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For the past, well, decade really, my mom
has worked from home.

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And about a year and half ago, she and my
dad moved to the country, surrounded by farmland

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roughly a two hour’s drive from Chicago.

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Her most recent work setup includes a RAP,
which essentially creates a dedicated, hardwired

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VPN connection over the Internet, so as far
as her computer and desk phone know, she’s

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still at an office in Chicago.

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She occasionally makes trips into the office,
but for the most part works here.

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Now in the past few months, for some reason
the electric service at their house has gotten

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a little unpredictable.

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They’ve never been without power for more
than a day, and usually less than 8 hours,

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but in the last month there have been two
power outages.

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And they’ve happened during her working
hours.

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Which kinda sucks.

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Actually, it really sucks, because depending
on the circumstances of the day, she might

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have to hop in the car and take a two hour
drive to work at the drop of a hat.

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So today, I’m gonna fix that for her.

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Now before you suggest so, they do have a
portable generator.

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But the generator lives in a shed, and takes
time to set up--plus, it’s cumbersome and

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too heavy for my mom to move by herself.

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And regardless, their generator produces a
really dirty and noisy power output, which

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some electronics really don’t like.

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Since all of this equipment belongs to her
company, she’s real leery on plugging any

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of it into the generator.

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And I don’t blame her.

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We know from experience with the generator
and a small uninterruptible power supply that...

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well the UPS didn’t find the generator’s
output safe enough and wouldn’t pass its

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power through.

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And it never worked correctly after that.

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So what we’re gonna do is use a deep cycle
lead acid battery as a temporary power source.

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A pure sine wave inverter on the battery will
produce a clean output that hopefully won’t

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bother her setup.

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And to recharge the battery, we’ll simply
use an automatic car battery charger, as after

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all a 12v lead acid battery is pretty much
universal in how you charge it.

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But, that doesn’t mean all lead acid batteries
are the same--no they are not.

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I’ll explain shortly.

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I want to add here that this process was done
with expediency in mind.

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My mom elected to buy this inverter on Amazon
and have it overnighted to her, and we would

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just pick up a battery at Menards that day
(I was due to visit them).

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The inverter is great--no qualms there--but
the battery is less than ideal.

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This is a marine deep cycle battery.

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As far as batteries go that you can just buy
at a hardware store, this is the closest to

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the best kind.

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But it’s probably not going to last for
too many charge cycles.

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Here, let’s explain a bit about lead acid
battery chemistry.

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Hold up--if you’re a newcomer to the channel
and are just looking for how to do this, go

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ahead and skip to this time.

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On this channel I like to explain a lot about
how stuff works, and I totally understand

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if that’s not why you’re here.

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Lead-acid batteries are incredibly simple.

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They are the oldest type of rechargeable battery,
invented in 1859 by French physicist Gaston Plante’.

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Their construction is quite basic--two plates,
one lead and the other lead dioxide, are submerged

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in a bath of sulfuric acid which serves as
the electrolyte.

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When it’s fully charged, the acidity of
the electrolyte solution is very high, thus

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there are a lot positively charged hydrogen
ions floating around, as well as negatively

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charged sulfate ions.

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Now I won’t get into the chemistry specifics--I’ll
save that for another video--but energy in

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the battery comes mainly from the acid.

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The sulfate ions will react with both the
negative and positive plates to form lead

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sulfate, and the hydrogen ions react in the
positive plate with oxygen atoms to form water.

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The more concentrated the acid is, the more
charged the battery is.

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Conversely, the more lead sulfate that appears on the plates,

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the more discharged the battery becomes.

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And this is where we get into the nitty gritty
of battery types.

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There are two basic categories of lead-acid
battery; deep cycle, and SLI which stands

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for Starting, Lighting, and Ignition.

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Essentially an SLI battery is a car battery,
and these are absofreakinlutely terrible at

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being deep cycled.

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If you just buy a car battery for backup power,
you’ll be lucky if it lasts a dozen cycles

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before it’s dead.

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And that’s because of how they are designed
and constructed.

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Car batteries need to be able to produce an
enormous surge of current for the starter motor.

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To get more current, you need a large surface
area on the plates of the battery.

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And with limited room, this surface area is
created by making the plates small, numerous,

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and sort of like a sponge.

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These spongy plates are great at producing
tons of current, but they limit the battery's

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ability to be discharged and recharged.

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See as the battery discharges, the plates
don’t just get coated with lead sulfate.

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They become lead sulfate--just as a rusty
piece of metal isn’t covered in rust--the

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metal has turned to rust.

