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My electricity just went out (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/Dullsters@dullsters.net
23 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

It's 6am. I woke up because my CPAP stopped. It's going to be a long day.

It's a bit cold outside, so I'll have to fire up my little generator if it goes too long. That's a pain in the ass.

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[–] 23 points 11 months ago (9 children)

I took my entire property off grid this year.

I still get text alerts about power outages and it’s funny to me now. Like “hmm, my neighbors don’t have power. Damn, that sucks.”

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (6 children)

    I'm sure this wasn't an overnight achievement. Can you please walk us through the steps taken?

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (5 children)

    Foresee republicans fucking up the residential solar tax credit.

    Act quickly on the design I had already outlined.

    Modify south part of my roof to relocate all vents to the north (while doing a full roof replacement).

    Extended shop 20’ to fit the remaining (of 65) industrial panels needed for a 36kW system.

    Add 75kWh battery setup with two inverters and a single controller for it all.

    Spend lots of money to secure what I wanted and the 30% tax credit before cap’n Kruger and Fiends fucked it all up.

    Was a shit load of work but I did enjoy the process and the results.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    That's a nice setup, I use the Luxpower version of those inverters. When I put up my shop I'll have to extend my 20kW/43kWh system. We don't have tax credits here so I couldn't get the nice stuff, I had to build my own batteries to keep costs down.

    I like where the prices of all this stuff is going.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Wow that is a MASSIVE setup!

    I barely have a 3000W BLUETTI that powers everything, and I have a new 6000XP I haven’t hooked up yet with 2 rack batteries from eco-worthy. That ate up my budget lol Oh and I have half a pallet of new old stock panels I got for super cheap $45 each 250W panels.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    Nice. Sometimes you just have to start somewhere to get your feet wet but if it powers everything that’s great!

    I designed this to provide power for 100% of my entire property in worst case conditions with 15% overhead for additional loads. Then I added another 20% to cover system degradation.

    I want it to still be 100% off grid when the entire thing has degraded by 20% lol. That was my basis.

    In 4.5 months I’ve produced 17MW. Which is outstanding.

    My biggest issue is having a large house with two central AC units. The power draw on hot nights is immense. So the only thing I undersized was the battery system. Plan to add one more 14.3 kWh battery to get that extra 20%.

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    • [–] 15 points 11 months ago* (7 children)

    I woke up because my CPAP stopped.

    I understand that some people with CPAPs get lithium power station things specifically so that they don't stop in an outage.

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  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

    I dunno how much power those things draw, but a UPS designed for a desktop computer would be perfect for a situation like that. They come in many different capacities, just get one that matches the size of the equipment.

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  • [–] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    UPC designed for a desktop computer

    I wasn't really aware of this until a few years ago, but UPSes aren't really generally designed to keep computers running through power outages. Even today, most still have lead-acid batteries (which have limited energy density and don't deal well with being deeply discharged many times).

    They were really designed to solve two problems:

    • In a power outage, being able to shut a computer down cleanly. That means time to save documents and

    back in the 1980s and 1990s

    shut down cleanly, to avoid filesystem corruption, when commonly-used filesystems could become corrupt through not shutting down cleanly. They also often came with functionality to automatically shut down the computer cleanly when the UPS's battery was getting low, if a human had not yet done so.

    • If a generator that automatically comes online in an outage is present, keeping the computer running until the generate giving it time to come online.

    This means that UPSes tend to have a pretty decent inverter, can put out a lot of power...but generally can't store a whole lot of power. They also are guaranteed to come online quickly; I believe that it's typically in under 20 ms, a blip that a computer power supply can handle.

    To grab a random UPS:

    https://www.amazon.com/APC-SmartConnect-Interactive-Uninterruptible-SMC1500C/dp/B077Y62GSJ

    That runs $529. It has a 900W inverter.

    It uses this battery, which is lead-acid 11Ah 12Vdc (so 132 Wh).

    To grab a random power station of about the same price:

    https://www.amazon.com/BLUETTI-Portable-Station-Generator-Off-grid/dp/B095Y6ZTR1

    That's $500, has an 800W inverter, but has 716Wh of battery storage, about 5.4 times what the UPS does. It also has an LiFePo4 battery, which will last a lot longer in terms of cycles and dealing with deep discharge than a lead-acid battery.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    I think you are kind of comparing apples and oranges. A decent UPS delivers voltage regulated wall power (smooth spikes and dips, or a brownout) and seamlessly switches over to battery power when wall power dips or drops. It often has a bunch of additional hardware that adds to the cost but wouldn't be useful to someone using a CPAP machine with it. Ex. remote access via Ethernet or at least a connector to signal a PC so that it can cleanly shut down.

    I don't believe that power stations like the one you linked are designed to maintain power seamlessly during an outage. I recall it being a battery that you'd switch to if you lost power or to take camping. I don't think it's meant to be run plugged in all the time with devices drawing from it all the time. Admittedly, I have no power stations so maybe I'm not the best person to comment.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    The CPAP model I use is meant for travel. When I bought it, it originally offered a bundle including - essentially - a power bank. It looks like that bundle is no longer offered, but now there appears to be a whole range of accessories meant to deal with loss or lack of power.

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    • [–] 6 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    My partners BPAP has a built-in battery for this specific scenario

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    • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    I bought a power station for this, and for camping with my CPAP. It's a 288wh ecoflow river. It runs my CPAP for 3-4 nights (no humidifier of course). They are much cheaper and more powerful than official CPAP battery packs. And they keep your phone charged as well!

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    [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I couldn't tolerate the CPAP mask so I got an Inspire implant.

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