a good amount of time in case of a power outage?

Been looking around the Internet and wondering why this isn't done.

Junkymagi · Oct 2007

trphoto said:
We have 10 computers at the office all on separate UPS's. we also have about 10 dead UPS's (sealed batteries are dead) laying about the office.

Is there any reason why we shouldn't buy a 300 amp/hour deep cycle battery, similar to what is used on solar installations, and take those 10 cheap UPS's with dead batteries, pull out the batteries and wire them all to the deep cycle battery. Then put a charger on the deep cycle battery. Shouldn't the deep cycle battery run all those UPS's for a good amount of time in case of a power outage?

Been looking around the Internet and wondering why this isn't done.

I bought a UPS from an auction, paid a US dollar for it. Dead battery. Went to local store (Walmart) and bought 6 12v lawn mower batterys. Hooked them up in parrellel (UPS took 12v) and was able to run from it for 3 hours at a time when the power went out. It finally died after 2 years of service... right after I got a laser printer, I guess I went over the max draw, didn't realise how much they pulled.

Snarkasm · Oct 2007

You guys made Slashdot. Congratulations?

BuddyJ · Oct 2007

We did? Where?

BuddyJ · Oct 2007

trphoto said:
We have 10 computers at the office all on separate UPS's. we also have about 10 dead UPS's (sealed batteries are dead) laying about the office.

Is there any reason why we shouldn't buy a 300 amp/hour deep cycle battery, similar to what is used on solar installations, and take those 10 cheap UPS's with dead batteries, pull out the batteries and wire them all to the deep cycle battery. Then put a charger on the deep cycle battery. Shouldn't the deep cycle battery run all those UPS's for a good amount of time in case of a power outage?

Been looking around the Internet and wondering why this isn't done.

I think that'd put you on the right track provided your UPSs and the charger could handle the 300 amp/hour battery.

mshiels · Oct 2007

Mike,
This is an excellent article and helps me allot with a similar problem I have. I am curious though in that if, 24V (i.e. in your case, 2 times 12 batteries wired in series) provided you with approx 2 hours, what do you speculate would happen if you added additional 24 v batteries in series? Would you have in effect extended the up time by almost double? Who would the outcome be if you added another 24V but in this time in parallel?
Cheers
Mark

Junkymagi · Oct 2007

mshiels said:
Mike,
This is an excellent article and helps me allot with a similar problem I have. I am curious though in that if, 24V (i.e. in your case, 2 times 12 batteries wired in series) provided you with approx 2 hours, what do you speculate would happen if you added additional 24 v batteries in series? Would you have in effect extended the up time by almost double? Who would the outcome be if you added another 24V but in this time in parallel?
Cheers
Mark

Adding in series would up the voltage, a bad thing if the UPS's voltage regulator couldn't handle the extra voltage.

If you added more batteries in parellel (I think he mentions that in the article) it would increase the up time. 2 batteries last 2 hours, 4 batteries would last almost 4 hours, 6 batteries would last about 5.5 hours. You lose a small fraction each time you add batteries because of the added resistance of the extra wiring and the batteries' internal resistance.

Snarkasm · Oct 2007

Buddy Jesus said:
We did? Where?

Whoops, I made a mistake. You made Engadget.

primesuspect · Oct 2007

Also Makezine! :D

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