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Mains drop out

Printed From: Graham Slee Hifi System Components
Category: DIY AUDIO
Forum Name: DIY Audio questions and answers
Forum Description: www.diy-audio-kits.com ... superb audio kits for experienced constructors
URL: https://www.hifisystemcomponents.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4274
Printed Date: 29 Mar 2024 at 11:27am
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Topic: Mains drop out
Posted By: peterb
Subject: Mains drop out
Date Posted: 19 Jul 2017 at 12:36pm
Having read lots of posts on this Forum I think I am like many other members, living in a rural area with not the most stable of mains electricity supply. This year we have had at least 4 losses of supply (brownouts), some which lasted over 15 minutes and others, like yesterday which was only a couple of seconds. This led me to think how could I protect my HiFi from these Mains failures, particularly the very short cycles which I think could be quite damaging.
There are lots of UPSs available but they have been designed to work with PCs etc, not Amps and Preamps. (as far as I can tell).

Have any other members faced, or even better, solved this problem?

Peter





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Peter
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Dual 505-1, Cyrus CD T, DIY 80W MosFet amp and PreAmp, 2xKEF 103.2



Replies:
Posted By: Richardl60
Date Posted: 19 Jul 2017 at 1:13pm
We have had short outages that killed two fridges. My mains hubs do have some protection.

On a few occasions I have noticed the sound has been markedly different before and after both ways.


Posted By: BackinBlack
Date Posted: 19 Jul 2017 at 4:55pm
Similar problem for me, quite frequent very short interruptions during storms. O/head line breakers usually automatically cut back in after a few seconds. I've not suffered any equipment failures (yet, fingers crossed ). Sound sometimes takes a little time to come back to normal, annoying but not too troublesome.
I would think that the best solution for the low power 24V DC equipment would be a supplementary battery supply with auto switching and off demand charging circuit. Depends on whether you want to listen during power loss or just maintain the  power supply. Higher powered equipment such as amplifiers presents a different problem in that batteries would have to be quite large to manage anything but the quiescent current, but  it can be done.
I'm not sure how good some of the better UPS units are at producing a clean sinewave that won't upset the main smoothing capacitors in linear power supplies. I know from using LiPo battery chargers on Lead-acid battery driven inverters that smoothing capacitors can fail due to the synthesised sine wave - messy.

Ian


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Just listen, if it sounds good to you, enjoy it.


Posted By: RichW
Date Posted: 19 Jul 2017 at 5:15pm
A company called PowerInspired make a range of UPS systems & mains regenerators.
I've been using their AG1500 regenerator for several years & it has been very reliable.

An enquiry to them regarding their battery backup systems might be worthwhile.
http://www.powerinspired.com/store/index.php" rel="nofollow - http://www.powerinspired.com/store/index.php



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Majestic/Enigma, Accession MM & MC.


Posted By: peterb
Date Posted: 19 Jul 2017 at 5:18pm
My target would be a safe shutdown, not really interested in using my HiFi during an outage.
As I said in my first post my major concern is the very short breaks in supply. What happens to the circuits that have just started to see a collapse in voltage only to get a pulse of full voltage. Can't see that would be good for the life of some components.


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Peter
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Dual 505-1, Cyrus CD T, DIY 80W MosFet amp and PreAmp, 2xKEF 103.2


Posted By: Richardl60
Date Posted: 19 Jul 2017 at 6:12pm
Sounds like you are looking for some form of spike protection?


Posted By: peterb
Date Posted: 19 Jul 2017 at 6:28pm
The PowerInspired regenerator with battery backup looks like the sort of thing, not cheap though!

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Peter
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Dual 505-1, Cyrus CD T, DIY 80W MosFet amp and PreAmp, 2xKEF 103.2


Posted By: RichW
Date Posted: 20 Jul 2017 at 8:11am
Originally posted by peterb peterb wrote:

The PowerInspired regenerator with battery backup looks like the sort of thing, not cheap though!

Yes, it would at least allow you to safely power off your system until the mains supply
recovers.
Not a cheap solution agreed, but the PowerInspired equipment is considerably cheaper
than some similar equipment primarily designed & intended for 'audiophile' use...Smile


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Majestic/Enigma, Accession MM & MC.


Posted By: Drewan77
Date Posted: 21 Jul 2017 at 4:58am
I used to own a PowerInspired AG1500 and it was very effective in maintaining a consistent sound at all times although I did not use it with power amplifiers. Extremely good value as well, it was only sold when we switched the house to solar PV/battery storage.

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Older than I once was, younger than I'll be
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Andrew


Posted By: Richardl60
Date Posted: 21 Jul 2017 at 6:52am
Solar power.

I have limited knowledge of how solar power works in a domestic situation.

