Need help with battery backup

[Solasis]

Hello! I am in Arizona where we rarely lose power, and if we do, it's typically only for 1-2 hours. I'd still like to be prepared just incase or for small blips of power outage.

I would like to power my return pump instead of my wavemakers. I use this hygger return pump:

Hygger 2650GPH Quiet Submersible and External 24V Water Pump, with Controller​

What type of battery backup can I buy to power this guy incase of a power outage? I'm looking at the icecap and ecotech battery backups. I can't seem to figure it out, I might just be missing something obvious. Very important for it to immediately give it power automatically, don't want to do any manual work on it.

Thank you!

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

That looks exactly like a jebao pump. I'm sure any one of those choices will work.

I personally use the ecotech brand.

Where in AZ are you? I'm in Phoenix (west valley)

 

[Townes_Van_Camp]

Buy a UPS instead.

We trust these guys on multi-million dollar robots and vision systems.
APC UPS 1500VA UPS Battery Backup and Surge Protector, BX1500M Backup Battery Power Supply, AVR, Dataline Protection https://a.co/d/0CiGKFS

 

[BigMonkeyBrain]

Both units you are looking at will handle small blips - however, you have an 80-watt pump. Both units may handle 2-hrs.

If you have room I would suggest

APC UPS 1500VA Sine Wave UPS Battery Backup, BR1500MS2 Backup Battery Power Supply, AVR, 10 Outlets, (2) USB Charger Ports​

I have one for my computers, and others UPS's for backup and portable power units for small 10-watt led lights ?​

I live in northern AZ.

Probably happens !

 

[Anthony Wood]

Wouldn’t recommend running just your return pump without the heater as well for any sort of extended period of time. The tank water temp can easily drop 5-10 degrees F in a matter of couple hours with just the return pump running. Circulating water will lose heat a lot faster then stagnant water. You’ll need a decent size (expensive) battery back up to run a heater.

That begs the question…why not just buy an inverter generator? Run the entire tank plus some other things around the house. I ran my entire tank, TV, AC, refrigerator and charged a couple phones for 24 hours using only 4.5 gallons of gas on my 3500watt inverter generator. This was last year when we had a freak 4 day power outage. I also use it all time when we get 1+ hour power outages. You can either have a disconnect hooked up to your breaker box or just temporarily run some extension cords. A standard 15amp orange extension cord is more then enough. A vast majority of people’s entire tanks don’t come close to drawing 15amps.

Opens you up to a lot more uses/possibilities as well. Need a 30amp plug but don’t want to add one to the breaker/house? You got the generator for that. Need a 50amp 240V plug? Buy a second 3500 watt inverter generator, a 50amp parallel kit and you got a 50amp 240V plug.

Another option would be one or two larger lithium batteries, AC to DC converter to charge when you do have power and a DC to AC inverter for when you don’t. But that’s literally what your talking about buying just wrapped up in a pretty case but with way less stored power.

 

[Solasis]

That looks exactly like a jebao pump. I'm sure any one of those choices will work.

I personally use the ecotech brand.

Where in AZ are you? I'm in Phoenix (west valley)

I'm in the East Valley! Nice to meet another AZ reefer.

 

[Solasis]

Buy a UPS instead.

We trust these guys on multi-million dollar robots and vision systems.
APC UPS 1500VA UPS Battery Backup and Surge Protector, BX1500M Backup Battery Power Supply, AVR, Dataline Protection https://a.co/d/0CiGKFS

I was looking at that one. Thank you!!

 

[SFREEF3R]

For my system I power my controller and one of my pumps with this ~300WHr power station - which will power both for days:

It's not available now, but it worked great for my purpose with one 12V out that I could use for the controller and one 24V that I used for my circulation pump:

I opted not to use a UPS for a couple of reasons:

UPS are typically spec'd for the peak wattage they can deliver - something on the order of 500-1500W - which they can do for only a few minutes. Based on the runtime calcs, I'd estimate the actual battery capacity to be on the order of 30-100Whrs - meaningfully lower than a batter backup I could get for the same price. The physical size of the UPSs I was looking at are also much larger and I was trying to make a pretty compact system. Lastly, there are losses associated with converting back and forth from AC to DC so I reasoned that for the same size battery I could ultimately get more run time with a direct DC connection to the battery.

There are certainly some caveats to using a backup like mine. For one, very few have a 24V out, so it's hard to find one with good reviews that will work for this purpose. Also many don't allow simultaneous charging and power draw needed for this application. Additionally, the polarity of the output on the 24V and 12V connections is not obviously listed for most products so you'll need to manually check this to confirm it isn't wired backwards - fortunately it seems most products in this voltage range are center positive but it isn't a guarantee. Lastly - while this has worked great for me, it isn't really the intended application and I would expect an actual UPS is more reliable.

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

For my system I power my controller and one of my pumps with this ~300WHr power station - which will power both for days:

It's not available now, but it worked great for my purpose with one 12V out that I could use for the controller and one 24V that I used for my circulation pump:

I opted not to use a UPS for a couple of reasons:

UPS are typically spec'd for the peak wattage they can deliver - something on the order of 500-1500W - which they can do for only a few minutes. Based on the runtime calcs, I'd estimate the actual battery capacity to be on the order of 30-100Whrs - meaningfully lower than a batter backup I could get for the same price. The physical size of the UPSs I was looking at are also much larger and I was trying to make a pretty compact system. Lastly, there are losses associated with converting back and forth from AC to DC so I reasoned that for the same size battery I could ultimately get more run time with a direct DC connection to the battery.

There are certainly some caveats to using a backup like mine. For one, very few have a 24V out, so it's hard to find one with good reviews that will work for this purpose. Also many don't allow simultaneous charging and power draw needed for this application. Additionally, the polarity of the output on the 24V and 12V connections is not obviously listed for most products so you'll need to manually check this to confirm it isn't wired backwards - fortunately it seems most products in this voltage range are center positive but it isn't a guarantee. Lastly - while this has worked great for me, it isn't really the intended application and I would expect an actual UPS is more reliable.

That was my thought process too for why I wouldn't use an UPS.

 

[BZOFIQ]

I advise against UPS units if running your DC pump is the goal. You need to find battery rated same as the pump and run it off that instead of losing many hours of run time due to up-conversion inneficiences.

 

[mattdg]

I had the same though last year, regarding keeping a return pump running. Wanted to be able to run all of the AC kit, with a DC backup to kick in after 10-12 hours. I built this battery backup. It's been working great and wasn't too difficult. Already cruised through two long power outages, post build.

 

[apb03]

I think the easiest thing to do is to just buy a UPS despite how inefficient it is to go that route.

The Ecotech battery backup (and I presume the IceCap as well) assumes you are plugging into an Ecotech controller which has a DC input for battery power separate from the main power feed from the main power brick that expects 12v (or 24v using the booster cable from Ecotech), so it has built-in capability to fail over to battery mode on just a 12v battery.

In your situation, it's just a pump wired only to the power brick, so you can't use it in the same way. If you just buy a UPS, then the battery backup will just power your AC plugs where you would hook up your pumps, and it will work as expected (albeit not for as long, which seems to be fine in your case).

Unless you plan to go all Ecotech, save yourself the headache and just buy a UPS.