In a Hurricane Sandy lessons learned thread on NASIOC [Subaru forum] one of the guys had purchased used a large Uninterruptible Power Supply unit. He replaced the batteries for a couple of hundred dollars, so for around $500 he had enough backup power to run his house for hours, until the power came on or he hooked up a generator. They are also gaining popularity for use with for pellet stoves, which typically seem to draw less than 500 peak watts and only about 100 while running steady state. Sump pump backup has been mentioned but that's typically a lot higher current requirement.
We power a large UPS with a Honda EU2000i at work during power outages. This got me to thinking that even at a quarter throttle, an inverter generator might be generating excess power for a period of time, and that a good-sized UPS might lower fuel consumption.
Anyone ever try this, or know of anyplace to research it? I'm going to get a small UPS for our PC and internet hardware, but if it made sense I could buy a bigger one. I've seen quite a bit about people buying batteries and inverters but the UPS seems to have a lot of advantages.
In checking into this I learned that Fairbanks, Alaska actually has a UPS big enough to power the entire city [population 32,000, metro area 100,000] for up to 15 minutes, giving them enough time to switch to backup generation.
We power a large UPS with a Honda EU2000i at work during power outages. This got me to thinking that even at a quarter throttle, an inverter generator might be generating excess power for a period of time, and that a good-sized UPS might lower fuel consumption.
Anyone ever try this, or know of anyplace to research it? I'm going to get a small UPS for our PC and internet hardware, but if it made sense I could buy a bigger one. I've seen quite a bit about people buying batteries and inverters but the UPS seems to have a lot of advantages.
In checking into this I learned that Fairbanks, Alaska actually has a UPS big enough to power the entire city [population 32,000, metro area 100,000] for up to 15 minutes, giving them enough time to switch to backup generation.