Solar Panel, Inverter and Large UPS's - Offgrid system help pls

[fastfwd]

Howdy Mate, UPS batteries arnt meant to by cycled and they are charged by AC (mains powered) CC (charge controler/battery charger) so what you are talking about doing is running your 4 250watt grid tie panels ( 1kW system) and the inverter it came with and incorporate the battereis to make a stand alone PV system. Trouble is what you got dont really work together, BUT you could get something working if you got a hybrid type inverter. Do you know what the stats are on those batteries are? How many kWh are they rated to at what depth of discharge. It might be helpful for you to read up in the offgrid section. I feel your main prob will be not enough solar panels to charge the batteries and you will be forced to charge them via mains power which kinda defeats the purpose, keep reading

Thanks for the info Pete, very helpful.

I have 6 panels so its 1500WATT. You may be correct the UPS's are 3600WATT max per UPS totaling 7200WATT if you add them up but that is usage on stored power not actual power needed to charge them.

I agree its probably going to be useless as UPS's batteries are made to hold charge and not cycle daily. What i could do is pull one of the batteries out as they are easily accessible. The last time i checked they were Phillips or Panasonic made. I will check the actual details on the batteries themselves. If they are suitable i might be able to pull all the batteries out and daisy change them to a charge controller or something.

Really just trying to use what i can for free for the time being. These UPS's themselves were 30-40k AUD each including battery banks and there's 4 of them and plus the solar stuff there's over 150k worth of equipment as new value. I have seen some people online do some stuff like this i just need some direction where to start.

[solar pete]

Technically all items are still in storage at my client and can be picked up or chucked out at any time so no skin off my back.

But some information as to why they are useless would serve me much better than a detailed description on how these could be used as a boat anchor.

Howdy Mate, UPS batteries arnt meant to by cycled and they are charged by AC (mains powered) CC (charge controler/battery charger) so what you are talking about doing is running your 4 250watt grid tie panels ( 1kW system) and the inverter it came with and incorporate the battereis to make a stand alone PV system. Trouble is what you got dont really work together, BUT you could get something working if you got a hybrid type inverter. Do you know what the stats are on those batteries are? How many kWh are they rated to at what depth of discharge. It might be helpful for you to read up in the offgrid section. I feel your main prob will be not enough solar panels to charge the batteries and you will be forced to charge them via mains power which kinda defeats the purpose, keep reading

[fastfwd]

Congratulations. You now are the proud owner of a new Boat Anchor. Only problem is they are extremely poisonous to aquatic wildlife. As such are pretty much useless.

Technically all items are still in storage at my client and can be picked up or chucked out at any time so no skin off my back.

But some information as to why they are useless would serve me much better than a detailed description on how these could be used as a boat anchor.

[fastfwd]

There is no way a 40A UPS can run a whole building AND a server rack. Though server racks (and servers) come in many different capacities. I had some very dense server racks full of blades, each fed by dual 60A 3phase, that could best most home electric furnace systems.

The batteries in the UPS are not meant for continual cycling and the UPS is not meant for continual use. You likely could use one of the better ones to keep up some circuits in your home completely independently from a solar system.
I think that inverter is grid tie so no direct connection to batteries. Keep the two system separate.

The building it powered was not as large as your thinking. It was basically the size of a small 1 Bedroom Apartment and it most defiantly did keep it running for power outage purposes (6 hours was the provisioned amount). Other than the Server Rack rack there was an Aircon system, 4 PC's, 2 TV's and some other small appliances here and there. The server rack only had 1 server 2 switches and a DVR so its not a fully stacked 42RU server rack. Plus if you look at the pictures you would see the the 2 x MX4000 UPS with 3 x XB Battery modules attached to each UPS. So Two of the MX4000's with 3 XB battery modules on each have a run time of 240 minutes new at 100% load. These UPS's would sit together at around 40% utilization. The run time on the UPS's would say 5.5-6.5 hours depending on the load at the time. It was never fully utilized to the 6 hours provisioned, max it ever got to was 4 hours outage as main power never went out long enough to test it.

The batterys in these were replaced toward the end of the 3rd year of its warranty life so they are still fairly new as far as UPS batterys go.

I figured these UPS batterys might not be good for cycling that rapidly but I have seen some youtube video's of people recycling UPS battery's and adding them to cheap solar power storage solutions.

