Inverter for Server Room

Inverters
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Richard I am talking about 4 hour load shedding, I don’t have the key to eskoms power station to go reset any CB.

I it’s no secret that ups’s have short backup times, why do you dispute the fact?

Technology has moved on Richard, we are not in the 70s or 80s anymore,.

On both forums you are clearly against solar and solar inverters, what is it that you hope to gain by shooting down anything solar related. There is a market for this technology and your micro DC
Systems just can not fill that gap… Period…

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AHA, I see where you are going and coming from, and you are spot on.

In all my cases the batteries were THE most expensive part of the purchases.
And Online Double Conversion UPS’e was never the answer.

I mentioned them in the context of solar inverters having the same protections built-in, even though I can use my Online APC 48v 2.4kw UPS on my lithium bank as long as the panels do the charging. :wink:
Not connected to Eskom in other words, as the chargers in them are stupidly small.

For clarification: Using the 50amp charger in a solar inverter vs a 50amp charger in a UPS, if both solutions have the same sized lead-acid bank that can last 5 hours (2 x Eskom failures), both the solar inverter and UPS will take the exact same time to recharge those banks. If you go lithiums on both, same time to recharge, although much faster.

Where the difference comes in, and only really daytime AND with good weather, is a hybrid grid-tied solar setup - one that CAN use the panels with Eskom being off - with lithiums. Then the batts are not used during daytime LS events, when most businesses operate … and one saves the rest of the year on Eskom cost to recoup the initial outlay.

Here’s the thing in my cases, each and every client rented office space, no option of adding solar panels ever.

Today, if a client has no chance of panels being added, I recommend Axpert solutions, 5kva ones, get more than one and split the loads, and If there are multiple LS events in their area, get lithiums, they last longer and charge faster.

As much as I bat for Victron, as a UPS, it is a VERY expensive 5kva UPS compared to Axperts - unless you want panels to go grid-tied.

Ps. If anyone repeats that I said a good thing about Axpert (spit) - NOTE that it is as a UPS’s only! :laughing:

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Or unless you want something that can remotely be monitored and controlled, which might be quite important. :smiley:

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Axpert with a Rpi and ICC software. :wink:

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For something this simple, I would not even go ICC. In a data center/UPS context you are only concerned with a few parameters, those being 1) how full is the battery, 2) is the grid on or off, 3) what are the loads on the output, 4) probably the most important one, is the power ON or not.

You don’t care about solar production, of which there is none, pvoutput.org, emonCms, or any of that nonsense.

As I said earlier, back when this was my day-gig we used Nagios for this, and Nagios has this beautiful architecture where you can write your own plugins to check whatever you want.

There are several examples lying around on github of how to talk to the inverter on its serial port.

So I would honestly just ask the sysadmin to write a script that monitors the inverter on its usb port, plug it into nagios, and be done with it.

I’d do the same with a Victron setup, but I’d use an Rpi and an mk3-USB.

With a bit more work you could probably even patch it into munin/cacti and draw some pictures too.

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