Cheapest power trollies and portable batteries for stage 6 load-shedding

[grok]

I've got one of those ups for my router and fibre box. but the bitch keeps dying before loadshedding ends

View attachment 1438077

This is a Ratel 8100, loadshedding started @10:00 its now 12:25 & I have both Telkom ONT & my TP Link wireless router sucking juice..

Telkom cannot handle, the Ratel can..

 

[wingnut771]

Get one of these. I run my router, FNO and an AP on it for 6.5 hours

View attachment 1438079

That UPS that didn't cover loadshedding is also 8800mAh capacity. Why suggest something that is of the same capacity?

 

[wingnut771]

Measured my 55" LG OLED as drawing 280W on very bright scenes, and somewhat less than 60W on very dark scenes. Guess this means that owners of these TVs will be restricted to watching Batman movies during load shedding.

On a different topic - there have been several lithium battery fires at work, usually attributable to unattended charging. There was also a house near me that burnt down several months ago from similar reasons. Looking at the aftermath a good follow-up article may be one on fireproof safety boxes for load shedding solutions.

What battery and chargers are these? Isn't all charging unattended?

 

[RaptorSA]

A laptop gets a bit small if you have a family of four.

No problems. I don't have a family of four. I was just pointing out that some cases a laptop is not suitable.

Refurbished enterprise HP, Lenovo or Dell Micro PC's for the win!

Lots of power, desktop-style replaceable CPU's, removable memory, triple monitor ports and last but not least: very low power usage.

Managed to set up a Dell with 32GB memory, Samsung NVME & triple monitors (32" 1440p 144Hz LG main panel, Dell 1440p 27" & Dell 1080p 21")... was super cheap compared to decent laptop and the whole setup sips power, less than 80-100Watts in use and almost nothing on idle/standby.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

I'm starting to think if you're not going to go solar then rather get a generator. Such long periods of no power then sometimes not enough time to fully recharge the batteries going to leave you in a bad state.

Depends obviously what you want to run, but most people will probably overload the thing and end up with prematurely failing units.

 

[chromedome]

Smart Power Systems | home

Get the MPSG if it's ever in stock again. I have an SPS-600 it's unkillable.

I have the 500, it died a horrible death after the fan blew copius amounts of wet cat fur over the circuit board, causing a short circuit. Lessons learnt was keep it away from windows frequented by the cat during winter and take the lid off now and then to check and clean the circuit board. Disclamer: Do this at your own peril as you could get zapped by residual voltage from the caps. Oh and I managed to repair the unit after much soldiering of damaged traces,replacing fuses, a capacitor and a relay.

 

[RaptorSA]

I got the MPSG recently. It works fine and super quiet. I can hardly hear the fan at any stage.

That thing looks cool.
I see it says:



Do you know what the solar input specs are voltage wise?
I can't seem to find the info on the site.

 

[zolly]

On a different topic - there have been several lithium battery fires at work, usually attributable to unattended charging.

I'm always in my room when my battery is on or charging. I also have a CO2 fire extinguisher specifically for this situation because you can't use liquid fire extinguishers on LI batteries.

 

[zolly]

Refurbished enterprise HP, Lenovo or Dell Micro PC's for the win!

Lots of power, desktop-style replaceable CPU's, removable memory, triple monitor ports and last but not least: very low power usage.

I've had my eye on one of these for a while.

https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-Processor-Desktop-Computers-Ethernet/dp/B09ZLDBC8X/

Currently my PC uses about 50w with the screen in low power mode. Getting one of these will cut it down to about 25/30w. Might be a little bit underspecced but should do for the work I get paid for.

 

[RaptorSA]

I'm always in my room when my battery is on or charging. I also have a CO2 fire extinguisher specifically for this situation because you can't use liquid fire extinguishers on LI batteries.

Actually, you can.
I know it sounds weird but look it up.... I was also like WTF.

It doesn't do crazy much, nothing really does since a lithium fire fuels itself but spraying a lithium fire with water does lower the heat significantly and can contain the fire. Once li-on batteries are on fire the fact that water can cause shorts doesn't matter.


There are videos on youtube comparing different extinguisher types for lithium fires, water actually does quite well, especially if you have a high flow rate.

I had to look this up properly some time ago since I have a whole heap of Lithium Polymer batteries indoors and those things are likely a time bomb. Which reminds me, time to get some LiPo bags and buy some military ammo boxes for storage, been dragging my heels on this for way too long.

