Battery Backup

[rjundi]

I heard from a neighbor about their storm backup system. They have 16 marine battery's hooked to some sort of inverter with a solar panel to help a bit too for partial home backup(fridge, well, heat zone, some outlets) for 3 days usage.

Apparently marine battery's from Walmart are around $70-$100/each. I researched this a bit and wondering if anyone knows the ups/downs of this system. Little I could find is out there. I would love a small version to power my office(monitor,laptop, router) and backup well pump(220V). The hard part is the well pump.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

For that kind of money, you'd be better off buying a small generator. It would be a lot more practical.

Oh, and 'batteries'.

 

[pcoxe]

Battery backup for brief outages and a generator for sustained outages. The generator should run from NG/LP, or diesel. Gasoline may be difficult to obtain during a sustained outage, and stored gasoline tends to spoil over time. Diesel and LP should store well. NG may or may not be sustainable depending on the local distribution system.

 

[The_Jeff]

That's goofy, overblown, and the batteries will die of old age. They have too much money.

The solar panels may be green but melting down the batteries at their end of life is not.

Friend of a friend has too much money and buys these "Xantrex" inverter gizmos, then doesn't use them in a common 24 hour outage because she doesn't want to wear them out.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

For the $3000 your neighbor probably spent, he could have bought a nice diesel generator and a lot of diesel.

 

[wrcsixeight]

Amazing how Marine batteries are thought of as these super durable, super high capacity, super powerful batteries, when in reality they are starting batteries slightly more tolerant of deeper discharges.

Marketing mumbo jumbo.
Cold cranking amps, measured at 0 degrees F
Marine cranking amps, measured at 32f.
Yet any battery measured at higher temperature will read higher cranking amps.

Most residential fridges will suck a group 29 battery dry in a few hours.

The system referred to in the first post is a joke. And a single Solar panel to recharge? A Bigger joke.

Most people have no clue how much electricity they use, vs how much can be stored in a battery.

 

[rjundi]

Should be interesting to see how it works in practice. They wanted no maintenance and silence. They both are immigrants that make an incredible amount of money. Amazing story of american dream, both appeared wearing on backpacks went to college and finally medical Drs.

 

[The_Jeff]

A honda 2000 watt inverter generator is also pretty darn quiet. Goofballs.

 

[Donald]

If you wanted to do something like that, use golf cart batteries. Maybe a second well with a smaller pump and make it a "3 wire" pump rather than a 2 so the starting current is less.

Forget about ANY heat load that uses electricity (resistance) as the heat source. It will just never work.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

I use something similar for myself, but that's because I'm in an apartment.

I can't have a generator, but I can put a few car batteries in parallel and run my refrigerator.

 

[andyd]

heh heh off line power. If my power goes out, I have a 5 Kw gen-set. It has less than 50 hours on it. It is a 25 yr old Coleman bare bones rig. bought after losing power a few times in the 70s. It works better since I spent Sunday afternoon straightening out a few troubles that I prolly caused in my attempts to "fix" it in previous attempts to get it running. Last year, I got it running well enough to load test it crudely with an old drier heating element. Got the thing glowing with no trouble. Should everything go right, I wont need it. But it is ready. I can run most of the house utilities with it. A thought occurred to me. Should I be concerned with the bearings in the alternator? I dont think there is any provision for lube? Oh well, something else to worry about.