Portable generators, and UPSes

R

Red Squirrel

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I've been pondering on buying a portable generator for emergency power in the event of a massive power outage that lasts for days, or even 4+ hours where my UPS wont be enough.

Looking at something like this:

http://www.homedepot.ca/product/6000-watt-13hp-peak-ohv-propane-powered-generator/812523

Probably wont buy this year just kind of looking around at this point.

How do UPSes work with generators, is the power clean enough that the UPS will stay on AC power, or will it keep going to battery, and possibly die? What about if I use rectifiers + inverters, will most telco grade rectifiers do fine with generator power? Keep in mind I'm talking about consumer grade generators, I know they do fine with commercial generators.
 
I want to do wind eventually actually, but not sure if my city would allow it especially due to the size of my yard and being near a high voltage line. (well "medium" voltage, probably 7200v) It is something I want to eventually look into though. But in short term I'd like to get a generator.
 
Cheap generators are not something you want to run a pc on they produce very dirty power suitable for refrigerators and some lighting. The ones you would run a pc on are more expensive. Things to look at are the inverter and run time. The one you posted uses propane and runs for 8 hours at 3000w. Also while propane is clean and efficient think of what would be most available in an emergency and what stores easier.

Diesel generators can also run on kerosene or bio diesel actually there is alot they could run on.

You could DIY a wind solution closer to the ground.
 
There is some excellent information in this thread. Something I have been thinking about for quite sometime too. The solar panel is not a bad idea but really need to get city regulations.
 
Careful with generators; my generator only produces 600 watts; you need to make sure that your generator does well over the watt use of your pc so you dont risk a power surge
 
We have a Honda Generator we bought a few years ago and it worked fine with my APC UPS running my main rig. main rig was either an i7 860 or an i7 2600k at the time.
UPS never went to battery while the generator ran.

We did borrow a cheaper generator many years ago and one of our LCD tv's died while it was plugged into that generator. had to replace the PSU board in the TV.
 
You need a good generator even with a good UPS.

Neither my Liebert GXT2 nor my APC SUA2200XL could make any sense of the shitty power that I got out of a Sportsman-brand (bottom-tier Chinese garbage) generator I borrowed from a friend during Hurricane Irene (in which I lost power for 5 days or so).

That generator was so useless the only thing it was good for was running my fridge. But even my fridge sounded really sick on the thing; I was worried it was going to burn up the compressor in the fridge. It did not... but damn. I won't even borrow a junky generator in a disaster like that again. I'll just go the 5 days without power.

Honda generators are great but so expensive.
 
How well would telecom grade rectifiers do with generators, or would they do badly as well? Eventually I want to go with a setup like that, as it will be fully dual conversion, so there is no switch time to worry about, it's always running off the batteries as they're being charged.

It sounds like I'd have to spend a pretty penny on a high end generator if I want to keep electronics going though. Might be cheaper to just add more batteries and solar/wind.

Though what about a crappy generator with some kind of power filter device?
 
You probably don't need an inverter generator with a good UPS, but you're probably going to need to spend at least $1000 to get decent enough quality. A Honda inverter generator is probably more like $2500-5000.

The generator I mentioned was like $300-400. Absolute garbage. I was going to buy a decent one but everyone was sold out at that point and once my power was back the priority dropped down again.

Not sure about telecom rectifiers. Haven't used any myself nor have I seen any schematics.
 
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