An interesting day. Was on the computer this morning, going through emails, when without warning I hear the noise of the computer backup power supply kick in and start beeping. A moment or two later it was joined by the UPS for the security system. That’s pretty much the song of a power failure.
Ok, not a big deal. Its the beginning of the day, so lighting isn’t really an issue. What is an issue is determining how big and widespread this thing is. There’s a big difference between a squirrel tap dancing on a transformer plunging my little neighborhood into a blackout and someone EMP’ing my local power generation facility.
Pulled my Icom R6 out of my Bag O’ Tricks and dialed up the local police/fire scene. No chatter indicating a town-wide outage but lets go take a look ourselves. Slipped the Glock into its holster, grabbed an MP5 ‘just in case’ and headed to the truck. A quick drive around the neighborhood showed that, indeed, the power was out. However, when I got to the busy main street I could see far enough down the street in either direction to see active traffic signals. SO..its a localized outage, not the opening act for something more sinister.
Returned back to the house and listened to the scanner some more. Cops reported various traffic signals as inoperative and were directing traffic where necessary. All in all, it was something that didn’t require any real escalation of alert status. So, since we have an actual-but-well-in-hand ’emergency’ going on lets see how ready we are.
Biggest issue: the UPS for my security cameras faded almost instantly. After a couple minutes the cameras all went dark. This was a bit surprising. While there are about a dozen cameras, their draw shouldnt have been enough to wipe out a constantly-charged battery in less than a few minutes. However, this UPS is close to ten years old so perhaps it’s simply time to replace it. Replaced it with two UPS’ later that day.
The Icom R6 performed quite well within its design parameters…and those parameters are for a compact radio scanner. Since I was not constrained by size requirements, due to being at the house, I really should have had a larger, more eay-to-use unit available. I have a few handheld Bearcats of varying vintage laying around but this reinforced that I need to have a more modern full-size unit around. So, there’ll be some research on that and then a quick trip to Amazon.
As has been typical in 90% of the blackouts I’ve experienced here, power was restored within an hour or so. No need to break out the Honda EU2000 to top off the freezer or anything like that. But, of course, it’s there if I need it.
Of all the systems here in the house, the security cams are the ones that have the least amount of reasonable alternatives for a period of power disruption. I have alternatives for heating, cooking, and lighting, but there is only one option for keeping a video security camera system operational and that’s electricity..either stored or generated.
In practice, the UPS for the security system only has to run the system long enough for me to get the generator up and the system plugged into it. Setting up the generator from storage and getting it running is, at most, a fifteen minute job. Closer to ten in the warmer months. Any UPS only really has to last long enough for that period of time. But, no one ever really complained that their batteries had too much capacity. I suppose it might be worth investigating just building a larger capacity backup system with a few AGM batts, a charger, and inverter dedicated to just the security cams.
That was, thus far, the most interesting thing to happen here today. A learning experience for sure. If it had gone on more than a few hours it would have been a bit more interesting but those kinds of failures a few and far between here in town. But, of course, that doesnt mean they won’t happen or that I shouldnt be prepared for them.
Better a minor outage than a major one to learn your weaknesses.
A couple of months ago I had a similar situation with the UPS for my computer and cordless phone. It is a large 1500 that I got for free about six or seven years ago when my then employer upgraded the UPS units for their servers. I put new batteries in it when I got it.
I had to replace them when it shut down very prematurely during a recent power failure. Odds are you could just replace the battery(batteries) in your old UPS. Sometimes you can replace the whole unit for the price of the battery replacement. Sometimes the batteries are cheaper, especially if you can find them on sale like I did.
Commander:
Useful practice!
Choosing to turn off your power a couple of times a year helps, but an unexpected surprise helps keep you sharp.
I agree – if your batteries are ten years years old they are likely to be on the way out.
When it comes to comms, go for the best you can force yourself to afford. A base unit, a spare, a unit in each vehicle and two hand-helds per vehicle, plus a few spares with the base unit.
