Thread: Anyone got a generator, mini power plant in your backyard perhaps?

well, there are MANY options that you can play with.

1. The generator idea. This will work fine as long as you have the UPS running along with it to power your computer.

2. Have a battery bank to power JUST a UPS to run your computer or whatever other goodies you can think of that you cant live without.

3.like you said, make a small power plant. =) no. really. stop laughing. I'm serious. anyway. a few years ago up here in Maine we had a killer ice storm. Most of the state lost power for at least 10 days. I was without it for about 17. So you can imagine I had alot of free time to kill. I am accually a power engineering student so I figured out how to use the boiler that heats our house to create steam to drive a turbine/generator set. All you need is a big diesel turbocharger and a generator. Anyway, I was going to have the whole thing charge a set of Gel-Cell (about 20) batters which could later run all the lights in the house. Or run it through a 2KW inverter I had laying around to power whatever needed AC power.


So there are alot of options you can use to power whatever you want. If you have any other questions, I would eb glad to help...

Just a 2Kw inverter laying around?
JUST!!!
Thats kinda funny.
I haven't looked at the site, but my parents sighned up for this: www.freelectric.com

Lawnmower engine running an alternator with it's output connected to the 12V inputs on a large UPS...The power goes out and the UPS runs on batteries until the lawnmower engine starts, which then provides the power...

I have a 4HP Briggs & Stratton engine, driving a 40A Car Altenator. This engine has a small electric starter, which is started from a PIC that is used to sense when the main batt bank is @ 40% of it's capacity.

The Altenator is in Parallel with 350AH of 12V SLA Batteies. These are normally charged from a 200W Solar Bank, and trickled when necessary from a mains powered charger. the Petrol engine is for backup.

This lives in my shed running my home server, and my desktop machine and all the sh$t in my "office" I only need the Mains about 10% of the time which is handy.

Just my 2c

Bj

Originally posted by PaulzY:
<STRONG>

could u have like generator ---&gt; 4 way plug -----&gt; UPS ----&gt; computer, but still have the AC from hosue going to UPS.

so when power fails (AC) UPS takes over, then you go outside and crank the generator, and that takes over from the UPS. Then when power comes back on u switch of generator, UPS takes over and then it switches back to AC.

</STRONG>

This would be possible, but you would have to isolate the generator from the mains to prevent motorizing. This could be done with a relay with a 120V coil. When the there is mains power the coil is energized allowing that power to go to the UPS. When the power cuts out the UPS takes over, while the generator starts up (one with an electric start so it can be started remotely). When the coil gets de-energized, the normally closed contacts will be used to feed power to the UPS, while the normally open ones are used for mains power. In the time that it takes the generator to start and make "clean" power the UPS will keep the computer, monitor, etc. running.

Originally posted by Aaron Cake:
<STRONG>Lawnmower engine running an alternator with it's output connected to the 12V inputs on a large UPS...The power goes out and the UPS runs on batteries until the lawnmower engine starts, which then provides the power...</STRONG>

Just noticed this, almost all of the UPS's that I have and have seen run off 24v. I think that ALL the ones made by APC run off 24v. But this is still not a big problem as you could just use a diesel alternator as they are all 24v. I have only seen one UPS that runs off 12v, and that is the 2KW one that I was talking about earlier. BIG battery in that one. It took 3 people to lift and move it....

Originally posted by Monger:
<STRONG>
Just noticed this, almost all of the UPS's that I have and have seen run off 24v. I think that ALL the ones made by APC run off 24v. But this is still not a big problem as you could just use a diesel alternator as they are all 24v. I have only seen one UPS that runs off 12v, and that is the 2KW one that I was talking about earlier. BIG battery in that one. It took 3 people to lift and move it....</STRONG>

I just opened up an APC 280, 250 and 600, and all were a single 12V battery (actually, the 250 was 2 6Vs in series)...Just let me look at a bigger one...A APC Smart-UPS 1400 uses 2 12V batteries in series for 24V...A Smart-UPS 700 uses 2 12Vs for 24V, a 420 uses a single 12V battery...Depends on the UPS I guess. For what it's worth, you can eaily get 24V alternators. Check out a deisal truck repair shop.

PaulzY: Power ratings depend on your application.