[HamWAN PSDR] VOTE: Power backup expansion project

Fri Feb 5 15:45:05 PST 2021

Gold is a very important site. There is a battery room on the far side of the main room that the HamWAN equipment is in. It would be easy to put 24 to 48 hours worth of battery on site. I don’t know if there is generator power in that building. You don’t need a razzle dazzle UPS, just a few hundred amp hour of battery and a power system to float them.

Carl, N7KUW

From: PSDR <psdr-bounces at hamwan.org> On Behalf Of Bart Kus
Sent: Friday, February 5, 2021 2:25 PM
To: Puget Sound Data Ring <psdr at hamwan.org>; Kenny Richards <richark at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [HamWAN PSDR] VOTE: Power backup expansion project

Sure, other UPS models exist, but I'm not sure where we'd be constrained for this much space.  This setup is 4U.

As you correctly point out, several of our sites already have great power backup systems.  Haystack (3-4 weeks on battery, years on propane), SnoDEM (well maintained power system), Beacon (large battery bank), CapitolPark (another large battery bank), CampMurray (surely a good power system).  However, the sites that worry me are:

Rattlesnake (Snoqualmie shack), which had no battery and a broken generator.
Rattlesnake (DNR shack), which has no battery and a seemingly working generator during the last outage.
Baldi (AT&T shack), which has a battery system but the brand new generator failed and we didn't load-shed quickly enough.
Baldi (Middle Wiztronics shack), which has a tiny UPS, and a seemingly working generator.
Baldi (North Wiztronics shack), which has no UPS, and a seemingly working generator.
East Tiger (HJR shack), which has no UPS and no generator.
East Tiger (Other shack), which has...unknown.
Gold, which has no UPS and unknown generator status.
Blyn, which has no UPS and unknown generator status.
Lookout, which has no UPS and unknown generator status.
BawFaw, which has no UPS and probably decent generator status.
CapitolPeak, which has a tiny UPS, and probably decent generator status.
Larch, which has...unknown.
Triangle, which has...unknown.
Buck, which has...unknown.

This list may not be exhaustive, I'm working from memory.

For these specific UPSes, I'd like to target Rattlesnake (both shacks).

--Bart

On 2/5/2021 1:43 PM, Kenny Richards wrote:

Bart,

Are there options for sites where we don't have access to that much rack / physical space? (obviously with reduced runtime)

Which set of sites would be targeted? I'm guessing SnoDEM, CapitolPark and Beacon might not need the same level of backup as Baldi, Rattlesnake, Capital Peak, etc.

Thanks

Kenny

On Fri, Feb 5, 2021 at 12:41 PM Bart Kus <me at bartk.us <mailto:me at bartk.us> > wrote:

Hello,

During the recent wind storm event in January, HamWAN lost utility power to some sites.  This triggered network outages that affected users and repeaters that relied on those sites.  It was far from our finest hour.  "When all else fails", HamWAN should not be the first in line.  I'd like for 2021 to be a year we focus on reliability.  Having a reliable power system at every site seems like a good place to start that journey.  In each of the power failures in January, a generator system failed to activate.  In these cases, we need at least 24 hours to mount a response in fixing generators.  This means our battery backup systems should be sized for at least 24 hours of runtime.  I have acquired a couple UPSes that can achieve this.  They are composed of the main UPS:

https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/APC-Smart-UPS-XL-Modular-3000VA-120V-Rackmount-Tower/P-SUM3000RMXL2U

And one external (and chainable!) battery expansion module:

https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/APC-Smart-UPS-XL-Modular-48V-Extended-Run-Battery-Pack/P-SUM48RMXLBP2U

They also feature an AP9631 network interface module in each UPS, so we can monitor and control the power system.  As you can see, each UPS costs about $3600 new, so the two I acquired would be $7,200 new.  However, I managed to find used units and purchased brand new batteries for them.  The total cost for these two systems is $963.71.  One of them is deployed at Rattlesnake ("Snoqualmie shack") already:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/HTomAzJUnrjuJ3bw8

If we ever want to expand the battery capacity of these, we can simply plug in more battery modules.

I'm hoping to deploy the 2nd system in the other building on Rattlesnake ("DNR shack"), but that hasn't happened yet.

--Bart

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