Not cheap, but could be a life saver.
Ceejay
Yes. With your infrastructure needs to maintain an extended duration of power supply to the surveillance cameras, and the recording capabilities as well, (having recorded footage of any spicy actions at your hermitage even if power is out is prudent c.y.a. planning should there be any after action law enforcement investigation scrutinizing your actions, i.e. post shoot scenarios) a larger battery array should be considered. Perhaps some scaled up utility cart loaded with batteries and ancillary gear. This will allow you to scale up later to power radios, etc. If a power outage is protracted. Fwiw I change truck batteries out at three year mark like clock work, just because. Batteries that are assigned critical roles,, i.e. vehicles, smoke detectors, C.O. detectors, etc etc should just be dumped and changed out on a cautiously frequent schedule. As systems and society degrades even more, along with election cycle tomfoolery afoot this scenario will occur more often. Stay powered up and stay frosty.
I have UPSes on everything, a holdover from living in Lightning Country (Central Florida) along with whole house surge suppression and individual surge suppressors (well, almost everything – the fridge and freezer would each require a UPS with enough capacity to manage the motor’s locked rotor current startup load, and a store-bought UPS to handle that would be cost prohibitive).( Pro Tip: Install the whole house unit ahead of the meter and as close to where power comes in as possible – you want the suppressor to be the first thing that sees a surge. And, surge suppressors are sacrificial, so it may not survive, so having a spare is a Good Thing).
UPSes are limited in battery capacity (APC makes a 1500VA unit that can be had with a “companion” battery-only unit that doubles the time capacity).
Which leads to the idea of a “whole house UPS” – a large battery array fed by both solar panels and grid power, distributed through the house to specific receptacles to support the most critical infrastructure. Grid power supplies daily needs, when it drops the UPS takes over. FYI, there are 2 types of UPS – “always on” or “zero delay” meaning grid supplies the UPS, the UPS supplies the load, and; “backup power” meaning it takes from several milliseconds to as long as 1.5 seconds for the UPS to “switch on” when power drops. Some stuff – my security system, for example, has its own constantly being charged internal 24-hour battery – won’t care about a very short delay in restoring power, but other more sensitive stuff – computers, for example – will.
Pro Tip, BTW: motors, and especially the AC, fridge or freezer compressors the motors are tied to, don’t like the 1-1.5 second power interruptions because they try to restart under compressor load. There are surge supressors for individual appliances that automatically enforce a 3-minute time-out if power drops, specifically to allow compressors time to bleed down before attempting a restart (see Amazon, and others, about $20-30 each). For central AC, it comes as an extra cost 240 volt “hard start package” for about $130 and gets installed on the condenser unit outside and performs a 4-minute time-out. FYI, the hard start package is NOT a surge suppressor, you’ll need a separate device for that, or whole house surge suppression.
My understanding of any UPS system is that they are there only to supply power long enough for an orderly shut down of the system it is powering or swap-over to an alternate power system. They are not for continued operation.
“They are not for continued operation.”
Then how else would a UPS work? A UPS has to be receiving power continually and providing that power continually to the protected equipment or it – by definition – could not be “an Interruptible Power Supply.” And, yes, the best that a UPS can – usually – do is provide a few minutes to perform an orderly shutdown, or switch to some sort of backup power.
There are entire buildings – I worked in one – that have a room-sized UPS to maintain critical equipment. For example, if grid power is lost, all the elevators immediately return to the ground floor and open the doors. The security systems and the rack-mountde UPSes for the on-site computer systems also run off that room-sized UPS. The building does have two large diesel generators – primary and backup – but from “grid fail” to “steady standby power” is about 35-40 seconds while the generators spool up and “assume the load.” Part of that load is keeping the room-size UPS charged, the rest is the usual assortment of emergency services – lighting, computer room cooling, computer room UPSes, etc.
