I'm looking for a battery backup that can keep my modem, mesh networking equipment, and a DH4300+ running for roughly two hours during a power outage. My fiancée works from home, so keeping the internet available until her laptop battery runs out would be ideal. Outages only happen a few times a year, but I'd like something that can handle the low power draw reliably. What kind of UPS or portable power station should I be considering?
4 Answers
Two hours is longer than what most traditional UPS units are designed for. Standard UPS devices are mainly meant to bridge short outages, protect against power problems, and give equipment time to shut down safely. For a couple of hours, you’ll probably want either a large rack-mount UPS or a portable power station with a lithium iron phosphate battery, such as the types sold by Bluetti or Anker.
If you expect to use it regularly, a battery power station is probably a better fit than a conventional UPS. UPS batteries generally don’t appreciate being drained close to empty over and over, while newer LiFePO4 power stations are built for much deeper cycling. Keep the NAS connected to the UPS’s USB monitoring port so it can shut down cleanly, while the modem and mesh equipment remain powered.
A portable power station rated around 1,000 watts could work, although the actual runtime depends on the combined wattage of the modem, mesh system, and DH4300+. A DIY option would be a 12V LiFePO4 battery paired with a 12V pure-sine-wave inverter, but a prebuilt power station is simpler and includes the battery management and charging hardware.
A normal UPS may last much longer than its advertised full-load runtime because your networking gear probably uses only a small fraction of the UPS’s capacity. For example, a CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD3 is rated for only a few minutes at full load, but low-power equipment could run substantially longer. Measure the actual draw with a power meter, then compare it against the UPS’s watt-hour capacity rather than guessing from the VA rating.
I’m planning to have the NAS shut down as soon as the UPS switches to battery power. The main goal is just keeping the modem and mesh router online long enough for my fiancée to finish working, since her laptop will eventually run out of charge anyway. Power outages only happen about three times a year, so this wouldn’t be a constant deep-discharge situation.