A small off-grid inverter/charger or a power station with internal relay and AC input on a timer should work. I have tested such setup with a small DIY system. There is no significant financial ROI from the load shifting but a longer backup time (more than long enough to setup and start a portable generator) than a typical lead-acid UPS is definitely a big plus.
LFP "UPS" and Load Shifting
- Thread starter Shimmy
- Start date
The transformer has gone from 50% charred to 90% in the past two years. They only recently added smart meters, so historically I doubt they concerned themselves with peak transformer loading, just circuit loading.
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
The money is in the batteries, even in a pure ups. The advantage of an AIO programmed as a backup only is the simplicity, pop a 30A breaker from your panel into the grid port, tell it to charge first at most however many amps, bypass to grid, no export, if it has that feature. The dis-advantage is going to be the switch time, thus a small online, or line-interactive UPS with minimal battery is likely needed.
Something like a 6000XP with 'generator boost' might be interesting, peel the 30A into the genny port, tell the system you have a 4.8KW generator (24A). Batteries to 100% first, should basically be an online UPS, would give you 240v and/or two 120's you could feed to your room(s). Put as much battery on it as you can stand, and it should be very efficient, inverters should just blend in if the power drops. Teensie bit pricey but $3000 would get you 5KWH of backup, that you could easily expand at $1200 or so a pop. You could seriously toss 4 odd/castoff panels at it, and let it charge the batteries/run some of the load in the daytime with the help of the 'generator'.
Getting rid of the Unifi stuff myself, still have some AP's flipping everything to Fortinet. I have 4 REOLINK's on a Syno 418, with 2 extra camera licenses, 2 pools 5TB(m) + 14TB(m). My 1815+ has the Atom clock problem, I soldered the start wire, but it's on borrowed time at this point. It has ~76TB of media, all spinning rust. I have two more 8-bay cabinets with SSD's a 3500 ATOM, and Ryzen 3000, stuffed with RAM (64GB each), and all SSD for play. I'm not a gamer, desktop is a Ryzen 3400G, bunch of rPi's, OrangePi's, couple of old ex2200's, and it's all only pulling ~300W. Jones'n for an 1823+ to stuff my drives in from the '15, just a little pricey for me at the moment, want to finish the solar first.
Something like a 6000XP with 'generator boost' might be interesting, peel the 30A into the genny port, tell the system you have a 4.8KW generator (24A). Batteries to 100% first, should basically be an online UPS, would give you 240v and/or two 120's you could feed to your room(s). Put as much battery on it as you can stand, and it should be very efficient, inverters should just blend in if the power drops. Teensie bit pricey but $3000 would get you 5KWH of backup, that you could easily expand at $1200 or so a pop. You could seriously toss 4 odd/castoff panels at it, and let it charge the batteries/run some of the load in the daytime with the help of the 'generator'.
Getting rid of the Unifi stuff myself, still have some AP's flipping everything to Fortinet. I have 4 REOLINK's on a Syno 418, with 2 extra camera licenses, 2 pools 5TB(m) + 14TB(m). My 1815+ has the Atom clock problem, I soldered the start wire, but it's on borrowed time at this point. It has ~76TB of media, all spinning rust. I have two more 8-bay cabinets with SSD's a 3500 ATOM, and Ryzen 3000, stuffed with RAM (64GB each), and all SSD for play. I'm not a gamer, desktop is a Ryzen 3400G, bunch of rPi's, OrangePi's, couple of old ex2200's, and it's all only pulling ~300W. Jones'n for an 1823+ to stuff my drives in from the '15, just a little pricey for me at the moment, want to finish the solar first.
Originally I had looked at the EG4-3000W AIO; the problem I get stuck with is that I should technically get a permit for the work. If the AC wiring is all cord-and-plug I don't have that problem. Permits in my area are backed up ~8 months... and I keep changing my mind as to what I want.
Years ago I had looked at the TrippLite inverter/chargers... apparently they still sell the same models, not sure if I can practically do better. My current priority decision is if I am doing 12V or 48V I guess.