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And lead sulfate isn’t a good conductor.

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If you let a car battery get discharged too
much, the spongy plates can sort of get clogged

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with the lead sulfate.

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The more this happens, the less current it
can pass, and then it can’t be recharged

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to reform the lead and lead oxide.

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Another common occurrence is called shedding.

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Again due to the spongy nature of the plates,
the expansion and contraction as the lead

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plate becomes lead sulfate and is turned back
to lead through recharging can actually cause

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bits of the plate to fall off, thus limiting
not only current passing ability but also

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capacity.

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But normally, a car battery will stay almost
completely charged all the time.

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The starter will only run for a few seconds,
then once the engine is running the alternator

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will swiftly replenish that charge.

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Ordinarily, the battery is hardly cycled at
all, and very little lead sulfate forms anywhere

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in the battery.

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Thus, it’s typical for a car battery to
last 5 years or more, but may only survive

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a few episodes of leaving the headlights on.

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Deep cycle batteries, on the other hand, have
big, thick, solid plates.

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With limited surface area, they can’t produce
monstrous surge currents, but they can tolerate

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much more lead sulfate building up without harming
the battery.

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They’re less susceptible to shedding due
to the non-porous nature of their plates,

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and in general are more specialized and a
bit more expensive.

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Due to their inability to create surge currents,
they aren’t used as a car battery but instead

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for things like golf carts, battery backup
solutions, and some early electric cars used

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them as their main source of propulsion power.

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For this project, we’re using a compromise
battery.

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There is a subset of batteries called marine
batteries, and within that subset there’s

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a subsubset called marine deep cycle.

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That’s what this is.

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These batteries have thicker and stronger
plates than an ordinary car battery, but they

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can still provide a generous surge of current.

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I chose this battery because it was A) Readily
available and B)

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cheap.

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A whopping $89, however a $7 core charge was
placed on top of that because I didn’t have

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a used battery to return.

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Speaking of, did you know that lead acid batteries
are among the most recycled things in the world?

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Everything in here can easily be recycled
and purified, with only the paper separators

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between plates being impossible to recover.

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Because of that core charge, people are incentivised
to not throw their batteries into landfill,

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and battery manufacturers have a steady supply
of used batteries to condense into their constituent

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parts and make new batteries again.

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It is almost certainly the case that this
battery was once many other batteries, with

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the materials having hopped from car to car
and from boat to boat.

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Look at that, society coming together to solve
a problem and no one’s complaining about it.

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Great job.

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So first, we want to determine what our needs
are.

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And I was going on an estimate.

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This setup uses a laptop in a docking station
and two 20 inch monitors, but there is also

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a power supply for the RAP, her phone, the
Google WiFi router (though that could be turned

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off if required), and the actual DSL modem,
so while the computer and monitor are probably

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the bulk of everything, there are a lot of
small loads that might add up.

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I basically just assumed 100 watts would be
enough, and let’s roll with that.

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Annoyingly this sort of battery usually isn’t
labeled with a helpful figure like amp-hours

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or watt hours.

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Instead it has a stat called reserve capacity.

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Now I simply picked the largest battery they
had among this selection, and I didn’t yet

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know what RC meant.

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So after some googling, I learned that a battery’s
reserve capacity is the time in minutes that

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it can sustain a discharge rate of 25 amps
before it drops to 10.5 volts,

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which is pretty dead.

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This battery’s reserve capacity is 170,
so 25 amps over 170 minutes is about 70 amp

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hours, and since this is a 12 volt battery,
that means it has a capacity of about 850

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watt hours.

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This was good, as I had estimated her setup
would use about 100 watts, and it should just

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barely get her through an 8 hour day.

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But, another fun feature of lead-acid battery
chemistry, is that its capacity will go up

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the slower you discharge it.

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So while this battery may only be 850 watt
hours with a 300 watt load, cutting that load

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down to a third might boost the capacity into
the kilowatt hour range.

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If we’re real lucky, with a slow drain,
we might get

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1.1 or 1.2 kilowatt hours out of this thing.

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So, we’ve got a battery.

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But now we need a way to convert the 12V DC
into the 120V AC that her stuff uses.

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That’s what inverters are for!

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These devices will boost the voltage and continually
invert the phase up and down to create A/C

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current from a DC source.

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If you’re running electronics, you definitely
want a pure sine wave inverter.

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This will replicate the sine wave pattern
as seen in true A/C power.

