A new reality
Power outages are becoming a fairly regular, albeit unfortunate, part of our daily lives. Whether an outage is caused by PG&E safety shutoffs or disaster, it is important to stay prepared for this inevitability. If you are considering a backup power system (such as an Uninterruptible Power Supply, or UPS) to maintain your internet connection, it is important to understand both the power requirements needed to support the equipment at your home as well as the capabilities of Valley Internet's upstream infrastructure. (Days' worth of backup power at your home will not be useful if the infrastructure serving your home stays online for just several hours after losing power.)
Infrastructure considerations
The vast majority of Valley Internet's network infrastructure is powered either off-grid with solar/wind/battery systems or on-grid with backup solar/battery systems. This makes our network very resilient to power outages but not immune. Due to limited resources, we must prioritize the larger and more "upstream" relays. If you would like to confirm the capabilities and expected backup time for your leg of the network, reach out to the team here: https://www.valleyinternet.com/company/contact
Equipment power draw
The Valley Internet equipment at your home is relatively low-powered. The average power draw for a standard system (1x exterior radio and 1x Smart Adaptor) is about 10 Watts. You'll also want to consider your router and related wifi equipment, which would likely be around 5W per device, and don't forget about your computer or whatever device would actually be using the internet. Device requirements can vary wildly, from 20W to 100W+.
Once you have an idea of the power draw needed by all of the devices that you intend to use, you can determine the load size of the UPS needed. We've found this article to be helpful:
https://www.howtogeek.com/161479/how-to-select-a-battery-backup-for-your-computer/
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A simple rule-of-thumb calculation you can use to determine how much UPS is as follows:
1.6 * Wattage Load = Minimum Volt-Amperes (VA)
Volt-Amperes are the standard measurement used to describe the capacity of UPS units. Using the equation above, we see that the minimum VA rating we’d want for our 400w needs would be a 640 VA rated system.
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Runtime
A major consideration is runtime, which is how long you can expect your devices to be powered by the battery and is often not very clear when shopping for a UPS. Also from the article:
https://www.howtogeek.com/161479/how-to-select-a-battery-backup-for-your-computer/
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Unfortunately, there isn’t a super quick rule-of-thumb calculation for determining the runtime like there is for determining the necessary minimum VA. In fact, it’s such an enormous hassle to dig up the necessary information (especially the efficiency rating), that it’s much more expedient to use manufacturer estimate tables (which we’ve found to be on the conservative side anyway). You can check out the calculation/selection tools of the more popular UPS unit manufacturers here:
Practically speaking, once you’ve established the minimum VA requirement for your setup, then you can go and begin comparing the run times for UPS units that meet that minimum VA requirement with higher-rated systems to determine how much more you’re willing to spend to get extra run time.
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Generator option
Depending on your needs, a generator is a good alternative and often complementary to a UPS. Many sizes and types of generators exist, which are outside of the scope of this article. Whole-home, solar-and-battery systems are a good alternative to generators in many cases as well.
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