Do you get a discount on the Fortinet equipment to justify its use? I've heard some stories with that gear. I have almost 20 Unifi cameras, so changing out that stuff gets expensive quickly. Mostly the Unifi stuff has served me well, aside from their PTZ camera and a few failed internal USB drives. The router should be replaced with something I trust more, but haven't decided on what I want to do there. Current one is the ER4.
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
Fortinet is pricey. I did a big project we had Palo Alto / Cloudgenix, Fortinet, Meraki, Legacy Cisco setups at a handful of branches POC. Ended up with PA/CG, but I preferred the Fortinet, and compared to Palo, it's quite a bit less expensive, and I don't work there any more. . . partially because of some of these decisions. Forti stuff is starting to show up on Ebay, as it ages out. Curious as to stories. I don't care for the Unifi UI, prices are good, switches and I have the virtual management appliance. The equipment has been solid, but configuring a switch is worse than Netgear.
Synology is camera agnostic, and IMNSHO the UI and management are hard to beat, especially for a platform I already own, but it depends on your needs. Syno ain't cheap either.
justinm001
Solar Addict
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2022
- Messages
- 1,576
With my Victron Quattros I get a voltage drop when switching from shore to inverter, it's very noticeable with motors like with AC units and dehumidifiers, there's a loud difference. I wouldn't trust it with IT gear.
I manage hundreds of IT systems and if you're planning on using an inverter I'd highly suggest keeping a normal UPS for power conditioning. I've dealt with quite a few power issues and even have clients where I need to replace UPSs every couple years because of power issues burning them out.
I love unifi gear, have about 10k devices and all single pane auto uodating. Although I'm with ksmith and can't stand how they program and do vlanning. At least with Cisco you can do a simple sh vlans and see everything.
I believe the higher end Cisco switches have DC power redundancy, similar to HP. I always wondered if we could tap in that to add a massive battery bank. Offload the switching and then just worry about the AC equipment
I manage hundreds of IT systems and if you're planning on using an inverter I'd highly suggest keeping a normal UPS for power conditioning. I've dealt with quite a few power issues and even have clients where I need to replace UPSs every couple years because of power issues burning them out.
I love unifi gear, have about 10k devices and all single pane auto uodating. Although I'm with ksmith and can't stand how they program and do vlanning. At least with Cisco you can do a simple sh vlans and see everything.
I believe the higher end Cisco switches have DC power redundancy, similar to HP. I always wondered if we could tap in that to add a massive battery bank. Offload the switching and then just worry about the AC equipment
ksmithaz1
Solar / EV Junkie
I dunno, most modern power supplies are extremely forgiving, I think much would depend on the use case and the sensitivity of the gear. 20 years ago it was a different story for sure. Today's switching power supplies will survive ridiculous brownouts, and a UPS with failing batteries (click/crash/back-on) is much worse than dirty power, though I've seen todays supplies even survive that if it's only one.
Cisco 2960's (for example) have a 48v bus connector, you can really just hook them up and roll if you have the harness and the 48v supplies. Very common in old Telco rooms to see 48v switching. PITA as there is no standard on the feed side, so you have odds-n-ends for the 48v bus arrangements, normally end up crimping lugs for every wire. Neat and tidy if you take your time.
Cisco and Juniper for all my switching at present. Pulled our last SRX out last week for a PA. I want to get a Forti-switch to see if I can stand it. Junos 18.x was a nightmare, but I like the CLI marginally better than the Nexus. VC stuff is easier with Nexus. Ever try a LAG with the Unifi? Meraki is, ... Meraki. Like a different world, but reasonably intuitive. I would never have it on my DC backbone. 10,000 is a lot of access points and switches
! Last place I was at we had 50 or so, the powers that be wanted to swap for Meraki and total "cloud" environment. Switch gear is very pretty, which is very important.Yeah, Ubiquiti's switching solution is only appropriate for a fairly static system with limited complexity. I have ~15 VLANs for home, but I use the Edgerouter line for my actual router.
I do actually like their video solution better than Synology's NVR, mainly because the viewer app options on an iPad/iPhone are pretty disappointing.
