I own small telecom cabins that are UPS protected and Want to incorporate Solar Power

[frantenerelli]

Hi! Im confused with solar systems.

I run a small isp/telecom business in a rural area in Venezuela, the business depends on multiple telecom cabinets that are all UPS protected for continuing operation while utility power isnt available.

Each cabinet have a 3KVA-rated UPS but the total consumption of the devices and equipments is 230 Watts (excluding UPS).


But power outages have become common in our country. From 2 hours a day without utility power we are now on 10 hours per day without power.


So I would like to incorporate a solar array + inverter and batteries to provide power to the UPS.

My first doubt is to add the inverter to the circuit like this:

UTILITY -> INVERTER -> UPS -> DEVICES

Or

——Auto Transfer Switch --> UPS -> DEVICES
INVERTER——^ ^—-UTILITY

Any advice would be highly appreciated

 

[Supervstech]

Hi! Im confused with solar systems.

I run a small isp/telecom business in a rural area in Venezuela, the business depends on multiple telecom cabinets that are all UPS protected for continuing operation while utility power isnt available.

Each cabinet have a 3KVA-rated UPS but the total consumption of the devices and equipments is 230 Watts (excluding UPS).


But power outages have become common in our country. From 2 hours a day without utility power we are now on 10 hours per day without power.


So I would like to incorporate a solar array + inverter and batteries to provide power to the UPS.

My first doubt is to add the inverter to the circuit like this:

UTILITY -> INVERTER -> UPS -> DEVICES

Or

——Auto Transfer Switch --> UPS -> DEVICES
INVERTER——^ ^—-UTILITY

Any advice would be highly appreciated

I would think with such a small load, you could power the ups with a simple 400watt solar setup. Since it is commercial, you might want enough to fully charge a days load during your daylight hours. If you have 230watts constant draw, that is 5.5KWh daily. Times 3 for cloudy and such... say 17KWh... divided by sunhours for your area, average is 6 is about 3000 watts of solar needed. You could get rid of the ups entirely, or you could get the ups configured to take in the solar, and use the batteries and inverters you already have.

 

[frantenerelli]

I get lost when you mentioned 3000Watt Solar? Is 400Watts (4x 100W solar panel) enough to completely charge the batteries in one day ??

 

[Supervstech]

I get lost when you mentioned 3000Watt Solar? Is 400Watts (4x 100W solar panel) enough to completely charge the batteries in one day ??

No.
When I did the math, you will need more solar to cover the daily demand.
To know exactly how much solar I would need to know the solar hours of production for your area, but I estimate 1000 would cover it for one day with an average solar hour of production.
I tripled that figure to cover weak production days averageing.

 

[lassikin]

If you have power reliably every day it will be cheaper to just use that power to charge the ups (plus you can charge it from the power regardless of the time of day). if you want to go with solar you will need the solar setup and you will need the batteries as well(also someone nicking them becomes a real possibility, such an installation is really obvious to spot).

but if you just upgrade your ups capability you will at the simplest just need bigger/more batteries for the ups - there are quite a lot of guides online for increasing the capacity by adding more batteries. you will need the bigger batteries regardless so you might just as well start with that. this is the end result that you're after anyhow isn't it?

Also pay attention to what you have in your cabinet. maybe some of the equipment actually runs on 12 volts and just goes through the inverter on the ups just to be transformed back to 12 volts? so if you could skip the inverter and transformer you might get longer working time out of the ups. things like these can be used to extend the working time of the setup, sometimes drastically.

 

[John Frum]

From 2 hours a day without utility power we are now on 10 hours per day without power.

Are these rolling "planned" blackouts?