Anybody got a generator?

D

DougLite

Supreme [H]ardness
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Had to shut down the War Room today. Power clicked off about 9:00 this morning. Thought to myself "More than likely gonna be off for some time." Had church at 10:00, so I had to decide if I was gonna gamble on the utility power coming back online before my UPS batteries ran out, or shut down. Shut down it was, and the War Room was turned off for the first time in the past four years. Had to click off five UPSes (It was a cacophony of chirping).

Anybody else considered installign a generator in addition to UPS systems to ensure total uptime? :D
 
I nearly died whe I red about this.

Definitely an option to explore in more detail. Unfortunately, I do not own my own home, so not an option for me right now.
 
I'll be installing a whole-house generator, wife will get pissed if I only keep the PC's hooked up :(
 
DougLite said:
Had to shut down the War Room today. Power clicked off about 9:00 this morning. Thought to myself "More than likely gonna be off for some time." Had church at 10:00, so I had to decide if I was gonna gamble on the utility power coming back online before my UPS batteries ran out, or shut down. Shut down it was, and the War Room was turned off for the first time in the past four years. Had to click off five UPSes (It was a cacophony of chirping).

Anybody else considered installign a generator in addition to UPS systems to ensure total uptime? :D
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A Generator is the expensive way to go... if you pick up a bunch of batteries and a large inverter \ charger you'll be good to go with very little way in the way of maintenance. When you've got utility power it will charge the batteries and when its off the batteries will be drained.

Thats the system used in countries with spotty power. Its hard to get a large enough of an inverter to handly a\c and a fridge so its not used for larger loads commonly. the upside is the power is completely clean for your computers. Total safety.

Generator's are ok, but you need gas and oil + the power won't be as clean as utility or inverter...
 
I read somewhere about generators that run off the gas for like your stove, water heater, and such. A few grand for one of these setups but something that will definately keep the power running.

Also, living in AZ you get a lot of sun. Solar power has been very intriguing to me and I would love to see if anyone else has this setup.
 
ICE_9 said:
I read somewhere about generators that run off the gas for like your stove, water heater, and such. A few grand for one of these setups but something that will definately keep the power running.

Also, living in AZ you get a lot of sun. Solar power has been very intriguing to me and I would love to see if anyone else has this setup.
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My parents have a 42Kw Onan natural gas generator. It is like the power never went out.

Edit: it is more like 20 grand to get this type of setup. I wish that I had that in my apartment here. However, I have never lost power, so I can't complain.
 
It looks like I could run of about a 15Kwh generator. I wonder if I can have it all done for under 7k?
 
look at the home standby generators from generac, they will run off lp or ng and are not that expensive... home depot carries them
 
We're considering getting a generator, as we're in the Houston area and lost power last year after Rita rolled through. Unfortunately, the A/C would come as the 1st priority.

Of course, if another hurricane comes our way, we'll probably evacuate again--last year we got a 6-day weekend out of it :cool:
 
Mohonri said:
We're considering getting a generator, as we're in the Houston area and lost power last year after Rita rolled through. Unfortunately, the A/C would come as the 1st priority.

Of course, if another hurricane comes our way, we'll probably evacuate again--last year we got a 6-day weekend out of it :cool:
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My parents got theirs after losing power for two weeks from a hurricane. I forget which one it was but it would have been 3 or 4 years ago. I remember that my college closed down for 10 days. It sure did suck making that up in May... It will be nice that I won't lose my boxen that I have at home due to a power outage; unless the internet goes down too.
 
Mohonri said:
We're considering getting a generator, as we're in the Houston area and lost power last year after Rita rolled through. Unfortunately, the A/C would come as the 1st priority.

Of course, if another hurricane comes our way, we'll probably evacuate again--last year we got a 6-day weekend out of it :cool:
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I'm guessing you would need a fairly beefy generator to run a/c. It's even worse that it runs all the freaking time down here thanks to humidity.

Don't you live on the north side of town? Keep your butt at home and let us people that are actually in flood plains get out of here next time. :p
 
sandmanx said:
Don't you live on the north side of town? Keep your butt at home and let us people that are actually in flood plains get out of here next time. :p
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Try telling that to my pregnant wife!

Hehe. Yup, I'm on the NE side. You guys on the floodplains need to build your houses somewhere else! :p
 
My uncle has this one for his gas station down here in florida :)
696471045826_3.jpg
 
Mohonri said:
Try telling that to my pregnant wife!

Hehe. Yup, I'm on the NE side. You guys on the floodplains need to build your houses somewhere else! :p
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To be fair, we are only in a floodplain with a Category 5 storm, but I plan on running due to the wind on a Cat3 or higher. Now those idiots that live in Galveson are another story! :D
 
Funny thing, power went out last night (Not sure what happened actually), but my UPS units seemed to handle the computers well. Had enough time to flip the circuit breaker and get back on normal power again... I have no idea how the electricity works in my apartment, I'm used to changing fuses.
 
