winter, load shedding

well, it's winter and electricity availability in gauteng is already becoming unstable.
how does everybody else supply power to their tanks when the lights go out? UPS?

if so, how do you determine size? my setup is a 30cm nano, 50w heater, small 300l/h internal filter and a small desk lamp with an energy saver bulb.

 

some of the marine guys run their "life support" systems off a deep cycle battery with an inverter. When the power trips the battery slowly discharges over several hours and the tank remains stable. Life support would be stuff like your filters and a heater but not the lights.

HTH

 

Forgot to add - the deep cycle battery runs permanently off an intelligent trickle charger.

 

I run my 2 tanks from an inverter and a batery bank of 3 bateries, this will last me up to 3 days should the power be off of that long.

 

deep cycle battery.. is this a normal car battery?

 

A PC UPS will run your filter for a few hours... this is the critical part. The heater not so much... Lights is definitely not critical

 

can anyone post a little something in the DIY section on how to put something like this together?

 

zoom i'v seen a few of these UPS's that are about the size of a 2,5kg bag of sugar (and weighs more) that will only run a server PC for something like 20 minutes, jsut enough time for you to safely shut down.. i dont think a pc uses that much more electricity compared to a little filter motor, and UPS's are expensive (the above UPS cost between R700 and R900 i think).. would it be worth it to spend the money on something like a UPS as opposed to a setup like @Laracroft, which could last for days rather than minutes or hours?

 

A PC server is pulling about 350W (Minimum power supply for PC's at the moment). Our office server power supply is 500W. A filter pump is under 50W. A PC UPS will run it for a few hours. The purpose of them on servers, or PC's for that fact, is to allow your to save and shutdown.. not to continue working.

 

PC UPS will brake your filter, as it is not true sign wave, you need a true sign wave ups to run your filters and heaters.

 

thanks zoom, this makes perfect sense now

 

lol i dont even know what this means, its above my firemaking place

too high science for my brain lol

 

go google it and read it, before you bugger up everything and you need to replace all

 

This is something I did not know. Will have to check it out and then, if true, will have to come say thank you, I did not know that! I always thought it is as pure as can be...

@Laracroft, can you give estimates on price, brands, specs and where to get a setup like yours? Or is it the same stuff that yo had the fortune to pick up for just about nothing?

To answer the question on the deep cycle battery. Yes, it looks exactly the same as a normal car battery, but it is not really recommended for cars, although some people do use it for that and swears by it. It is a little bit more expensive. The main difference is that a normal car battery is designed to deliver a high load on demand, whereas a deep cycle is delivering lower 'peek current' (do not know the right term, think it is ampere/hour, a/h). That enable the battery to last much longer on its charge. I have a friend with one in his car. He will leave his lights on overnight and think nothing of it and start his car normally the next morning. As I have it, it charges much slower as well, therefore the need for trickle charge.

 

Firstly you need a 'true sign wave' inverter, prices on these can very, but normally very expensive. They start @ about R3k. You can contact Cumunica in Midrand, they will explain to you very nicely. I did not pay this much, I was lucky to find someone where a company went bankcrupt and bought it brand new but at half the price. Sorry the person we dealt with no longer have stock.

We don't use car batteries, as this is not suitable. Again I am lucky, my husband is registered with Energizer bateries so yes we do have the deep cycle batteries.

My set up, 2x inverters, 1 - inverterter with 4 bateries - this is connected to our PC and fridges, 2 - inverter with 3 bateries - this is connected to our tv, video, 2x fish tanks.

Hope this helps.

 

thanks guys, this is a lot of very good information...