Feeding Used UPS for backup?

[Tom]

Other than the price, as pointed out above, the only down side I've seen with the Trace is that it hums that 60HZ hum rather loudly. At least mine did the newer ones by Xantrex might be better. Right now my plan is to run our off grid home on 2 SW5548's. If you buy them all setup in a "power center" that includes disconnects and stuff the cost is around 7.9K. The SW's make a nice clean sine wave power and all my electronics ran fine.

One thing to look on a ups is the "idle" current. A Xantrex SW inverter uses about 18 watts of power. I'd imagine the ups designer was not concerned about such issues. 

[rgroves]

I'll chime in here regarding Trace inverters.  I am right now in the process of installing my SW4024's in a small wash house right next to my house.  I may link them with a cable that allows them to feed both legs of a 240 circuit (Xantrex part SWI) if I really find the need for that.  Current battery pack is small, 4 Trojan L-16's with some years on them.  Eventually I will replace them, with some Rolls units that have an easy 20 year life span.  Having a big battery bank can let you shut down the generator for the night and sleep soundly.

I've used a 4024 for years, and back before the world as we know it ended on 1/1/2000 i sold quite a few of them too.  They are top notch, built to last for a long time, and they can surge to 3 times their rated power for starting loads.  In fact they can exceed their rated power by two times for 5 minutes.   And they  have a superb 3 stage battery charger, configurable for different battery chemistries and voltage/amperage setpoints. As somebody mentioned here, they can parallel to another AC source as needed.  So if you have a 6/1, powering a 5 kw head, and if that head can actually give you a momentary 5 kw output, the inverter would boost that to 17 kw for starting loads.

One bit of advice for anybody thinking about taking the plunge.  Buy the highest voltage you can get.  Xantrex makes these inverters with either 24 or 48 VDC input.  Higher voltage allows you a lot more leeway in cabling from batteries to inverters, and reduces by half the amperage you need to pull out of those batteries for a given AC load.  I have 4/0 inverter cables, necessary to absorb those big 24 volt surges.  I wish I had bought the 48 volt inverters.

Now I have a question for the group. One of these inverters, which have been in storage for 10 months, has had a mouse in it and it smells like mouse pee. It runs fine but that corrosive urine can't be a good thing.  I tried to remove the case but it's clearly not intended for mortals to do that.  Anybody have any ideas for a spray cleaner I could direct into the places where I need to clean it?

Thanks

rg

[n2toh]

I'll chime in here regarding Trace inverters.  I am right now in the process of installing my SW4024's in a small wash house right next to my house.  I may link them with a cable that allows them to feed both legs of a 240 circuit (Xantrex part SWI) if I really find the need for that.  Current battery pack is small, 4 Trojan L-16's with some years on them.  Eventually I will replace them, with some Rolls units that have an easy 20 year life span.  Having a big battery bank can let you shut down the generator for the night and sleep soundly.

I've used a 4024 for years, and back before the world as we know it ended on 1/1/2000 i sold quite a few of them too.  They are top notch, built to last for a long time, and they can surge to 3 times their rated power for starting loads.  In fact they can exceed their rated power by two times for 5 minutes.   And they  have a superb 3 stage battery charger, configurable for different battery chemistries and voltage/amperage setpoints. As somebody mentioned here, they can parallel to another AC source as needed.  So if you have a 6/1, powering a 5 kw head, and if that head can actually give you a momentary 5 kw output, the inverter would boost that to 17 kw for starting loads.

One bit of advice for anybody thinking about taking the plunge.  Buy the highest voltage you can get.  Xantrex makes these inverters with either 24 or 48 VDC input.  Higher voltage allows you a lot more leeway in cabling from batteries to inverters, and reduces by half the amperage you need to pull out of those batteries for a given AC load.  I have 4/0 inverter cables, necessary to absorb those big 24 volt surges.  I wish I had bought the 48 volt inverters.

Now I have a question for the group. One of these inverters, which have been in storage for 10 months, has had a mouse in it and it smells like mouse pee. It runs fine but that corrosive urine can't be a good thing.  I tried to remove the case but it's clearly not intended for mortals to do that.  Anybody have any ideas for a spray cleaner I could direct into the places where I need to clean it?

Thanks

rg

Distilled water can be used to clean electronics, BUT you must allow all of the water to evaporate befor you power the unit up.

You may also want to look into a product called "urine gone" I'm seen it advertised on late nite TV.

[Tom]

Mice must love those inverters as mine had them too. My first clue was a tip of a chicken feather sticking out near a button on the control panel. When I pulled on it there was a whole feather attached, now how did that get in there. Well it was operator error I left one of the covers off and the mice found their way in. In fact the interior was packed with stuff, good thing it didn't get warm enough for the fans to turn on!

I took mine apart and and cleaned the boards with WD-40. It was still running fine 6 months ago when I took the system apart to move.

To bring this story back on topic (well sort of), this is why we need to mouse proof those ST-5's

Tom