The weak point is the power distrobution system from that large UPS – one day the main breaker in that system failed and the entire building also stopped for 3 hours while the breaker was replaced and the load sequentially restored – including the emergency stairwell lighting which was “value engineered” by the builder to run off the large UPS (huge mistake, that, but it was cheaper than maintaining a couple hundred individual battery backup stairwell emergency lights) – except for the “aux services” picked up by the emergency generator – lights, etc.
You mentioned your EU2000
I converted mine to duel fuel (propane/gas) a couple of years ago and never went to gas. I either use a barbi tank or my 1000gal house storage tank. No gas service life-drain the carb, fill before use issues and with the large tank, probably months of running.
Place that supplies the conversion kit begins with “Hutch”
It would help for those of us less versed in this if you show step by step when you build the battery setup and inverter for the cams.
Inverter really isnt necessary since the cams run on DC to begin with. But, when I do it, I’ll try to remember to take some pics.
Moved to a new area a few years back and lost power for the first time in the hurricane ( first time for more than an hour anyway). I’m on a well now and never used to be, so the water was gone as soon as the pressure tank bled down. I had a generator that would keep my fridge and freezer cold, but I hadn’t thought about that one. Made me realize the necessity for dry runs.
RE: well pump shutdown. Look at large to very large well pressure tanks. many years ago I was in a similar situation and installed 2 large pressure tanks, each with 46 gallon draw-down.
Ther were three advantages – if we lost power when the tanks were full we weren’t “high an dry”, and when it came time to refill them with the generator running the well pump it took about 15 minutes to give us 92 gallons of water. That’s enough for several showers using “navy showers” and 1.6 GPM water saving shower heads. Laundry, toilet flushing for liquid waste, etc. went on hold.
The third advantage was much longer pump life – builders go for what’s cheapest, so it’s usually a small 5-6 gallon draw down tank, meaning the pump starts and stops A LOT. That’s hard on pumps and shortens pump life. With a couple larger well tanks, the pump starts only 2-5 times a day and runs for 15-18 minutes. Much easier on the pump. If you have to power the pump with a generator it means having to run the generator only 2-4 times/day.
No idea what larger tanks cost now, but I’m sure it’s a lot higher than it was 25 years ago when I did it; just for giggles, price a couple much larger well tanks, then price the cost of a deep well pump replacement.
These are the situations where those power banks from Bluetti or EcoFlow would come in handy instead of dragging out the generator and firing it up for a few hours. They’ve really come a long way since the days of getting several deep cycle batteries and inverters with extension cords all over the house that would give power for a fraction of the time that’s available today.
Work threw out two UPS’s and all they needed were new batteries, picked four of those up off of ebay for $80 and now I have USP’s for the router and security system. I still have a deep cycle group 24 battery into a trolling motor battery case that can run the sump pump for several hours, recharge my phone and provide light via your 12v lamp instructions you did a while ago. I’ve made up several to hand out, now I’ve found that the LED light strips and a small pocket battery bank can provide just as much light for a fraction of the space. Technology for the survivalist/prepper these days is truly amazing vs just 10 years ago.
Since my escape from the people’s paradise of Crook County,IL (with dear leader Pritzker). I have experienced several small area total blackouts for several hours with no real adverse effect. But also noted a new grid substation under construction in the area- old system probably just being limped along till new system online.
@commander, for scanners I recommend the Uniden Home Patrol 2. I do not recommend the version that looks like a walkie talkie. It’s got a built in library, no programming! The reception is good, trunk tracking and digital modes work fine. It’s very easy to operate. I have mine running in my office 24/7 with the volume low. I usually lock the scan to just the Gulf Coast Interop channels, because that’s what the locals and Feds use for surveillance ops. They are the most interesting to listen to on a daily basis…
I like it enough that I bought a second for use elsewhere.
FWIW, I think you need a scanner per agency in a real event, otherwise you miss too much.
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