This one especially:



Two 6800mAh LiPo batteries strapped together has enough energy to turn my complex into one of those Lord of the Rings beacons

 

[tcofran]

Worth a read :

Alan Carr - Camping - Boksies

alancarr.co.za

 

[Dan C]

Refurbished enterprise HP, Lenovo or Dell Micro PC's for the win!

Lots of power, desktop-style replaceable CPU's, removable memory, triple monitor ports and last but not least: very low power usage.

Managed to set up a Dell with 32GB memory, Samsung NVME & triple monitors (32" 1440p 144Hz LG main panel, Dell 1440p 27" & Dell 1080p 21")... was super cheap compared to decent laptop and the whole setup sips power, less than 80-100Watts in use and almost nothing on idle/standby.

View attachment 1438243 View attachment 1438245 View attachment 1438247

Got one of those. Just a smaller version.

 

[BlackStatic]

Measured my 55" LG OLED as drawing 280W on very bright scenes, and somewhat less than 60W on very dark scenes. Guess this means that owners of these TVs will be restricted to watching Batman movies during load shedding.

On a different topic - there have been several lithium battery fires at work, usually attributable to unattended charging. There was also a house near me that burnt down several months ago from similar reasons. Looking at the aftermath a good follow-up article may be one on fireproof safety boxes for load shedding solutions.

That sounds very dodgy, what's your setup at work? These batteries usually have Battery Management Systems integrated and all that to prevent them going nuclear, the one case I know of where batteries burned was a big UPS failure when the giant Rolls Royce generator kicked in, something blew up something and then everything said cheers. R2.4m inverter ate sh*t that day too.

I think fires are a more a thing when you deal with huge loads.

 

[BlackStatic]

Got one of those. Just a smaller version.

If efficiency in a desktop is of concern explore the Apple Mac Mini, there is some serious voodo going on with the M1/M2 chips, that thing refuses to draw power. I had that, and a 4k display, and a light, some small speakers connected and the freaking SPS-600 didn't even show a single bar of load lol

 

[Dan C]

If efficiency in a desktop is of concern explore the Apple Mac Mini, there is some serious voodo going on with the M1/M2 chips, that thing refuses to draw power. I had that, and a 4k display, and a light, some small speakers connected and the freaking SPS-600 didn't even show a single bar of load lol

I have not measured mine. Not using it during loadshedding. Mostly use the MI Box.

 

[BuckRogers]

I'm starting to think if you're not going to go solar then rather get a generator. Such long periods of no power then sometimes not enough time to fully recharge the batteries going to leave you in a bad state.

Depends obviously what you want to run, but most people will probably overload the thing and end up with prematurely failing units.

Maybe some truth in this.
At least the generator keeps the fridges and freezers going as well.

 

[InTheWild]

That's awesome to hear, the SPS-600 is still oldschool, fan is noisy (standard small solar inverter intake fan) but that's where the complaints end, I chucked a lithium ion battery in and connected two solar panels, very well made, I'm sure the MPSG is the same.

which panels did you hook up? I also have a sps-600 and thinking to do the same..

 

[grok]

Refurbished enterprise HP, Lenovo or Dell Micro PC's for the win!

Lots of power, desktop-style replaceable CPU's, removable memory, triple monitor ports and last but not least: very low power usage.

Managed to set up a Dell with 32GB memory, Samsung NVME & triple monitors (32" 1440p 144Hz LG main panel, Dell 1440p 27" & Dell 1080p 21")... was super cheap compared to decent laptop and the whole setup sips power, less than 80-100Watts in use and almost nothing on idle/standby.

View attachment 1438243 View attachment 1438245 View attachment 1438247

Interesting, I'm still running a HP Microserver Gen 8, works perfectly but.. where do you buy those?

 

[RaptorSA]

Interesting, I'm still running a HP Microserver Gen 8, works perfectly but.. where do you buy those?

The best place by far is to keep an eye out for listings on BidOrBuy
I'm also using 8th Gen. Perfect price vs performance tier... older is a bit too old for certain fancy features and newer is still too expensive.

 

[BlackStatic]

which panels did you hook up? I also have a sps-600 and thinking to do the same..

Two 160w 12v panels in parallel, works pretty damn good. Especially if we've got extended downtime due to non loadshedding related power problems.