"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.

telephone central offices have 2 separate banks of batteries and a (diesel
generator).
they are setup to stay functional for at least 8 hours during a complete
power loss.

for home use, you may google (hydrogen) fuel cells.