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Originally Posted by The_bluester
Vince, sorry in advance to sort of Hijack your thread.
Brent, it is your wife who works in the UPS sector isn't it? Could she comment on if there is a smallish double conversion unit which also has a 12VDC output direct from the battery storage? That would be the best of both worlds in my application, 240VAC uninterruptible for the AC equipment, 12VDC for the mount and heaters and battery charge state managed all in one unit.
There are two of us commonly observing and imaging respectively at the one site and if we could cover off enough load to pad both the DC and AC components of both scopes through a power failure in one box it would be worth shelling out some money on. We commonly enough have short failures, long ones would be a bit of overkill.
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Hi Paul,
There are no UPS's that put out both mains voltage and 12 volt DC although theoretically you could tap straight into the battery as long as it didn't run a battery string which could series connect for a higher internal battery voltage.
I couldn't size up a UPS without better knowing the max load expected of all probable connected devices, Mounts, PC's, Cameras, heaters etc etc. I suspect something around the 3 Kilowatts as we have inside ( a cheap internal buy at the time ) would probably be about right. NZ$ cost on that new is about $1200. It's about the size of a good desktop PC tower. It would probably give you enough run time to at least shut down your systems properly or complete a few more images. But it certainly would protect your gear from spikes and brownouts.
Nothing to stop you plugging in a 240 VAC to 12 VDC power supply to it either although that would not necessarily be the most efficient way to solve it.
If you are using laptops you don't really need a UPS in front of those. Already isolated and protected by their PS and battery configuration.
Why not just a big marine or auto battery and a decent car charger in front of that for 12 volts ? Charger will isolate spikes and battery will provide capacity and stability. The more expensive chargers have full regulation and protection.