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Sign up with GooglePowering LED TV during load shedding
- Thread starter Edwe
- Start date
akescpt
Honorary Master
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- Aug 12, 2008
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Luckily ordered mine on Friday already.. and got it in window period where it was marked down to R1005
WTF
Ok, so I can confirm that The RCT 650 VA UPS with a 100Ah battery attached is definitely enough to power TV and DSTV. I ran it for 4 hours and used 30% of the battery, now I'm testing the part I'm skeptical about, the charging.
I have a 46" Samsung 5 Series and a PVR Dual view decoder.
Cost of the setup was about R2000:
Battery (Stride Deep Cycle 100Ah from www.Solarsolved.co.za) - R1254
UPS (RCT 650VA/360W from www.Takealot.com) - R482
Cables (2m of 5 Gauge from Sound Match) - R100
Lugs, nuts and bolts (also from Sound Match) - R30
Power Cable (Same cable that goes into PC Power Supply) - R80
They don't include the Power cable with the UPS, so you need to get it somewhere else. Unless you're planning on putting it inline with your PC then you can use your current cable because it has 2 male to female PC Power Supply cables and 2 female docks on the back of the unit.
I have a 46" Samsung 5 Series and a PVR Dual view decoder.
Cost of the setup was about R2000:
Battery (Stride Deep Cycle 100Ah from www.Solarsolved.co.za) - R1254
UPS (RCT 650VA/360W from www.Takealot.com) - R482
Cables (2m of 5 Gauge from Sound Match) - R100
Lugs, nuts and bolts (also from Sound Match) - R30
Power Cable (Same cable that goes into PC Power Supply) - R80
They don't include the Power cable with the UPS, so you need to get it somewhere else. Unless you're planning on putting it inline with your PC then you can use your current cable because it has 2 male to female PC Power Supply cables and 2 female docks on the back of the unit.
akescpt
Honorary Master
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- Aug 12, 2008
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- 22,456
Looking forward to that charging update. Might go with this for exactly what you using it for.
So far charging not looking so great, only getting to 12.5V (should get to 13.6V) seems to be sticking there. Could be that the software and measures on UPS are ***, so going to check with a Multi-meter later to get the actual.
The UPS is still drawing about 26W so I assume its still charging the battery, or trying to.
The UPS is still drawing about 26W so I assume its still charging the battery, or trying to.
The_Traveller
Expert Member
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- Aug 9, 2008
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Ideally for a 100ah battery you would need a 15A charger. Charging too slow can shorten the battery life.
Ok so its still charging, slowly. So the basis of my argument earlier holds about it not being a complete load shed solution. I recon the RCT 650VA that I've got has a 1A charger in it, that's why they say it charges the battery to 90% in 4-6 hours - It a 7Ah battery that come stock, so that about how long it would take to hit 90%. They always rate 90% because it starts trickle charging after that to not overload the battery, so they never rate the last 10%.
So, if you discharge your 100Ah battery to 40% in a Load Shed, its effectively going to take over 60 hours (2.5 days) to recoup that with this modification. So this setup is cool if you need a now and then backup, but you cant use it in a continuous load shedding scenario. Where you don't get a couple of days break between spells of load shedding.
As far as how many it would last: (All this is based on how we're load shed in Cape Town, I'm not sure if its applied the same elsewhere)
In stage 1 load shedding where your zone only comes up every 62.5 hours. It should be a solution that lasts indefinitely if you use it every loadshed period
In stage 2 load shedding where your zone only comes up every 17.5 hours. You will quickly draw down to zero out your battery if you use it every loadshed period. I give it 6 or 7 consecutive running my TV and DSTV, before needing to skip periods to recover charge.
In stage 3 it gets far worse.
Bottomline:
This is probably useful for most people, if you wont always be using it for every load shed period - which you probably wont with the new rotational schedule (You'll be at work or sleeping).
Ye, but for the application in question the battery is still going to last about 5 years minimum, which is more than enough to warrant the outlay for the mates of mine that want me to make these for them.
Been thinking about adding a solar panel and charge controller to the setup - was suggested by someone on the main thread about this conversion.
I actually was planning to go this route with the RCT 650va with my 160ah deep cycle battery and was thinking about the charging time of this setup. It's. A hit and miss as far as I'm concerned about this as we not sure when load shedding will take place.
I do also have my RCT 2000vac setup that I also use. Maybe using them in tandem will solve my problem.
The best would be to get an external charger to,charge the 160ah battery faster. Anyone knows how much a decent 10a to 20a charger cost.
Zenbaas
Honorary Master
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As much as the battery system setup:erm:
Up to 13V now, so its slow and my estimate of about 2.5 days goes up to 3.5 days to charge from a 50% Depth of Discharge
Shew that's pretty slow.
Decide against the 650vac. So I bought this
http://m.bidorbuy.co.za/item/158579457/MECER_1200VA_700W_12V_INVERTER_Mecer.html
Anyone ever used this or have experience with them. Waiting on stock coming in only on the 6th March.
http://m.bidorbuy.co.za/item/158579457/MECER_1200VA_700W_12V_INVERTER_Mecer.html
Anyone ever used this or have experience with them. Waiting on stock coming in only on the 6th March.
So after just under 2 days of charging, I've caught up to where I was before I ran the unit for 4 hours 20 minutes (79%)
Are you planning on modding the battery. Mod should be the same on all UPS's, people were just going for the RCT because its the cheapest I think.
No, i bought the inverter to use with the 160ah battery.
I can always sell the battery and get myself 2x 100ah deep cycle batteries and hook them up to the mains.
ah sorry, its an inverter, didn't look hard enough and thought it was a UPS.
Thats also quite a nice setup, 160Ah is fine though, only reason you'd need 2 batteries is if it requires 24V, but its 12V. You need two Batteries in parallel to step up the voltage to 24V for the RCT 2000VA.
Yeah, I know. I will first see how it pans out. Might sell the ups, depending on my needs.
Do I need to put a fuse between battery and inverter