Battery Backup / UPS

[jimsflies]

Here are some pics of a UPS that I am currently installing. Its on a large commercial building, but you will get the idea. Hope you like the pics. Hope it doesn't bore you .

I'm bored...how long will it run a Koralia 250?

[jolson10450]

an example, we have ones at our work. they are 1200w capacity ups's and we run about 1000w worth of power on them and they stay on for about 15 minutes before running out of battery. i would say if you only had 10w on a 100w ups it would last only about an hour or so.

ups's wern't intended for the reef hobby. they are designed in case of a power failure or if the power goes out it can automatically shut down a computer so all data isnt lost or the hard drive fried so they usually only last a few minutes.

[cmpenney]

The output from a computer UPS isn't the best for motors either. It's usually a square wave which doesn't work very well with AC motors. They are OK for electronics becuase the power supplies in pretty much all electronics change the 120v AC into 5 & 12 DC right off the bat. AC motors are designed to so work with a true sine wave. Using a PC UPS to run a motor will at best result in way less than peak performace for a shorter time, and at worse ruin the motor and the UPS.

You can get by this problem if you are using a DC powerhead like a stream(not the nanos), vortech, or the DC version of the Koralia for the reason I stated above.

[cg5071]

thanks, that is good to know.

[jimsflies]

You can get by this problem if you are using a DC powerhead like a stream(not the nanos), vortech, or the DC version of the Koralia for the reason I stated above.

You mean avoid the problem, right? And the tunze nano stream 6055 would be a dc version...

I also have read that most computer ups's need a certain size load ~50watts to work properly. Again they are designed for computers which would have that much load, where as a small power head may only have 20 watts or so. I'm not an electrical guy, so I'm not sure if that is trur or not, but it's something to keep in mind.

I think the tripp light power inverters like the one I posted in the link above are made to work with a wide range of electrical items. Not sure but they may have a sine wave output or approximate one.

[cmpenney]

Some of the more expensive ones are OK. You just need to check the output specs and make sure that the output on backup is PWM sine wave and not square wave and you'll be OK.