Storm Season among us. Power outage readiness!!!

gbru316

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I'm saying you'd stick the ups before you fish tank, that way it picks up the time period why the generator is warming up

I'm not sure what you mean by "warming up."

The total time without power for a whole home standby generator is measured in seconds. And that's just the logic built into the ATS to ensure that the power outage is actually an outage and not just a transient before deciding to turn on the generator.

I routinely remove power from most components in my tank -- during feeding, during maintenance, etc. I've properly sized my sump, my tank is drilled, and I'm running a beananimal overflow. I'm not worried about not having power for a few seconds.
 

Hallowhead

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I'm not sure what you mean by "warming up."

The total time without power for a whole home standby generator is measured in seconds. And that's just the logic built into the ATS to ensure that the power outage is actually an outage and not just a transient before deciding to turn on the generator.

I routinely remove power from most components in my tank -- during feeding, during maintenance, etc. I've properly sized my sump, my tank is drilled, and I'm running a beananimal overflow. I'm not worried about not having power for a few seconds.
If you have a UPS between your wall outlet and your tank. When utility to your home goes out the UPS will kick in why the generator starts and the ATS switches over to generator power.
 

SteveMM62Reef

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From a Salvage Watchdog Basement Battery Back up Sump system. Used a Deep Cycle maintenance free battery from Walmart. I drilled the Cap for the Battery liquid level probe that comes with the Watchdog.
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Okay
 

Malcontent

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The total time without power for a whole home standby generator is measured in seconds. And that's just the logic built into the ATS to ensure that the power outage is actually an outage and not just a transient before deciding to turn on the generator.

UPS transfer time is 8-12 milliseconds vs. 10-30 seconds for a generator. That's why data centers have UPSes to bridge the gap.

A brownout is enough to shutdown my PC and in my last home they were annoyingly frequent.

Aquariums are more resilient and the only thing I'd worry about is the UV (which hates being power cycled).
 

Hallowhead

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UPS transfer time is 8-12 milliseconds vs. 10-30 seconds for a generator. That's why data centers have UPSes to bridge the gap.

A brownout is enough to shutdown my PC and in my last home they were annoyingly frequent.

Aquariums are more resilient and the only thing I'd worry about is the UV (which hates being power cycled).
To add to this if you have aquarium controllers and all, improper fail safes could result In the tank sitting stagnant for a bit. The UPS will bridge the gap as if the power never went out
 

Snoopdog

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I ended up getting another Champion Hybrid generator last week, another 3500 watt one. I also picked up two portable AC units. Hopefully I will not need them this season, but it sure is unusually hot this June, July will be a *****. I fear this hurricane season.
 

gbru316

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UPS transfer time is 8-12 milliseconds vs. 10-30 seconds for a generator. That's why data centers have UPSes to bridge the gap.

Sure. UPS absolutely have a use case -- where equipment cannot handle downtime or hard shutdowns. But is that really needed for an aquarium? As you said (and as my point was -- since we're discussing outages and their impact on aquariums -- not datacenters, computers, or other stuff):

Aquariums are more resilient

My house goes from grid power to generator power in 6 seconds (3 to make the decision to failover, 3 to start the generator and supply power), which is hardly enough to warrant adding a UPS. Unless you're worried that a controller isn't able to handle a hard shutdown and reboot cycle properly.

If someone is looking for tank backup from a battery source they'd be better off actually using batteries with DC pumps/wavemakers/controllers to avoid conversion losses that accompany UPS, since those eat away at the hold-up time.


Oh, and stagnation? Mine spends 10 minutes a day with no water movement. 6 seconds, even 30 seconds or a minute, is nothing to be concerned about. Which is why I was curious about the need for a UPS on top of a standby generator. It just doesn't make much sense to me in the context of aquariums. But to each, his own.
 

neo1738

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Sure. UPS absolutely have a use case -- where equipment cannot handle downtime or hard shutdowns. But is that really needed for an aquarium? As you said (and as my point was -- since we're discussing outages and their impact on aquariums -- not datacenters, computers, or other stuff):



My house goes from grid power to generator power in 6 seconds (3 to make the decision to failover, 3 to start the generator and supply power), which is hardly enough to warrant adding a UPS. Unless you're worried that a controller isn't able to handle a hard shutdown and reboot cycle properly.