I got all of this for free so i can basically chuck it out at any time i just figured it would be a cool project to play with.

Can you please explain what you mean by keeping the two separate?

The goal was to only power a few appliances in my home, not my complete home. 4.2kWh/day to be exact, which other calculations I've been doing would be a 15% utilization of the 2 x MX4000 UPS's with their battery packs. This should hold power through a winter night where i live (12 hours). I mean this is all theoretical i have no idea what it would be like when properly tested.

If you believe these UPS's are worthless for my design, what can i use out of my items to build a small off grid system? and what would i need to acquire to complete it otherwise?

[Sunking]

Congratulations. You now are the proud owner of a new Boat Anchor. Only problem is they are extremely poisonous to aquatic wildlife. As such are pretty much useless.

[ButchDeal]

Hi all,

New to this forum so please be gentle with me

I run an IT company and one of my clients is a refuge and recycling business. I have always been fascinated with Solar power and always wanted to play around with the idea in the future of having an off-grid system. I think now i might have that chance.

6 months ago one of my clients replaced all of their High end UPS equipment for new models to stay within warranty. They gave me their old UPS's which work completely fine these are the UPS's below:



These UPS's in stacks of 2 would hold a Server rack stacked with equipment online for a minimum of 6 hours. The larger 2 UPS's would actually run a building with a server rack in it.

Eaton/MGE MX4000 and MX2200 Series UPS's 2 of each both with 3 battery packs on each UPS. From memory the model number is referencing the Wattage or KVA.

I was keeping these UPS's in storage until i purchased some cheap solar panels. But today this fell in my lap below at the recycling centre, i picked them up next to nothing:



Its a Suntellite Inverter and 6 x 255 watt Solar panels. I will get more information on these at a later date. One of them has the glass smashed but the rest are fine. I am having a mate (electrician) look them over this weekend and make sure its all working before i take them home.

What i want to know is. how can i use all of this gear to make a small offgrid system at home. I was looking to set it up so i can have an offgrid system that i can run a few appliances on separate to my main supplied power. I'm no stranger to home electrical work as i have my grandfather (electrical engineer) who assists me from time to time. He will be helping on the project but he is quite oldschool so i though i would get some info on here and do some research before getting him involved.

Would this setup be going from DC to AC then plugged into the UPS which would charge from AC to DC and then invert back to AC. From everything ive looked at online alot of people have pulled apart UPS's and used them as inverters which has got me fairly confused.

There is no way a 40A UPS can run a whole building AND a server rack. Though server racks (and servers) come in many different capacities. I had some very dense server racks full of blades, each fed by dual 60A 3phase, that could best most home electric furnace systems.

The batteries in the UPS are not meant for continual cycling and the UPS is not meant for continual use. You likely could use one of the better ones to keep up some circuits in your home completely independently from a solar system.
I think that inverter is grid tie so no direct connection to batteries. Keep the two system separate.

[fastfwd]

Also from what you have said that i need a charge controller (CC). Does that mean i will be removing all the battery's from my UPS's and connecting them to a Charge controller? then running back through the UPS after the charge controller to convert DC to AC?

I think i might need someone to draw me a crude diagram...

[fastfwd]

Howdy fastfwd and welcome to Solar Panel Talk. Dont want to rain on your parade but the reason they got rid of the batteries is that they are very likely getting towards the end of their life, not to worry you might still get some good use out of them, I would suggest you start with reading the off-grid stickies, you need a charge controller, that inverter will be next to useless ( iam guessing) you are going about things backwards, in designing an off grid system you must star with the load, you are basically just going to get whatever the system you have will produce, any way a good learning experience for you, good luck with it, keep reading, cheers

Thanks a bunch mate, <--- fyi im aussie also if you haven't guess already so we are talking 240v's

as i said in the previous post i only replaced these UPS's for the business as they are a government organisation that needs all equipment such as this to remain in warranty. These were just out of warranty but the last time they were plugged in they were fully functional. I would almost go as far as saying they had 85-90% of their battery life from new in them. They were great units.

So to start off i wasnt looking at running to much. My server rack under my staircase is a maximum of 100watts which consists of a NAS, small custom server, switch, router, modem and wifi through a power injector. I have calculated this wattage through a power monitor so its always under 100watts. I have a fridge that is on the adjacent wall to where my server rack is under my staircase (storage room). So i was also thinking off adding the fridge onto this system also. I havent monitored the power usage on the fridge but from the manufactures website it says 680kw/h usage per year. If my calculations are correct 680kw/h per year = 1.8kw per day. my Server rack calculation is 2.4kw per day so add them both up thats 4.2kWh per day total (4.2kWh/day).