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Cheaper inverters will simply throw spikes
up and down, which many modern power supplies

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can tolerate, but which probably isn’t great
for everything.

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In choosing an inverter, we went extraordinarily
overboard.

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I basically combed through reviews for my
mom on Amazon, and while there was a much

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cheaper inverter that would have done the
trick, it had some lackluster reviews indicating

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it might overheat, so we went with this enormous
beast.

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You never know, it might truly come in handy
someday.

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And we also need a way to charge this battery.

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For that, we’ll use an automatic car battery
charger that my parents already had.

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This is a relatively slow charger, only putting
out 6 amps, but that’s 72 watts and will

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be enough to recharge this battery from empty
in 16 hours or so.

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If there were an extended power outage, the
charger could be run from the generator overnight.

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But having a slow charger is probably a good
thing.

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See, you do have to worry about hydrogen production
when the battery is being charged.

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Ordinarily very little hydrogen is produced,

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in fact ideally close to none should be produced

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and the bulk of hydrogen would come from a
battery being overcharged, which this automatic

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charger should prevent from occuring.

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But, even if it were to overcharge the battery,
the amount of hydrogen generated is directly

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dependent on the amount of current being pushed
into the battery.

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I ran the numbers and determined that in order
for hydrogen to reach dangerous levels in

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this room with 6 amps of charge current, it
would require about a month of overcharging.

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So clearly, that’s not a concern.

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However, I did alter course for safety--I
was planning on situating the battery on a

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small cart, but its partially enclosed top
could trap hydrogen and potentially create

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a small explosion risk.

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So I went to work setting things up.

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This battery has threaded studs to mount cables
to in addition to standard lugs.

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We’ll use the studs with the supplied cables
from the inverter, but I did add a large fuse

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for short-circuit protection.

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The inverter could theoretically pull 125
amps continuously

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(though the battery could not sustain that for very long)

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so I looked for a fuse above that rating.

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Now, I’m only adding this for protection
from a short circuit.

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The inverter has built-in protections of its
own, but in case something metal should get

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lodged behind the inverter, or some other
stupid thing causes a dead short, those 600+

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cranking amps need something to stop them.

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But then, I added this little guy.

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This is a battery level monitor and voltage
indicator.

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This is really neat, it can support different
battery chemistries and voltages, but came

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preconfigured for a 12v lead acid battery.

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Now it’s showing that percentage based on
the battery’s voltage reading.

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This will give you a relatively good indication
of charge, but it means that if there’s

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a load on the battery, thus dropping its voltage,
the reading also drops.

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Additionally, whenever the battery is being
charged, the reading will jump to 100%, as

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the charger gives the battery a higher voltage
when charging.

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However, it will still serve as a useful indicator,
as after its initial drop, that percentage

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will steadily drop as it discharges.

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Best of all, pressing the button turns on
the backlight, and pressing it again will

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change to an actual voltage reading.

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The specs on this thing indicate that it draws
112 microamps when idle.

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That’s practically negligible, and will
perhaps cause the battery to lose 1% of charge

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over a few months.

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00:12:37,260 --> 00:12:41,000
You’ll also notice that
this is connected straight across the battery.

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It would be wise to fuse this as well, however
it’s fairly likely that there is a fuse

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on its circuit board somewhere

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00:12:47,160 --> 00:12:51,980
(even if it’s just a resistor or something that’s not “supposed” to be a fuse)

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00:12:51,980 --> 00:12:54,740
and even if
there wasn’t one, these thin wires would

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quickly melt in a dead short scenario.

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00:12:56,800 --> 00:12:59,020
Thus, I’m not worried about it.

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So now, this setup is pretty much done.

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After putting on the charger long enough for
it to switch to float charging mode, I lugged

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the battery and inverter down to her workstation.

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I also finally used a kill-a-watt to determine
the actual draw of her workstation.

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Hopefully it’s 100 watts or less.

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Amazingly, everything here only draws around
52 to 55 watts!

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It occasionally spikes to 70 watts, but even
if we take that as a worst-case figure (plus

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this will account for the 10 to 15% loss in
the conversion from the inverter), this battery

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will now easily pass 12 hours of backup time,
and with an average of 4 and a half to 5 amps

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being drawn from the battery, it may be even
more.

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This extra capacity also means the battery
won’t be as deeply cycled in a day, which

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will prolong its useful life.

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To use this is really simple.

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Everything is already plugged into a small
uninterruptible power supply, but this is

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really small and can only realistically provide
20 minutes of power,

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maybe an hour if we got super lucky.

