- Today on BRStv Investigates,
if you adjust down the pump speed during a power outage
will you drastically see longer life from your
UPS battery backup?
Are larger, heavier, more expensive UPS battery backups
the best options?
Are lithium ion battery packs
a viable way to protect your tank?
Today we find out.
(upbeat music)
Hi I'm Randy with this Friday's BRStv's Investigates.
We put popular reefing gear, theories and methods
to the test by experimenting on our own tanks,
so you don't have to experiment on yours.
And in today's experiment we're circling back to ways
we can protect our tanks, and keep our fish and corals
alive during a power failure with two tests that
should be able to give us a better understanding
of how these UPS battery backups work,
and more importantly what we should be looking for
when buying one to protect our tank investment.
I think many of us have heard that when you're deciding
on a battery backup option, you can simply make your choice
based on the weight of the UPS, where the heavier it is,
the bigger the battery, the longer it's going to last.
In almost all cases, heavier weight
also means higher price tag.
However, in our last UPS battery backup experiment,
that didn't seem to be the case.
And today, we're testing that theory even further,
thanks to you the reefing community, whom many of you
asked us to repeat the test
and answer today's first question.
Will the UPS style battery backups last longer
at lower pump speeds and less wattage draw?
And, should we expect to see similar numbers that
the Ecotech battery backup put up?
But we didn't just stop there so in a second test
we plugged our MP-10's into a much smaller,
lower wattage output and less costly UPS battery backup
as well as a lithium ion battery pack
that has 100 watt ac power output so that we can answer
our second question today.
Can we actually get better performance from a cheaper,
smaller UPS backups with smaller inverters?
Let's find out.
Like I mentioned, we have two experiments today,
and in the first experiment we're bringing back our
two cyber power UPS battery backup options
to find out how much longer they run in comparison
to the initial investigates test where instead
of drawing a full 18 watts at 100% flow speed,
we've tuned them down to operating at just five watts
similar to the default battery backup speed
that the vortex have, when attached to
an Ecotech battery backup.
In that first experiment, we saw the larger 1500 volt amp,
900 watt UPS battery fail first, lasting only
five and a quarter hours, followed shortly after
by the smaller 900 volt amp 560 watt UPS
which failed within five and three quarter hours.
So today, let's find out how much longer they'll last
when the pumps are drawing over 50% less wattage
from the battery.
We added a clock to the time lapse this time around
and with the pumps drawing 13 watts less
than previous experiment, we see that they surpass the
five, six, and seven hour mark,
beating their last run time of over five hours.
However, right at the eight hour and five minute mark,
the larger 900 watt UPS battery finally fails.
The test continues into the 10, 11 and 12 hour marks
where finally at almost exactly 13 hours,
the 560 watt UPS also dies, but lasting seven and a half
hours longer than previous tests.
Before we get into the second experiment today,
I think we can hold the suspense on this first experiment
and go ahead and rate our first question.
Will the UPS style battery backups last longer at lower
pump speeds and less wattage draw?
And should we expect similar numbers to the Ecotech
battery backup?
Without a doubt and with a full 10 out of 10,
when we manually turn the Vortech pumps down to just
five watts, we produced longer run times with
our UPS batteries where we gained over 50% more run time
from the 900 watt UPS and more than double at around
125% gain from the battery backup time of the 560 watt UPS.
As for the second part of that question in if we could
expect the UPS backups to provide similar run times
to the Ecotech battery backup, undoubtedly the UPS
batteries came nowhere near the 81 hours of run time
we saw in our last experiment even with them set
to similar wattage draws of around five watts.
And again this really demonstrates the efficiency
of providing straight DC to DC power from the battery
to the pump driver, versus the far less efficient conversion
of AC to DC then back to AC power to run the pump.
I think it's important to remember that
although UPS battery backups are great options
for protecting your tank, they're definitely not designed
for this purpose, and we can't reasonably expect them
to perform the same.
The most fascinating result from the first test today
is how much longer the smaller, lower wattage output
and cheaper 560 watt UPS lasted over the larger 900 watt,
which leads us to the second experiment today.
We wanted to test our theory that the larger, less efficient
inverter on the bigger 900 watt UPS is what causes
the reserved battery power to drain much faster
than one with a smaller wattage output.
It's in that spirit that we looked for a UPS backup
with a lower wattage output than the two
we had already tested.
And we found the 255 watt 450 volt amp APC backup
for around 60 bucks,
which comes in at five and three quarter pounds.
And even more compact and lower wattage than that,
we also tested this 24,000 MilliAmphour lithium ion battery
with 100 watts AC power output that we picked up from
Mophie for about 200 bucks.
Let's find out how they did.
Similar to the previous test, we ran the MP10's
at five watts, or roughly 20% pump speed,
and then monitored them with a time lapse where we
get two hours into the experiment and almost exactly
at two point three hours, the pump connected
to the 255 watt UPS fails.
Honestly, I was surprised at how quickly the APC UPS seemed
to lose it's charge, so I removed it from the testing area,
turned it back on, and ran the pump again
to make sure the battery was completely wiped,
and much to my surprise it lasted for
another roughly two and a half hours.
After a third attempt with similar results,
I had to rule this UPS out, as it seems the manufacturer
placed a limiter on the run time.
Where even the packaging quotes up to a two point three
hour run time.
I have to say that I did have high hopes for
this low wattage output battery backup
and I feel that if it didn't turn off prematurely
we would have seen far better results,
but the test continued with the lithium ion
portable battery which only has 100 watt inverter,
where we watch it continue to provide power
through the eight, nine, and tenth hours.
Where finally at 11 and a quarter hours later,
it finally shuts off.
So to answer our second question today,
can we actually get better performance from cheaper,
smaller UPS backups with smaller inverters?
As much as I wanna give this one a complete 10 out of 10
on the reef certainty scale, I have to say that the test
was actually inconclusive, and we'll need the test again
with other low wattage output options that don't turn off.
You know it is obvious to anyone that some UPS battery
backup choices are far better than others,
and it's important to remember that for aquarium purposes,
and keeping our tanks alive during a power outage,
we're really using these backup sources well outside
of their intended purpose.
Especially with the case of the lithium ion option
that had the highest cost and lasted relatively longer
than most, yet our model could not keep itself charged
and run the MP10 at the same time,
meaning that we could only use it if we were home
and able to plug it in and turn it on manually.
So with that, I don't think we're quite done yet
with this experiment.
In the next investigates test, we aim to find
the best option using what we've tested so far.
However I'd say for those of you who already
have Vortech pumps, just stick to the Ecotech battery backup
and know that it's the best option for that specific pump.
For the rest of you, keep a watch for our next experiment.
But in the mean time, if you wanna know how we failed
at our own advice during a power outage,
you can see that and more in this power outage playlist.