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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!

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  • 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 three-phase

    Hi Donald,

    Thanks for the info! I'll check the latest electricity bill to find that code.

    The past few times an outage occurred, the phone lines worked, since BT legally are not allowed more than a 6-minute outage as far as I understand (otherwise they have to report to the government) however I can't recall if that extended to DSL, it might just be for voice. I have a spare 4G/LTE modem so worst case I can get that going, it just requires a 5V DC source. Definitely a good idea to have a normal phone at home too, and not just cordless.

    I had a look, it seems that Power Oak have a brand called Bluetti that seems consumer-oriented. I'm still looking for something with higher power delivery over USB-C, since the Power Oak and Bluetti devices offer 45W or so, and that's good for some laptops, but 90W or more would be preferable (mine cannot charge even with 90W, it needs higher, but I have a Chromebook and other devices that would be fine with 45W). Anyway, Power Oak and Bluetti will be top of my list for now in terms of reliability and safety, since you've not heard of any issues with that manufacturer devices.

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  • 0 in reply to three-phase

    Hi Donald,

    Thanks for the info! I'll check the latest electricity bill to find that code.

    The past few times an outage occurred, the phone lines worked, since BT legally are not allowed more than a 6-minute outage as far as I understand (otherwise they have to report to the government) however I can't recall if that extended to DSL, it might just be for voice. I have a spare 4G/LTE modem so worst case I can get that going, it just requires a 5V DC source. Definitely a good idea to have a normal phone at home too, and not just cordless.

    I had a look, it seems that Power Oak have a brand called Bluetti that seems consumer-oriented. I'm still looking for something with higher power delivery over USB-C, since the Power Oak and Bluetti devices offer 45W or so, and that's good for some laptops, but 90W or more would be preferable (mine cannot charge even with 90W, it needs higher, but I have a Chromebook and other devices that would be fine with 45W). Anyway, Power Oak and Bluetti will be top of my list for now in terms of reliability and safety, since you've not heard of any issues with that manufacturer devices.

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