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However, it means that in the event of a power
failure, everything is seamless.

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If the power goes out, everything in her setup
will remain powered on.

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To switch to the large backup supply, all
you need to do is unplug the power cord of

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the UPS from the wall, and plug it into one
of the outlets on the inverter.

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After you switch the inverter on, the UPS
will say “hey, that power looks OK”, and

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it switches back to what it thinks is normal
AC power.

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At this point, the entire setup is running
solely from the large battery.

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This should provide at least a full day’s
work of backup power, and possibly 2 if the

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slow drain boosts the battery’s capacity
up to 1.2 kilowatt hours.

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When the power comes back, just switch off
the inverter.

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The UPS will kick back into action briefly,
but after plugging it into the wall, it will

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be on true AC power again.

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Then, just grab the car battery charger, hook
it up, and after an overnight charge the battery

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will be full again.

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00:14:50,420 --> 00:14:54,000
If there’s a prolonged power outage, the
battery charger could theoretically become

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an indirect power source for the inverter,
using the battery itself as a large buffer

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00:14:58,440 --> 00:14:59,610
or ballast.

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The dirty energy coming from the generator
would be converted to DC power, and when the

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inverter switches it back to AC, it will be
clean as a whistle.

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This charger might even be enough, as 6 amps
works out to 72 watts.

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00:15:12,030 --> 00:15:14,130
However, it would be pretty close.

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00:15:14,130 --> 00:15:17,300
A larger battery charger might be desired
for this purpose.

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00:15:17,300 --> 00:15:20,860
But using this with a generator isn’t really
the point.

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If that were the point, then a wiser investment
is a generator with a built-in inverter, which

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can safely power electronics.

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00:15:27,400 --> 00:15:32,950
Rather, the goal of this setup is to provide
immediate, easy, and convenient backup power

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00:15:32,950 --> 00:15:35,000
that will last at least a day.

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00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:39,780
For most power outages, this battery will
be all that’s needed to get my mom through it.

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00:15:39,780 --> 00:15:44,540
One last thing before I sign off--this brass
lug on the inverter should be grounded.

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00:15:44,540 --> 00:15:49,570
Right now, when on battery power, none of
this equipment has a connection to earth.

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This isn’t necessarily an abhorrently dangerously
scenario, but to be safe a ground lead should

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be attached here.

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We could attach a lead to the ground wire
inside this electrical box, or we could use

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an adapter like this.

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00:16:01,980 --> 00:16:05,680
Whichever you choose, make sure it actually
has a good ground connection.

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Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the
video!

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Lead-acid battery technology may be wicked
old, but it has some compelling applications

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such as this.

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But remember, this battery won’t last many
cycles.

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00:16:17,180 --> 00:16:21,060
It doesn’t have to, as it will probably
only get a discharge a few times a year if

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that, but if you want to regularly charge
and discharge a lead-acid battery for energy

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00:16:25,720 --> 00:16:28,980
storage, you want to choose a better battery.

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00:16:28,980 --> 00:16:33,240
Golf cart batteries, which are usually 6 volts
and thus require a pair to be wired in series

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00:16:33,240 --> 00:16:36,010
to get 12V, are a good start.

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00:16:36,010 --> 00:16:40,020
The solar power community seems to favor Trojan
batteries for longevity.

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00:16:40,020 --> 00:16:44,750
I’m planning on making some videos analyzing
the costs and lifespan of deep cycle lead

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00:16:44,750 --> 00:16:49,589
acid batteries versus lithium ion for stationary
energy storage, because the winner may be

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00:16:49,589 --> 00:16:51,660
less obvious than it seems.

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00:16:51,660 --> 00:16:55,800
But for now, thank you to everyone who supports
this channel on Patreon, especially the fine

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00:16:55,800 --> 00:16:58,200
folks who have been scrolling up your screen.

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00:16:58,200 --> 00:17:02,720
With the amazing support of people just like
you, I’ve been able to turn Technology Connections

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00:17:02,720 --> 00:17:06,549
from a weird hobby into my full-time job.

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00:17:06,549 --> 00:17:09,769
And there are big projects just around the
corner.

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00:17:09,769 --> 00:17:12,660
If you’d like to pledge some support to
the channel to help it grow, please check

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00:17:12,660 --> 00:17:14,300
out my Patreon page.

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00:17:14,300 --> 00:17:17,100
Thank you for your consideration, and I’ll
see you next time!

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♫ do do do do do do ♫

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♫ a jazzy sax ♫

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♫ some piano and drums chime in ♫