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Post by papaof2 on Oct 17, 2023 0:57:39 GMT -6
www.woot.com/They've changed their format and there's no easy way to do a quick synopsis of today's offers :-( But you might find something useful in cord reels, hoses and maybe generators.
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Post by feralferret on Oct 17, 2023 2:06:01 GMT -6
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Post by papaof2 on Oct 17, 2023 4:04:53 GMT -6
I really like the CyberPower GX1325U pure sine wave UPS I bought several years ago. 1325VA, 810 watts, 4ms transfer time, 3 to 6 years battery life. It has a mute button so you can silence it during an outage and the display shows the load, input & output voltages, estimated runtime at current load (minutes) and % battery left during use. It uses two 12 volt 7AH batteries. I'm seriously considering building an 8s2p or 8s3p 24 volt LiFePO4 pack for it when it needs batteries again (don't remember when the batteries were changed - the UPS was purchased in August 2016 so it's 7 years and a couple months old - and it saw several minutes use a few hours ago ;-) It also has AVR for adjusting voltages between 90 and 140 volts. It switches to UPS mode for voltages outside that range. Fully discharged batteries (UPS shuts down with Low Voltage alarm) need at least 8 hours to recharge - that's good, as it means they're not burning up the batteries trying to get them to full charge in a couple of hours.
The typical load on the UPS is the TV (average of 89 watts, max of just over 200 watts with an all white screen) plus 20 watts for the cable box/DVR. That load gets about 45 minutes of battery life so very reasonable for the $125 I originally paid for it - that's less than $18/year for surge protection, voltage regulation and UPS ;-) The load is higher and the runtime shorter if using the DVD player/recorder, Blu-Ray player, the VCR or the internet box.
If I had bought more of the Fuji LiFePO4 batteries that batteryhookup.com had earlier this year, I could probably have made a pair of 12 volt battery packs that would fit in the GX1325U. A 40 amp BMS at 24 volts is almost 1000 watts so more than enough for the loading I put on that UPS. I do have enough of the 3.8AH 26650 cells to build at least an 8s2p pack which would be 7.6AH but with a longer, flatter discharge curve and the UPS' LV alarm is probably higher than the 20 volts that's safe for an 8s pack if using 2.5V/cell LV cutoff so maybe 20% or more additional runtime. As yet, we haven't reached LV shutoff on that UPS but I tend to turn them off before I think the batteries are near LV shutdown (not left on during the 3, 8 or 12 hour outages we've had since I bought it) - just makes the batteries last longer - or maybe I'm cheap (frugal?) ;-)
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Post by feralferret on Oct 18, 2023 4:04:32 GMT -6
We had a BAD voltage spike around 2 AM. My ups units protected as they should. I have an LED night light and a bug trap with a UV LED light near my computer. Both flashed rather brightly with the spike. As usual with any power glitch, my wife's cable TV box/DVR puked. It took around 15 attempts to finally get it to fully cold boot without faulting out before completion. We went through this same thing around a month ago. I spent over three and a half hours on the phone with tech support that night.
Considering my big UPS for the computer was a throwaway from where I worked, my only expense for it was recently replacing the batteries. Tonight it essentially paid for the batteries as I suspect the computer and maybe even the monitor might have taken a bad hit otherwise.
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Post by papaof2 on Oct 18, 2023 16:51:29 GMT -6
And some people just can't be bothered with all those "useless electronic gimmicks". I'm certain the other UPS units I have (many free from Craig's List) were well worth the money even if it was just putting new batteries in ;-)
That's one reason all the A/V equipment is on the CyberPower GX1325U. While the provider would replace the cable box/DVR, the rest of those things are on my nickel :-( TrippLite and others made some serious surge protectors back in the day - I haven't researched that lately because all the UPS units I use have some level of surge protection.
The cable box is one application for the small (125 watts max) APC BGE-70 and BGE-90 UPS units. They were closed out in 2018 or so for $20 with free shipping from Newegg.com and someone else (BestBuy?) - basically the current price of the battery. I have five of them: backup for the laptop that monitors the solar backup system, the house alarm system, the Uverse router, the wifi router and the 24 port network switch. As the AGM batteries die from old age, I'm building LiFePO4 packs to replace them for less than $20 and about 30 minutes of my time - much better than the $50 APC wants for their replacement AGM battery and I can say that I'm making $60/hour tax free ;-)
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