Are you able to outline how it works in respect of powering items, storesge etc?

Presumably this supports rather than replaces the national grid?

Does it sound any different?

Does anyone else have any experiences?


Posted By: Graham Slee
Date Posted: 21 Jul 2017 at 12:56pm
Wouldn't it be nice to go off-grid Evil Smile

To get rid of those uncooperative call-centre idiots you have to deal with every time they screw up your account - you know, the thick people with even thicker accounts managers, all owned by some heartless bastard who knows nothing about business or people or ...


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That none should be able to buy or sell without a smartphone and the knowledge in how to use apps


Posted By: Drewan77
Date Posted: 21 Jul 2017 at 2:28pm
Basically Richard, our house has a 4kw solar array on a south facing rear roof and 6.2kw battery storage. An inverter manages the interface between solar and grid electricity so that anything generated is fed to the house first until it exceeds current usage, with the remaining going to the batteries. Once they are full, the remainder is exported to the grid (helpfully, home owners are paid for all of this regardless of whether they use it or not Smile)

Although we have been overseas for many weeks, I can see from an online app that the house has run from batteries/solar since early April with just a few short occasions where a couple of consecutive cloudy days meant that short periods in the night reverted to mains power as the batteries dropped to their standby point (4%). It hasn't used mains power at all since we travelled because naturally there is very little background consumption (in our case just fridge/freezer, a few timed lights and of course a few PSU1s - total about 315w/hr).

Whenever the batteries have charge and the house is powered by them, we are effectively 'off grid'. 

On grey winter days we use mostly grid power. In total, solar generates about 70% of the elec we use annually which is nice.




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Older than I once was, younger than I'll be
.............................
Andrew


Posted By: Richardl60
Date Posted: 21 Jul 2017 at 3:59pm
Any difference battery power to grid feed?

Graham you should try British Gas who I have to deal with for our business! It would be an insult to compare with a stupid zombie!😖


Posted By: peterb
Date Posted: 21 Jul 2017 at 7:17pm
I contacted Power Inspired and had a reply within the day.
I outlined my need and put a 300W maximum on it.
They recommends their AG500 ReGenerator. It provides a clean 500W 230V 50Hz from its Invertor and if the mains fails or dips its battery will hold up its output for a period dependant upon current draw.
It looks like a really good solution for my concerns. All for 275 notes (old pre-coin jargon) !

Thanks for the suggestion and link.


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Peter
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Dual 505-1, Cyrus CD T, DIY 80W MosFet amp and PreAmp, 2xKEF 103.2


Posted By: Drewan77
Date Posted: 21 Jul 2017 at 7:42pm
Originally posted by Richardl60 Richardl60 wrote:

Any difference battery power to grid feed?
It's difficult to say as everything passes through the inverter & switches seamlessly so you have no idea if power is coming from the panels directly, the batteries or grid until you look at either the inverter display or the online monitoring app. There was one instance though when I was listening & we had a power cut - everything stopped for a couple of seconds and when it restarted, music sounded exactly the same as before.

Originally posted by Richardl60 Richardl60 wrote:

Graham you should try British Gas who I have to deal with for our business! It would be an insult to compare with a stupid zombie!😖
Funnily enough, although British Gas is not our energy provider, I do use them for the quarterly feed-in tariff payments and they are super efficient & helpful.

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Older than I once was, younger than I'll be
.............................
Andrew


Posted By: Graham Slee
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2017 at 3:48am
Originally posted by Drewan77 Drewan77 wrote:

Funnily enough, although British Gas is not our energy provider, I do use them for the quarterly feed-in tariff payments and they are super efficient & helpful.


After being a British Gas user since the days they were called Emgas, they recently decided to gazump my business electricity prices citing my bad credit rating as the cause for their decision.

They said I should contact Experian, and I should settle my outstanding bill.

I did one better - I went online at Experian and entered all the details, and it returned the best credit rating possible.

As for the outstanding bill, there isn't one - it was paid in full by DD last month!

British Gas are unrepentant - if their f**k-up isn't scripted they can't do anything about it - such an ignorant 'too big to fail' bunch of nasty people!






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That none should be able to buy or sell without a smartphone and the knowledge in how to use apps


Posted By: Richardl60
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2017 at 7:58am
Sounds about right.

They sent a bill for 18 months electric in one of our premises for over £8k.

Rang and overseas call centre would speak as I wasn't on their named list. They said I neeed to get a named person to contact them, I threw a few possible names without success. They wouldn't tell me who was authorised so offered to send a letter by a partner which I did. They rejected the letter as the couldn't read the signature of which they had no record anyway!

This remains outstanding after 5 months. They do speak on 4 other accounts.

There are lots more things....



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