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Keeping Computers (And People) Warm In Winter?
Grimwiz writes "Similar to a few of you, I have some of my computers on a UPS. However, the UK press have recently been warning that power supply interruptions are likely this winter and I've been pondering about upgrading my power protection from those few machines to include a few key house components. In particular, I need to ensure that the gas-powered (but electrically controlled) central heating stays working. I have reviewed a few solutions, including Solar / Photovoltaic or purchasing a generator
but they seem to be hugely more expensive than my simple UPS solution, although they do provide a much longer lasting solution than running off batteries. (A battery solution becomes quite expensive if I require more than an hours backup.)
My power requirements for a quiescent house is about 4amps @ 250V, and I'd like to survive at least 8 hours. What solutions do you recommend?"
I have a small, 20 minute UPS. Once the battery could no longer hold a charge, I took it out and replaced it with a higher capacity VRLA battery that I got from work. With one LCD and one computer, I get about 9 hours of reserve time. The UPS does not get hot, even when the battery has been significantly discharged. I plan on doing this to two other UPS that I bought at a flea market for $10.
Vote for global prefs bug
If you are going to need a generator occasionally, but don't want to pay the upfront cost, you might consider hooking your DC system (assuming that it runs at 12V) into your car and then using the car as a generator
http://michaelsmith.id.au
We get natural gas directly from the wellhead.
The lease dates back to the 1940s and at the time it wasn't uncommon for the leaseholder to be able to use all the gas they needed from the well for household use.
The oil and gas company that has the lease desperately wants to change those terms.
The only downsides are:
1) Occasionally the well will freeze up in the winter. That's not that much of a problem because my oldest brother who also lives on the farm is retired from that same oil and gas company and can thaw out the well.
2) There are no odorants added to the natural gas and so it has no smell to tell you that you have a gas leak. I ended up in the hospital once because of that when a natural gas heater went out and let the room fill with natural gas.
Your best method (but not the cheapest) is a hybrid battery (UPS) and Generator solutions. Generators for 4Amp@250Volts are not that large, or that expensive. (Well, this is all relative I suspect, but if you think a UPS is really cheap, I figure you can afford it.)
Get a large-ish UPS that can support this power consumption for, oh, 15 minutes. Make sure your generator is ready to work at any time. Power goes out, plug the UPS into the generator, and start it up. As long as you have the UPS (a kind of power cache) your generator can act up a bit, or run out of gas, and as long as you can get all that fixed in 15 minutes, you're power supply will be constant. If you're not sure if 15 minutes is enough, get a bigger UPS.
This is more of a large scale disaster scenario setup though. I don't suspect your power company would leave the power out, in the winter time, for more than 15 minutes. If they do.... you're not the only one in deep shit!
Now, WHATEVER YOU DO, do NOT run the UPS or the Generator back into the grid!!!!! If you're thinking of setting up something a bit nicer, like running your entire house off the UPS without any cares, you'll probably need to integrate the UPS (and generator) into your home's power system. If you're doing this, do it right, don't screw around with it if you don't know what you're doing. (If your laws are anything like ours, you'll need a permit to do this in the first place, and an inspection afterwards.)
Anyhow, this is the cheapest method I could come up with that would actually work pretty well, and I have it. Truth is, I don't really need the generator, but bought one for outdoor events and camping, and figured I might as well put it to (possible) use if it's around the house most of the time.
Having lived through 3 hurricains in 6 weeks, after Charlie my wife made me buy a generator, best purchase I made in years ( besides that new G5 17" imac). The only generator available was a huge 12000 watt unit for like $2000. I bought it anyway, more is better right. Well we were outa power for like 10 days total, but I had the genny running and was able to power the whole house, including the A/C. Man i loved watching Lord of the Rings in the a/c, on my entertainment center, while my neighbors were trying to find out when the next shipment of ice was coming into the area. Just Kidding, I had my neighbors over to the house alot. Then we went through the other 2, needless to say that genny is hard wired into the house pannel now.
I agree with the generator AND UPS solution.
I had a generator (can't remember which one now) that featured "clean" power output for electronic devices 5-6% distortion or something like that.
I had the place wired so I could use one plug to connect the genset to the house, and then switch certain circuits over from utility to generator power.
For heat, I used a Kerosene heater (place had electric heat). I'd not recommend this option if you don't have electric heating.
The PC was powered through a surge protector, a power conditioner, and then a Automatic Voltage Regulating (AVR) UPS. Overkill, perhaps, but I never had any errors, glitches, lock-ups, or data corruption (that I could tell).
Alas, I had to move and couldn't use the genset in my new apartment. On the plus side - I haven't had a loss of power that lasted more than 10 minutes in the new place.
Solar voltaics can provide backup, as can a micro-chp station. This old article talks about micro-chp, but basically when you are heating your house you get 1kW/h of free electricity. Connect this to a fuel cell, and when you are producing excess electricity then you store it up in hydrogen. When you burst it can be taken directly from the fuel cell without paying the national grid. Use white LEDs for lighting, a VIA mini-itx for your server, and your electricity bills will be only for your cooking and heating.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
If space isn't a huge issue, you could consider using water tanks for their thermal mass. If you keep the house heated most of the time, the water temperature will stay constant even if it's not directly heated. If the power goes out, the water's thermal mass will slow down the cooling process considerably. Ditto the heating, if your power goes out in the summer.
Always a godfather; never a god. -Gore Vidal
We are in a first world country with a decent infrastructure and it is extremely unlikely that we will have mass powercuts.
