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Power banks for Home IT equipment - anyone used them?

shabaz

Several friends have been discussing the need to be prepared when/if there are power outages in the UK in Winter or Spring.

Our assumption is that the outage would not be longer than a day. Some of the battery backup systems cost thousands, which could be justified (say) over a 5-year life period, but it's unrealistic in the UK to want to be prepared with a backup source for 5 years for the home, given that any power outages won't be very frequent. Granted that backup systems could be used to obtain cheap(er) electricity at off-peak times, but it is hard to predict if the savings will be that significant enough to justify the big up-front expense commitment.

A generator is unattractive because of the noise, but we are open to it, but would definitely prefer a battery solution. Cooking food with an electricity source isn't too important; if there isn't natural gas connection in the kitchen, then camping gear could be used.

Then we noticed there are power banks. Some are in the $200 price range, many are $300-$500, and there are others circa $1000 and beyond.

There are lots of obscure power bank products such as the one below. It's a lot of energy to keep in a home, so whatever is used needs to be safe.

image (Image source: Amazon)

Backup lighting sources are cheap; there are even power tool ecosystems that use the same battery for task lights, so they could be used in a pinch. Not elegant, but it gets the job done at low cost.

However, we were not sure how to deal with IT equipment. Routers/DSL modems are straightforward because they operate from 12V or 5V and a backup supply is easily rigged up for that.

For laptops, it could be attractive to have a backup supply that offers USB Type C output, since many laptops (or lower power chromebooks) have a USB-C socket for power nowadays.

Any battery banks, or other backup scheme, that people can recommend? It would be nice to be able to charge (and run) laptops and power and charge anything that uses a USB connector. Perhaps a minimum of 100W power support would be needed, although really several hundred W would be preferred, so that a couple of laptops could be run, iPad, phones charged and so on. An additional 12V output would be a nice-to-have, to charge up or operate other devices. AC mains output is not essential. Hot-standby is not essential either, since a laptop will continue to run on its own battery while power connections are swapped. 

Any comments/ideas appreciated!

  • 0

    Solar is getting more affordable but requires dealing with all the logistical issues of location and daylight hours. Is it feasible to limp along only during the day, or is 24/7 operation an untouchable requirement for servers? Distributed batteries, like each laptop has its own battery, is probably more expensive than a central system, but is more flexible and avoids the single point failure problem of concentrating a lot of power in one place.

  • 0

    There are some powerbanks which can provide 100W USB-C, although they really aren't going to make a big dent for those who use their computer a lot.

    The power stations that you picture - those are a nice idea, but the way they are built does leave me a little hesitant to adopt them just yet. Some of them have some insane number of parallel cells ... I just feel that there's a bit of a risk statistically speaking, especially with the more "flammable" Li-Co-based cells. The cycle life is also a potential issue and the smaller units are not particularly cost effective.

    You would probably be better-off being served by a wall-mounted AC battery like the Tesla Powerwall ... they've got the capacity and power rating to actually make useful energy, and can afford to be efficient and safe too. They can run without grid and some houses I know use them as a UPS.

    - Gough

  • 0

    I'm kind of interested in the battery-powered generator replacements, but I bet they are still a rather pricey option.

    I do still have an old lead-acid based portable power bank that I bought many many years ago to keep a laptop going all day (back when laptops had a 3 hour battery life), and I've since used it for keeping the IT cabinet running just to have WiFi. I have a little old solar panel that plugs into a cigarette lighter that can keep it topped up.
    It doesn't have a very long battery life, but usually enough for our usual power outages.

    I'd like to see what others recommend for up-to-date options Slight smile

  • 0

    I have fibre optic broadband at home. When it was first installed around 6 years back, I was surprised to see that the ONT had it's own 12V 6Ah battery supply for power outages. The power supply is quite bulky because of the battery but the solid state switching is much faster than the inverters at my home. It switches to battery power immediately when the mains is OFF.
    Maybe a similar kind of UPS is available specially for network/IT instruments.  Also, since most IT instruments run on 12VDC it shouldn't be difficult to DIY a 12V DC supply powered using Li/ Lead acid battery.

    A quick amazon search showed these results

    image

  • 0 in reply to dougw

    Hi Doug,

    Good idea, a small solar setup would be really neat. Where I am, the winter/spring time here (when we expect there may be power outages) the daylight time is very brief, so unfortunately that rules solar out for me currently at least, but I'm definitely open to revisiting that at some point.

  • 0

    I use a 500wh portable station from Power Oak. I have had it a few years now and have not had any issues with it. I use it a lot on sites for powering test apparatus when there is no power close by. I know a lot of sparkies who use similar systems to power a house when they turn off the electricity to change the board or carry out work.

    Your ultimate, more permanent solution is a solar system with battery storage, but obviously the time span and larger costs will not be that good.

    It will also depend how the power outages are handled. There are plans for coordinated power outages in the UK. Your electricity bill has a single letter designation on it that denotes your outage category. You can then look up on the Governments Electricity Emergency Code to find out your schedule of disconnection.

    Electricity Supply Emergency Code - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

    It will depend where you live and what is around you. If you are off the same feed as a strategic site, you may not even suffer a power loss. It further depends on how utilities are backed up. If you connect to a large phone exchange, it likely has backup generators to maintain power to the equipment, smaller exchanges may not. Same for gas compressor stations. If you are on fibre, I don't know how the power is supplied to converters installed in the street boxes, whether there is internal battery support and how long it would last. If you have fibre direct into the house, you may be ok.

    Of course this assumes a controlled power outage. If it is uncontrolled then anything could happen.

  • 0 in reply to Gough Lui

    Hi Gough,

    I feel the same, definitely hesitant about trusting most of these. There are some well-known brands that have a reputation they probably wish to preserve, such as Anker. Those units are higher-cost but the safety is key so they could be contenders. As you suggest, the price versus energy stored is very poor compared to the larger units like the Tesla unit. I'm still trying to find a price-versus-energy combination I would be happy with. The Tesla product costs about as much as a small car in the UK, which ends up excessive if the aim is to ensure some typical home IT equipment can run under an unexpected outage, but for sure would be worthwhile to solve bigger problems such as local energy generation and storage, or if operating electrical appliances like fridges and TVs during outages too. 

  • 0 in reply to ntewinkel

    Hi Nico,

    That's great that your system is still operating after so long. Mature, known tech like lead-acid has a lot going for it.

  • 0 in reply to rsjawale24

    That's very neat that the broadband modem came with in-built backup : ) 

    Here they usually don't but for that and router/wifi it is straightforward to back that up with a battery, and a BJT + relay + capacitor should result in a very reliable hot-standby solution easily. It doesn't even need to be rechargeable, since the batteries could be removed and charged up, and then the charge topped up if required every few months (assuming outages are very infrequent, which is the case here).

  • 0 in reply to shabaz

    As a DIY solution to the WiFi router backup issue, I made this scalable battery bank using the 18650 cells and a BMS. Since required voltage is 12V. It is easy to have 3S balancer directly connected to the 12V supply.

    Link: www.instructables.com/.../