All these items are the only items in my house that run 24/7 which is why i wish to put them on the solar system.

so i know my Draw roughly and im pretty sure the setup i have in equipment above is more than enough for the task, i just need to know what to do to get this running.

[solar pete]

Hi all,

New to this forum so please be gentle with me

I run an IT company and one of my clients is a refuge and recycling business. I have always been fascinated with Solar power and always wanted to play around with the idea in the future of having an off-grid system. I think now i might have that chance.

6 months ago one of my clients replaced all of their High end UPS equipment for new models to stay within warranty. They gave me their old UPS's which work completely fine these are the UPS's below:



These UPS's in stacks of 2 would hold a Server rack stacked with equipment online for a minimum of 6 hours. The larger 2 UPS's would actually run a building with a server rack in it.

Eaton/MGE MX4000 and MX2200 Series UPS's 2 of each both with 3 battery packs on each UPS. From memory the model number is referencing the Wattage or KVA.

I was keeping these UPS's in storage until i purchased some cheap solar panels. But today this fell in my lap below at the recycling centre, i picked them up next to nothing:



Its a Suntellite Inverter and 6 x 255 watt Solar panels. I will get more information on these at a later date. One of them has the glass smashed but the rest are fine. I am having a mate (electrician) look them over this weekend and make sure its all working before i take them home.

What i want to know is. how can i use all of this gear to make a small offgrid system at home. I was looking to set it up so i can have an offgrid system that i can run a few appliances on separate to my main supplied power. I'm no stranger to home electrical work as i have my grandfather (electrical engineer) who assists me from time to time. He will be helping on the project but he is quite oldschool so i though i would get some info on here and do some research before getting him involved.

Would this setup be going from DC to AC then plugged into the UPS which would charge from AC to DC and then invert back to AC. From everything ive looked at online alot of people have pulled apart UPS's and used them as inverters which has got me fairly confused.

Howdy fastfwd and welcome to Solar Panel Talk. Dont want to rain on your parade but the reason they got rid of the batteries is that they are very likely getting towards the end of their life, not to worry you might still get some good use out of them, I would suggest you start with reading the off-grid stickies, you need a charge controller, that inverter will be next to useless ( iam guessing) you are going about things backwards, in designing an off grid system you must star with the load, you are basically just going to get whatever the system you have will produce, any way a good learning experience for you, good luck with it, keep reading, cheers

[fastfwd]

Hi all,

New to this forum so please be gentle with me

I run an IT company and one of my clients is a refuge and recycling business. I have always been fascinated with Solar power and always wanted to play around with the idea in the future of having an off-grid system. I think now i might have that chance.

6 months ago one of my clients replaced all of their High end UPS equipment for new models to stay within warranty. They gave me their old UPS's which work completely fine these are the UPS's below:



These UPS's in stacks of 2 would hold a Server rack stacked with equipment online for a minimum of 6 hours. The larger 2 UPS's would actually run a building with a server rack in it.

Eaton/MGE MX4000 and MX2200 Series UPS's 2 of each both with 3 battery packs on each UPS. From memory the model number is referencing the Wattage or KVA.

I was keeping these UPS's in storage until i purchased some cheap solar panels. But today this fell in my lap below at the recycling centre, i picked them up next to nothing:



Its a Suntellite Inverter and 6 x 255 watt Solar panels. I will get more information on these at a later date. One of them has the glass smashed but the rest are fine. I am having a mate (electrician) look them over this weekend and make sure its all working before i take them home.

What i want to know is. how can i use all of this gear to make a small offgrid system at home. I was looking to set it up so i can have an offgrid system that i can run a few appliances on separate to my main supplied power. I'm no stranger to home electrical work as i have my grandfather (electrical engineer) who assists me from time to time. He will be helping on the project but he is quite oldschool so i though i would get some info on here and do some research before getting him involved.

Would this setup be going from DC to AC then plugged into the UPS which would charge from AC to DC and then invert back to AC. From everything ive looked at online alot of people have pulled apart UPS's and used them as inverters which has got me fairly confused.