"Rob Patrick" wrote in message
...
I've had a pretty rough year for electricity at my house. Seems like
after every rain shower, someting elecronic stopped working. In
addition, about once a month, power flicks off just long enought to
set every piece of gear with a clock a-blinking. After hurricane
Isabel knocked out my power for 15 hours, I've decided to finally look
for a whole-house backup system.

To take care of the momentary outages and brownouts, a huge
battery-type UPS that was connected to the whole house would be ideal
(it seems.) There is actually a company (Banner Electric -
www.bannerbackup.com) that makes such a system and actually markets it
as replacements to generators - but I'm not sure exactly how long they
would keep a house running (even with loads minimized) plus there is
reference to a system costing $20,000 on their web site (ouch...)

I'd like to get the thoughts of anyone out there about the wisdom of
connecting the whole house to a big UPS. It seems to me like the ideal
system would have an automatic generator for extended outages but a
battery to handle short outages and to keep power flowing while the
generator started.

This is not a new idea, just new marketing. We have been running computer
rooms and other facilities that can not tolerate any power outages on
systems such as this for 20+ years. It works well, but it is not cheap.
Besides the initial cost, the batteries have to be replaced every few years,
the inefficiencies inherent in the system will raise your electric bill, and
the system itself can fail and require repairs. The amount of time you get
on a system depends on the power required and the number and size of the
batteries. There are all sorts of variations, but some of the facilities I
am familiar with have 20-30 minutes of battery power, which is sufficient to
start the backup generator or to shut down the equipment gracefully. It
does not seem to make sense for the average homeowner.