Skip Williams wrote:
Kenneth,
I wonder if a solar or wind powered charger would be sufficient for
the battery backup on the sump pump. 15-20 hours is quite good by
itself, then add to that changing from solar power during the
day...should be enough to keep the sump pump running intermittely
for
a long time.
If his pump is cycling every 30 seconds and draws say 2 amps then
that's a 110 watt load---if it's winter then triple that because the
days are short and you've got 330 watts worth of collector required,
plus losses due to various inefficiencies. Not considering air mass
and average cloud cover at his location and suchlike, I'm pulling 500
watts out of my butt as a number. At the 8 bucks a watt that I'm
seeing in various places, that's $4000 worth of collector alone, then
you have to add inverter, batteries, etc.
JAT
Skip
www.ShopFileR.com
"Kenneth" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 20 Nov 2007 23:06:14 GMT, (Doug
Miller) wrote:
In article , Kenneth
wrote:
Kenneth wrote:
[snip]
I need something on the order of 5-10KW.
[snip]
The units I have seen are in the 7KW range
Seems to fit -- I'm not sure I see the problem here... g
and I need a small fraction of that.
If all you really need to power is a sump pump and a small fan,
then an automatic backup unit seems to be overkill; is there a
reason you can't use,
say, a 1500-watt portable generator?
Consider a sump pump with an alternative power source, too, such
as
Basement
Watchdog or Ace in the Hole.
Hi Doug,
I could use a small generator... In fact, I have, but...
We travel a fair amount, and living in rural New Hampshire,
outages are not all that rare.
We would be in trouble if we had an outage while we were
away.
Beyond that, the standard "battery backup" units for the
sump pump seem to have a run time on the order of 15-20
hours and I recall an ice storm in which we lost power for
more than 96 hours.
Thanks for your thoughts,
--
Kenneth
If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."
--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)