Are you kidding? I'm not too sure about the UK, but where I live (US), rolling blackouts and brownouts are not totally uncommon in the summer, when electricity consumption is at its highest. Even if your distribution infrastructure is the best in the world, it's no help if you're not generating enough power in the first place. Line problems are not that uncommon either - I live in the middle of the most densely populated state in the country, and our power was out for almost week a few years ago while we waited for repairs to the lines after a storm.
If you were a hot dog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?
(I'm not affiliated with Xantrex.)
For the best inverters I know of, use Xantrex.
Get a bank of 12V batteries, like marine, or car batteries, and run it through something like this, or pop for the integrated solution like this.
Also take a look at those neat solar arrays.
A very close associate of mine uses Xantrex's Trace inverters with a system of LP gas generators, solar arrays, and battery banks to provide power to an off-grid site on a barrier island. When the sun shines (a lot of the time) the solar keeps the batteries charged. The inverter powers the camp from the bateries, and if someone plugs in a hair-dryer (or the sun doesn't shine for a few days) the inverter can turn on the generator to boost the juice, and refresh the batteries. The tricky part is regulating the temerature on the batterie bank. If it gets too hot, it'll "boil" the batteries and they won't be for shit until you fill 'em with distilled water and say a prayer.
http://www.sunmachine.de/english/index_y.html
Not in full production yet but should be in a year or so. Once it is it'll be possible to have your own solar power station in your back garden.
35% efficient at converting heat into electricity and the rest of the heat is used for central heating and hot water giving an overall efficiency of 90% or so. If not enough sun, it can switch to gas powered generation.
Will it compete with a cheap petrol generator? Not in the short term. In the long term, it supplies electricity to the grid as well as heating the house, so not only does it reduce your bills, it actually earns some cash.
Deleted
An alternator produces AC anyway, no need for an inverter. Just a 10x (or 20x, if you are on 240v) steup transformer, and make sure the RPM stays stable so that it produces as close to 60hz (or 50) as possible. And dont run any electronic equipment directly off it - eg stick with lamps and motors (eg, the forced-air furnace would be fine)
germany runs for a few years with 230volt AC
:) ) :)
:)
tollerated till 240 volts (just for peacs witch will never happen because the net gets switched of or corrected when there is a extrem little change of any variable)
a half countrywide black out would be close to impossible here... (exeption natural stuff like a tree fallen down but this would recomend that country wide all trees fall over... and with the must be distance for powerlines and trees... well impossible... (only the high voltage lines are over ground ) than the spider like energynetwork well...
last energy breack down: 12 years ago for ~2 minutes
greetings
I read that University dorms are having to be upgraded "spec wise" for electrical power because of people like you. You oughta be proud.
Stacked up, it would be the size of a fridge and weigh 1,200 lbs. It would also cost you about $3,600. And they would only last about 7 years before needing replacement. And of course, you would need all the plumbing to vent the hydrogen produced during charging.
Read some of the other posts. Extra batteries are probably the LAST way you would want to tackle this problem.
I live in North Pole, Alaska (yeah, really) and I've seen it get to -70F (-57C) here a few times. I've actually saved myself from freezing to death by crawling under the hood of my truck to lay on the [rapidly cooling] engine when my belts snapped with the cold. I now make it a rule that I call in sick if it drops below -55F.
In my experience, it takes a long time for pipes to freeze to the point where they burst. The power goes out a lot here (I have 3 APC 1100 UPS's under my desk to keep my computers and peripherals up during the black/brown-outs). Granted my house has 12" walls, but I've seen the power go out in the dead of winter here and, 12 hours later, the house might be down to around 40F. I do not run glycol in in my heating system, but I DO let the faucets drip (slowly) whenever it looks like it's going to be a long outage.
Now, I have considered getting a generator (a lot of people have them around here), and it would probably be a good idea. But in leu of that, [we] have a rather impressive set of winter gear that we can rely on - my parka has build-in, replaceable 8-hour chemical heaters under each arm and my "bunny-boots" could probably have kept the astronauts toasty on the moon.
That being said, I'd have to echo the parent post about finding the chicks. It's usually best to have the wife and kids spend a nice warm night in a hotel though, before you invite said chicks over to help you survive.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Some APC UPS units have an external connector normally used for disconnecting the built-in battery for safe shipping or in case of fire. By replacing the internal battery with a wire-loop, the external connector can be used to conveniently hook up large batteries. (Watch the polarity!)
The SmartUPS 1400 model pictured is a 24 volt system, so 2 serially connected deep-cycle lead acid batteries must be used.
ups1
ups2
This setup worked great during the recent hurricanes and power outages in Florida. It kept my laptop, cell phones and flashlights charged during the outages, the longest of which was about 5 days. During prolonged outages you would want to turn the UPS off, and only run it for an hour a day or so to charge smaller devices, check the news, etc.
Most gas furnaces require power to drive the fan, and a little power to turn on the valve for the gas (controlled by the thermostat).
During the prolonged power outage during the ice storm of 1998 in eastern Canada, we fixed up a workable solution. Roughly 24V DC from sealed lead-acid batteries was enough to switch the valve, and the hooked the fan up to a bicycle. A few minutes of peddling on the bike would heat the house several degrees, and the peddler similarly. A bit more detail is contained in one of the articles in Stories from the Ice Storm.
That being said, this may not be possible with modern furnaces. Also, your house, unless very poorly insulated, will stay warm enough to live for 8 hours. (Then again, my "very poorly insulated" might be your "adequately insulated".)