Topic: Inverters

[bellyflop]

I just went through a prolonged power outage. The only way to power my WX radio and laptop was to use an inverter in my car.  I used a Cobra CPI200. It allowed me to run/charge my laptop and run my WR-300.

BF

[DanS]

That's a good idea. I believe it wasn't too long ago some one on here made, and showed us, a homemade similar setup. They used a car battery that was on charge all the time and had an inverter connected to it for the AC power interuptions.

[Budgie]

It's best to use a "Deep Cycle" battery for this sort of thing as these can stand being totally discharged and then recharged again.
Your normal car battery will only stand a full discharge and couple of times before it starts to fail.  

I've got a 2.2 Kva genny that does the job for our house. 

[Andy Thompson]

I have sometimes thought about wiring up a step up transformer and then controlling it with a variac. The problem is, I do not own a variac.

[DaculaWeather]

How long was the power off?

[Budgie]

The last time our power was off was the 3rd Feb when we had gusts of upto 77 mph. The power was off for about 20 hours after that one.

I've got a UPS that'll keep the WX PC & router going for about 40 minutes, which gives me time to get the genny going if the power doesn't come back. If I'm not at home then the UPS software will do a soft shutdown of the PC before the battery runs out. 

[DaculaWeather]

I getting ready to get some new UPS's myself. That's one reason I wanted to build a new weather computer using a mini itx form factor board. No fan, solid state hard drive, 10 watts or so of power consumption, I could run quite a while on a nice sized UPS.

[DanS]

The last time our power was off was the 3rd Feb when we had gusts of upto 77 mph. The power was off for about 20 hours after that one.

I've got a UPS that'll keep the WX PC & router going for about 40 minutes, which gives me time to get the genny going if the power doesn't come back. If I'm not at home then the UPS software will do a soft shutdown of the PC before the battery runs out.  

That the thing, as you mention, not only the PC but the router, the wx station, modem, etc. have to be supported to stay online. My UPS will keep the power hog wx PC (without monitor b/u) and these other mentioned items going for just about an hour.

[Budgie]

I getting ready to get some new UPS's myself. That's one reason I wanted to build a new weather computer using a mini itx form factor board. No fan, solid state hard drive, 10 watts or so of power consumption, I could run quite a while on a nice sized UPS.

I've just got a newish desktop and a Belkin 1200va UPS, I need the desktop for the Boltek PCi.  

That the thing, as you mention, not only the PC but the router, the wx station, modem, etc. have to be supported to stay online. My UPS will keep the power hog wx PC (without monitor b/u) and these other mentioned items going for just about an hour.

The WX Station I let run on it's own batteries when the power's off but the VP2 has plenty of capacity for that. So for me it's only the WX PC & router that need power, like you I don't power the screen off the UPS.  

[gadget_guy]

One of my stations is in a remote location.  i.e. I'm not there 24/7.  I have the station running on a laptop and have a high capacity backup battery.  That gives me about 5-6 hours of run time if power dies.  I have a small UPS for the router.  But if the laptop batteries (primary and backup) drain completely, I'm out of luck till I go on site.  The laptop does not support boot on power or boot on lan.  So I've been thinking of getting a used mini tower and a battery/inverter setup.  At least the PC would automatically come back on line when power is restored.  Because of where the PC is located, I have some appearance considerations to resolve first.  Nothing is easy or obvious.

[DaculaWeather]

I'm also considering a Netbook, built in battery backup for quite a long time on it's own, add a UPS to that and it would take an extended outage to turn stuff off. I just don't really want Win7 on it though, that's why I'm leaning toward building my own.

http://www.mini-box.com/Intel-Mini-ITX-Boards

[bellyflop]

They used a car battery that was on charge all the time and had an inverter connected to it for the AC power interuptions.

Yep, you can do that via the power utility but also use a solar panel to keep your battery topped off till an emergency.

[bellyflop]

Your normal car battery will only stand a full discharge and couple of times before it starts to fail.

Good point. The inverter I was using did have a low battery charge shut down feature but I always ran the engine occasionally to make sure the car battery was never completely drained.

[ncpilot]

I getting ready to get some new UPS's myself. That's one reason I wanted to build a new weather computer using a mini itx form factor board. No fan, solid state hard drive, 10 watts or so of power consumption, I could run quite a while on a nice sized UPS.

Newegg has the Foxconn barebones on sale... http://www.newegg.com/store/Brand.aspx?Brand=2136&Tpk=foxconn&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL030311&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL030311-_-EMC-030311-Index-_-E0I-_-MB (sorry for long URL)

A good time to point out for all those that complain about having to buy the Davis data logger "just" to get data to their computer--it will store days to weeks (or more) of data during a power outage... without worrying about backup power... My UPS backup(s) are definitely short term. If we have a long power outage, it will most likely be due to a hurricane (although I did have my house transformer blow up, and it took about 10-12 hours to get replaced), in which case I've got bigger worries than whether my internet is up and can I pump out weather data... 

I use a netbook, so that should be good for a few hours, but it's the modem+router+switch I've got on a second UPS that probably wouldn't last as long as the netbook.

[DaculaWeather]

The other afternoon my step-daughter used (or tried to use) the weather computer and shut it down by mistake. It was off for two hours before I realized it, luckily the datalogger had the data.