If someone is looking for tank backup from a battery source they'd be better off actually using batteries with DC pumps/wavemakers/controllers to avoid conversion losses that accompany UPS, since those eat away at the hold-up time.


Oh, and stagnation? Mine spends 10 minutes a day with no water movement. 6 seconds, even 30 seconds or a minute, is nothing to be concerned about. Which is why I was curious about the need for a UPS on top of a standby generator. It just doesn't make much sense to me in the context of aquariums. But to each, his own.
Only benefit I see is to prevent voltage fluctuations. With abrupt hard reset and while running on a generator. That being said most devices aren't that sensitive to those like electronics might be.
 

gbru316

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Only benefit I see is to prevent voltage fluctuations. With abrupt hard reset and while running on a generator. That being said most devices aren't that sensitive to those like electronics might be.

mains voltage usually drifts by a few volts throughout the day, but I wonder if failover would cause any sort of worrisome transient. My gut says transients are absolutely generated, but there’s gotta be some sort of transient suppression in the switching circuitry, right? Though to be fair my domain is RF, not power, so I could be totally wrong.

maybe I’ll finally get around to picking up an oscope for home use and do some testing around failover just to satisfy my curiosity.
 

c4sxm5

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Knocking on wood but I haven't had an outage lasting more than an hour in the last 4 years. Have a eco tech back up for mp40 and it's worked the handful of times we lost power.
 

Aluco

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If you have a UPS between your wall outlet and your tank. When utility to your home goes out the UPS will kick in why the generator starts and the ATS switches over to generator power.
Could you just hook the tank system straight to a ups if you just need power for a couple hours? I've never bought one but I am in the pc gaming hobby as well and know they come in handy for that. Maybe I could use it for both my tank and pc, the power here never goes out for much longer than a couple hours
 

Hallowhead

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Could you just hook the tank system straight to a ups if you just need power for a couple hours? I've never bought one but I am in the pc gaming hobby as well and know they come in handy for that. Maybe I could use it for both my tank and pc, the power here never goes out for much longer than a couple hours
You'd have to make sure it's properly sized, but in theory, yes. Maybe you have a UPS that only powers the powerheads off the default so you have water turnover, and than cycle your heaters on and off as they will draw a lot more power.
 

nano reef

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Doesn't take up that much space.

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Is that a mini generator or something? I live in fl as well and with all this rain I was just thinking today about the risk I am taking!. If something happen to my electricity I would be in massive trouble! My son uses a humidifier because he has a newly aquired trachea! I doubt that I could stay here in the house if its warm because of his health though but maybe my hubby or someone could! I have invested way to much money in 3 tanks and fixing to get a another and all I have is a few battery air bubbler!
 

neo1738

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Is that a mini generator or something? I live in fl as well and with all this rain I was just thinking today about the risk I am taking!. If something happen to my electricity I would be in massive trouble! My son uses a humidifier because he has a newly aquired trachea! I doubt that I could stay here in the house if its warm because of his health though but maybe my hubby or someone could! I have invested way to much money in 3 tanks and fixing to get a another and all I have is a few battery air bubbler!
Yes that's likely a duel fuel generator currently configured for propane. (Likely a flow adapter to use natural gas) but either way that's a propane generator. I think some even run on gas as well. All 3!
 

BitReef

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We survived a power outage this week. It was caused by a storm (possibly a microburst). I’ve lived in this house for 16 years and it’s the first time we’ve lost power for more than 20 mins. All total it was a 6.5 hour outage. My reef tank is running on a Cyberpower 850va AVR UPS which kept things going for about 2.5 hours. After that I hooked up a 400w inverter to my car battery. That got me through until the power came back on.

I’m going to buy a Honda inverter generator (EU2200i) in case this happens again. It was a little stressful. I’m also thinking about getting some large battery packs (Ecoflow or Bluetti). I could run the generator during the day, and use the battery packs at night. The generator could probably even charge the batteries if I size everything right.
 
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