To battery backup, or not to battery backup, this is the question.

[ddc0715]

I have a spare apc br700g pro battery back up, that's has my return pump, DT one wave maker an one return chamber Heater on it. The battery should get 4 hrs. So my question is ---should I put both on my Eb832's / entire apex setup on that back up. My concern is, as it stands now I believe I would get more life support with just three prime devices, instead of my entire setup. What do yall think.? I mean; do I need my sump light, and other misc equipment running for a short time vs life support devices running longer durning a power outage?

 

[BBoley24]

I looked into this today. I just don't think these were made for catastrophic power failures for more than a few hours

 

[Fishyfish22]

the less you have on, the longer it'll run in case of an emergency. You wanna run the bare minimum to protect what's in your display/frag tank. So probably a heater and wavemaker.

I think apex has a way where you can set up a battery backup, so in the case where power goes out it only runs two or three outlets automatically

 

[jjencek]

I would drop the heater. The wavemaker is the essential one. You need water movement more than the temp.

I use APEX with lots of stuff on it, but when there is no power, only the main APEX control unit is on and the pumps.

 

[SuncrestReef]

Read my tutorial on Apex Power Monitoring for details on configuring the Apex to selectively turn off high-power equipment like heaters, pumps, lights, and skimmers to preserve the battery life for water movement:

Neptune Apex Programming Tutorials, Part 4: Power Monitoring

Part 4 of our series on programming your Neptune Apex: Power Monitoring

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Ocelaris]

One of the points BRS made when they ran their test videos, is that the AC/DC computer UPS have a very inefficient conversion on low power use; so depending on the size of the UPS, you wouldn't want to run the bare minimum, as it won't get you that much more time. i.e. at 10% power you may get 4 hours, at 50% power use you may get 3.5 hours, i.e. it's not a linear relationship due to the terrible inefficiencies. On the other hand if you have a DC battery backup for your pump/wave maker you don't suffer from that inefficient conversion at low power.