UPS Battery Backup

J

Jshelle01

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Due to all the recent storms in the area, I would like to have a way to keep power to my tank for about 18 hours. I only want to run two 10 watt power heads to keep a good supply of oxygen in the tank.

I have found a few UPS battery backups and they seem to have the same specs but every different prices. Below are the links:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FBK3QK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007ZT2KKM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1GZCORRJ9SA2O

http://www.amazon.com/APC-BR1500G-Back-UPS-10-outlet-Uninterruptible/dp/B003Y24DEU/ref=pd_bxgy_23_text_z

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00429N19W/ref=pd_luc_rh_sbs_02_01_t_img_lh?ie=UTF8&psc=1

What is the difference in these UPS? How much run time will I get with these devices?

Note: I looked for a UPS calculator by wattage but I was unable to get a complete answer that I understood.
 
Jshelle, I have two of these exact ones running on my tank, and 2 more running other electronics. One on the Chiller and heater, and the other on a 15 watt return pump so my sump has at least a low flow rate return during power outages. I have two sump returns a powerful one and this emergency one. You will get over two hours of flow with these for a single pump low wattage pump on a fully charged ups. I don't really know how much longer because the power came on within about 3 hours and the pump was still running at that point. I don't think you will get 18 hours. The 900 watts ones are designed to run 900 watts for about 2 minutes and then the battery is completely drained. They are meant to get your TV through mini blackouts or computer desktop to auto turnoff within a couple of minutes.

I have 4 of these ups, one for computer, one for 70 inch tv and stereo, 1 for chiller, and one for return pump. When the power went off last week I shut down all electronics and prepared to swap out the return pump on each serially as each battery died but didn't have to because the power outage ended so quickyl. The best thing about these auto turn on when power isn't supplied to them.

I would consider getting one of these if you have a great sump system and would like more piece of mind for about 3 hours to have total flow in a power out. However a better investment than my route would probably have been a small generator and a single one of these ups. A single one of these to keep the sump flowing for enough time to get home and start the generator manually.

The different between these is apc brand is considered slightly a better brand than cyberpower. In my experience go with cyper power for cost savings. Also the price difference is sin wave vs non sin wave. Sin wave power is cleaner, but about 2x the price. I haven't had a pump die on me in non-sign wave version. Unless you have a lot of disposable income go with non-sign wave one at half the price.
 
Great thank you for the help. In DFW they usually have the power back up within 6 hours. I will look at getting a deep cycle battery for prolonged power outages. I think a UPS will be good for the normal power outages.
 
These are all 900W batteries. They will run your 2 10W (rated) pumps for about 900/20 = 45 (ish) hours. That's theoretical. Depends on what power your pumps are really consuming and how much other parasitic power losses, etc, you have.
I would just about guarantee that they all will last 24hrs running your 2 10W pumps.

Difference in prices are:
APC vs CyberPower - brand name. APC has been around longer and are more of the standard in the UPS arena. There might be some quality differences in batteries, but I'm not sure.
My personal anecdote is that I had a CyberPower surge protector that just fried during one of the power storms. It protected the equipment that was plugged into it, but the surge protector heated and smoldered. It burned my carpet. I emailed CyberPower about it, and their customer service said they would mail me claim documents. 6 weeks later, and I've never received the claim documents.

Sine Wave vs Square Wave - The more expensive models for each brand generate true sine wave power just like the power to your house. Electronics are designed to operate on true sine wave power, but that also doesn't matter too much, they will work with square wave power as well. The issue is that #1) they won't use all of the power being delivered, so your 900W is going to be considerably less in practicality (just guessing at 600-700W) and #2) your electronics may heat a little bit more since they are wasting more of that power. Most delicate electronics like PCs, etc, will have internal voltage regulators that will fix that square wave into a sine wave, but less advanced electronics are just going to use it like it is.

Either sine or square wave are generally just fine for you. Just know that 900W square probably won't last you as long as 900W sine, and if you have really expensive electronics plugged in, you might be more inclined to spend the money on a true sine wave generator.
 
TDub7. Can you review that runtime estimate?

http://www.apc.com/tools/ups_selector/US/en/home/load

When i plug in 20 watts and the 900 watt, they say it will be 244 minutes, 4~ hours of runtime. That's about what I'm seeing too.
 
You're right. My bad.

You have to look at the battery specs on each unit.

The CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD has an 8.5AH battery.
The CyberPower BGR1500 has a 9AH battery.
The APC doesn't report their battery specs, but let's assume they are the same.

20W device = 120VAC * I so I = 20/120 = 0.167A

8.5AH = 0.167A * Time(hrs) Time(hrs) = 8.5 / 0.167 = 51 hours

I'm still getting 2 days of run time.

You're right, though. APC only reports 4hrs. My assumption is that the UPS' themselves are consuming quite a bit of power to maintain operation. The curve in their time graph kinda confirms that. The greatest change in slope is around 200 Watts, so that's probably the amount of power consumption the UPS has itself.

So your 20W pumps + 200W used by supply = 220W => 2A 8.5AH / 2A = 4.2 hours of use

Thanks for making me check. I would have never guessed a UPS uses 200W of power to do its thing.
 
yeah your right that seems ridiculous that it would use that much power to run. I'll try to get some concrete numbers this weekend for this thread as I'm curious myself by running the ups not plugged in with only the extra pump.
 
That would be a good test.

I was still wrong in my last statement about the reason for the plot being curved. AH and VA are both linear relationships. If the UPS used a constant 200W itself, the relationship would still be linear and the plot would be a sloped line. The fact that it is curved says that it's efficiency is changing depending upon power load - and voila, it shows the efficiency chart just below that same time plot. The more load it has, the more efficient the system is at generating that load.

I'm a moron and didn't think about the power the unit is consuming just to convert the 12VDC battery to a usable 120VAC signal. That's where most of the power loss is.
 
ANNNNDDDD... Here's the real answer as I found from the EE website at U of Colorado:

You have to use the power conversion factor: VAC/VDC = Power Conversion - 120VAC/12VDC(battery) = 10
Battery Capacity = ((AC Load * Conversion Factor)/Efficiency) * Hrs
9AH battery = ((0.167A * 10) / (0.7)) * Hrs
9 = 2.385 * Hrs
Hrs = 3.77

I guess the efficiency from that plot at 70%. It must be a little better than that which is how you get 4 hours for a 20W load.

For a full load, 900W, you'd have the following:
9AH = ((7.5A * 10 CF)/0.97 efficiency) * Hrs
Hrs = 9 / 73 = 1/8 hours or about 6 minutes
APC reports about 7 minutes
 
A ups is only practical to run essential equipment for a short duration. I have a ups to run a powerhead but have a generator for running more gear for longer time periods. Another longer term solution is to get a power inverter that connects to the battery on your car. Your vehicle will need to be running while in use otherwise you'll drain your battery.


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