We used to have a battery backup for all our Ham Radio stuff in the basement. Neat little rig. I think I may get something similar going here at my new apartment. We lose power more frequently than we should.

Now to figure out how to protect it from the neighbourhood brats (aka stop them from arcwelding their bikes or themselves to my batteries)
 
mwarps said:
Now to figure out how to protect it from the neighbourhood brats (aka stop them from arcwelding their bikes or themselves to my batteries)
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I discovered a nice, simple method for this--from a panel shop making a panel for an oil company no less. They got some rubber chair-leg covers, drilled out the bottoms, and pushed them onto the tops of the battery terminals.

Upgrading your UPS with Car Batteris can also help. Heck, if golf carts can run off wet lead-acid batteries, your UPS can, too!
 
Mohonri said:
I discovered a nice, simple method for this--from a panel shop making a panel for an oil company no less. They got some rubber chair-leg covers, drilled out the bottoms, and pushed them onto the tops of the battery terminals.

Upgrading your UPS with Car Batteris can also help. Heck, if golf carts can run off wet lead-acid batteries, your UPS can, too!
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DUDE?!?! Does that work!?!?!
 
It sure does. That was me that tried it in that thread, and it works just fine. Although I would suggest getting something larger than the 2x 18AWG wire I used (it was all I had on hand). Mine is a 500VA UPS, and the wires to the battery are 14AWG. Just get a big bank of cheap car batteries, and you'll never have to worry about power again! (well, until the batteries wear out...)
 
Mohonri said:
It sure does. That was me that tried it in that thread, and it works just fine. Although I would suggest getting something larger than the 2x 18AWG wire I used (it was all I had on hand). Mine is a 500VA UPS, and the wires to the battery are 14AWG. Just get a big bank of cheap car batteries, and you'll never have to worry about power again! (well, until the batteries wear out...)
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Eh. If you do them in parallel, you have to worry about the internal resistances being different for each one, and I've heard that's not so good on your controller. Though, I may hack my Best Buy POS UPS to use a huge-ass car battery very soon. :D
 
mwarps said:
Eh. If you do them in parallel, you have to worry about the internal resistances being different for each one, and I've heard that's not so good on your controller. Though, I may hack my Best Buy POS UPS to use a huge-ass car battery very soon. :D
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Unless the internal resistances differ drastically, you'll still be ok. In fact, the internal resistances will help equalize charge and voltage. Large UPS battery banks commonly run in parallel at least to some extent...
 
I work with large scale battery sets on a daily basis. There's no issue here as long as you do the following:

1: Use batts that are the same voltage... all 12v volt, for example
2: Don't mix old with new batteries... too much can be wrong with old batteries
3: Wire them so you only increase the amperage and not the voltage.
4: If you are hooking a lot up, make sure you precharge them before you hook them all up. Putting a large battery pack on a cheap-o-matic ups is a surefire way to destroy it.
5: Make sure you double check all your voltages before you wire ANYTHING... and then check again to make sure you got it right.
 
dekard said:
Putting a large battery pack on a cheap-o-matic ups is a surefire way to destroy it.
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I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Would you care to expound on that?

/me snickers at the thought of some noob hooking a 12V battery to a 6V....
 
I work for a UPS maintenance company (I'm the one man IT staff) and I think what dekard means is you will burn out the charger if you put a large battery on a small unit. It could litterally take days to charge the battery, if it were completely flat. After a deep discharge (ie. an extended outage), the UPS may die trying to charge the battery. They just aren't designed to handle a battery that large, especially if you put multiple batteries in parralel. You may also shorten the life of the battery because the UPS may not properly maintain the battery.
 
DDogbert said:
I work for a UPS maintenance company (I'm the one man IT staff) and I think what dekard means is you will burn out the charger if you put a large battery on a small unit. It could litterally take days to charge the battery, if it were completely flat. After a deep discharge (ie. an extended outage), the UPS may die trying to charge the battery. They just aren't designed to handle a battery that large, especially if you put multiple batteries in parralel. You may also shorten the life of the battery because the UPS may not properly maintain the battery.
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You're probably right for UPSes that "know" how much capacity the battery should have. If the UPS has just a dumb constant-voltage current-limited charger and is designed to handle the power dissipation (from inefficiencies) for longer, it shoudln't be a problem, right?
 
Mohonri said:
You're probably right for UPSes that "know" how much capacity the battery should have. If the UPS has just a dumb constant-voltage current-limited charger and is designed to handle the power dissipation (from inefficiencies) for longer, it shoudln't be a problem, right?
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It's now a matter of identifying which UPS units "know" and which units have a dumb constant-voltage/current-limited charger. :)
 
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