Uninteruptible Power Supply as RV Inverter?
So I was looking at some rack mount UPS's on ebay and it looks like you can get some decent deals... About $100 for a 1000 watt Pure Sine rack mount (professional) system with no batteries. What i...
Forum Discussion
I hate to add to the bad news... but I considered this myself but based on my experiences with the hundreds of them that I maintain, there were a few things that concern me about this idea:
1) batteries are not cheap and require replacing every 3 years (less than 1 year if you regularly drain them). UPS batteries are designed to maintain a charge (like a car battery), but not meant to be drained regularly (like a Deep Cycle battery). One full discharge can be enough to kill the batteries.
2) batteries are very heavy: a 3000kva rack mount UPS with batteries will come in at about 50-75lbs, a 5000kva will be over 100lbs.
3) most do have fans, but they do not come on until it flips to battery power, at which point they are quite noisy.
4) most UPS's, even the cheap $40 ones are very noisy and irritating when on battery, they beep constantly to warn you they are on battery
5) most UPS's even the cheap ones will beep for everything, brown out, black out, low battery, really low battery, replace battery etc....
Regardless of the quality of power, the weight, type of batteries and noise was enough to turn me off. If you are really concerned, just do something like a cheap APC SmartUPS 350 and use it like a power bar, just for your critical/expensive equipment ie TV, Laptop etc. It will at least give you a really high joule protection rating, smooth out the bumps and give you a bit of time to finish what you are doing. But if you already have an RV Surge Protector on the rig, you already have most of the benefit anyway.
If you are really set on this idea, I would consider something more like this:
http://www.apc.com/products/family/?id=310
I believe these UPS's designed for entertainment systems provide much more "pure" power (term used loosely as I do not think any are true sine).
1) batteries are not cheap and require replacing every 3 years (less than 1 year if you regularly drain them). UPS batteries are designed to maintain a charge (like a car battery), but not meant to be drained regularly (like a Deep Cycle battery). One full discharge can be enough to kill the batteries.
2) batteries are very heavy: a 3000kva rack mount UPS with batteries will come in at about 50-75lbs, a 5000kva will be over 100lbs.
3) most do have fans, but they do not come on until it flips to battery power, at which point they are quite noisy.
4) most UPS's, even the cheap $40 ones are very noisy and irritating when on battery, they beep constantly to warn you they are on battery
5) most UPS's even the cheap ones will beep for everything, brown out, black out, low battery, really low battery, replace battery etc....
Regardless of the quality of power, the weight, type of batteries and noise was enough to turn me off. If you are really concerned, just do something like a cheap APC SmartUPS 350 and use it like a power bar, just for your critical/expensive equipment ie TV, Laptop etc. It will at least give you a really high joule protection rating, smooth out the bumps and give you a bit of time to finish what you are doing. But if you already have an RV Surge Protector on the rig, you already have most of the benefit anyway.
If you are really set on this idea, I would consider something more like this:
http://www.apc.com/products/family/?id=310
I believe these UPS's designed for entertainment systems provide much more "pure" power (term used loosely as I do not think any are true sine).
