Topic: UPS for weather gear, lan and internet conectiivity

[OldAlaskaGuy]

Is anyone using a UPS to keep your weather stations online during a power outage. I am looking for a solution. In windy weather or heavy snow here in Alaska trees tend to take down power lines here often. Duration can be from 1 to 8 hours. Short of a $8000-$10000 generator system I am looking to find a way to keep my weather station online and sending data. I have 4 bridges, 2 USB powered, 2 brick powered, a modem and router that are brick powered.
I am currently building my own version of a UPS for my weather station. It uses a deep cycle RV battery, solid state battery charger and 12 to 5 volt converters for USB power receptacles. The router and modem are currently powered by a 12V bricks that will be direct wired into the battery via a patch cord. This way the router, my wireless bridges and modem will all be running off of battery power independently. In case I loose power there will be no interruption of data sent. Calculated out I should get 5-8 hours of power to my weather station and no data loss. Using a comparable Li UPS is extremely expensive.

[Paulcheffus]

Hi

I use a Cyberpower BR1200ELCD UPS 720W to power my router, mesh disc, pair of Raspberry Pis and GW3000 gateway. According to the status details on the UPS it will give me around around 80 minutes which is ok for the majority of power outages we get.

Cheers

Paul

[davidmc36]

APC UPS's times 4 in my house. Protects and powers all sensitive electronics. Just do it.

[Otis]

I use 2 UPS just so I can power down the equipment when their is an outage.  In particular the PCs so they don't crash.
UPS will work for that but not long outages, my last outage was 13 days, 2-3 days can be normal.

[Mattk]

Typically a UPS is only a short term power solution but that will be variable depending on the UPS size? 2000VA would give a couple of hours dependent on the load.

Weather station itself, yes DC battery, charger, 12/5v converters is the way to go and include a means to hot swap the battery.

Network/switches/routers/bridges/modem etc then with mains power something like a Ubiquiti EdgePower on a 100Ah+ battery and 12/24V or POE switches works well. If you really get stretched then a small genset/battery charger backup behind the EdgePower.

Remote then obviously solar using something like a SolarSwitch(Uniquiti) or Tycon/MSTronic power which would fully support the station and all associated network gear.       

[weatherdoc]

All my sensitive electronics are on UPS - I learned to do that when I lived in Florida. When I moved to NC a year ago, we did install a whole-house generator. So, the UPS supply clean power and keep my electronics running until the generator kicks in. We've had two 30-45 minute power outages in the past year. In Florida we had two 5-day outages due to tropical cyclones and Florida in August/September is no fun without A/C!

[Cutty Sark Sailor]

APC 1500's.  Changed from Cyberpowers a few years ago cause they kept failing.  Nope, wasn't batteries...  but expect batteries after about 3 years... similar to normal 'real' auto expectation... . These are real anger management support for those momentary spikes 'n' dips... and allow graceful shutdown for longer term.  Leave My APC's Alone!