To all those people looking to cover power cuts with batteries

I'd have thought a 1ph 6kW would be sufficient for most?

However... the problem is not just the length of the power cut. It's the fact that it happens at all. A 1 second power cut is just as disruptive as a 1-hour one, in that all computer devices will reboot and may need hand-holding to get them to start cleanly.

A fast-acting, glitch-free UPS is probably needed in addition to any long-term solution such as a generator.

For several years we have had periods of 1-second power cuts in our village, thought to be caused by untrimmed overhanging branches touching high-voltage lines to our substation. They sometimes mean that Windows computers take ages to come back because they need to check and repair a "dirty" filesystem, and it often needs manual intervention to start our various wifi mesh nodes in the correct order so they all connect to each other (starting them simultaneously when power is restored often means one or more fails to reconnect). The mesh situation is a problem because it would need one UPS per node since they are dotted around the house.

Fortunately in the six years we've lived here, we've only had two long power cuts that lasted several hours. One was planned in advance; the other was as a result of a brown-out (I measured a mere 90 V at our sockets!) which stopped some devices but kept others going (switched-mode PSUs are great, even if means that they are operating at a much greater duty cycle when the input voltage is a lot lower).

Just a thought...

What can a desktop computer do that a laptop can't, as you've got a built-in UPS with the laptop? You'd still require a UPS for any auxiliary equipment such as a router and big screen monitor, etc, but the computer itself is "safe" from all those glitches.

Not sure that would even power an electric cooker?

I've had three just this YEAR,. Trees on line resulting in 4-6 hours each

Well half of the problem is connecting to the internet

Or get a petrol generator, either ready converted to run on LPG or convert it, and it should run of natural gas.

( The conversion includes a special / low pressure on demand regulator which should work with domestic gas pressures. Running such generators like this is common in the US. No need to store fuel.)

Buf has the other hassle that if you have the charger plugged in all the time, that fucks the life of the internal battery with most laptops and you can't even decide that that doesn't matter when you can't easily just replace the battery with modern laptops

It doesn't actually avoid the problem, just isn't as bad as ones that don't

Very few have a removable battery now

Sure, but that doesn't help when the battery is now the internal pouch battery

And in some ways it doesn't make a lot of sense to have the cruise thru any shortage of power using a device whose screen and keyboard are basically useless unless you need that portability

Makes more sense to have a decent ups that provides power full time from its battery even when the mains drops out because you need that for the stuff outside the laptop like the router etc and then you can make the battery easy to swap out when its life has come to an end, given that it doesn't have to fit into a very thin laptop which makes it impossible to swap easily so you have to basically dismantle the laptop to change it

That is not very difficult. I recently changed the fans in a Dell XPS notebook which is quite compact. All I needed to do was remove a few screws from the bottom of the case, prise open the bottom cover, then unscrew and unplug the battery pack to give access and swap the fan module. Most people with reasonable manual skills would be able to do this so long as they had the right screwdriver for opening the case. The service manual gives very clear instructions, complete with drawings. A single UPS for everything only works if all your equipment is in the same area. In any case, holding the maximum state of charge at about 70% is very effective at prolonging battery life. John

I don't see how. If the battery remains uncharged above the optimum for long life the battery will not even know whether the laptop is in use and conneccted to mains.

Depends on the laptop

But that isnt available with most laptops

That's not accurate either, there is nothing to stop you running a power lead from the ups to say the router

You don't necessarily have to do that if the charger supplys the power that the device uses so the battery is just sitting there in case the charger is no longer providing power

Fact remains, you don't need the f***ed keyboard and lousy screen that laptop has unless you need portability and its a lot easier to replace the battery is that becomes necessay when it isnt an ultra slim pouch in a stupidly thin laptop which is only stupidly thin for the portability

Optimum charge for long life isnt the same thing as not charging it at all isnt the same thing as not charging it unless it needs to be charged

Choose a laptop which is relatively easy to repair or upgrade. You don't have to buy one that makes this difficult.

My router and switches live under the stairs. I don't want to run an extension cable to another room creating a trip hazard.

So long as the battery does not spend a lot of time close to being fully charged where corrosion mechanisms are greatly enhanced, or deeply discharged where dendrite formation is more likely the battery will last a very long time. Small amounts of charge-discharge activity in the middle of the optimum range will have very little effect. A well designed charger circuit will have some hysteresis so that even such small charge adjustments will not happen very often.

Makes more sense to not use a laptop in the first place, use a ups what operates like a laptop battery wise so you don't have to pay for the useless screen and keyboard if you don't need the portability

Doesn't have to be a trip hazard

I suspect a gas safe engineer would charge a lot to make the connection.

Unless a bayonet cooker connection would suffice, but would that be legal?