I just thought i'd ask how most people on this forum power their Routerboards not only on Remote sites but in datacentre's we're on a bit of a power cutting kick at the moment and have been amalgamating the several old x86 routeros units to routerboards where applicable and just generally making the most use of our rack space in some datacentre's

When it comes to power, what are people doing?
Solar Charging, Wind charging.
How about simple 12 or 24v battery systems in sites with quite reliable mains power.

Most of our sites are mains powered and currently running small UPS's however they're 240v to 12v to 240v to 18v, which obviously isn't ideal. What have people found to be the most cost effective for straight battery systems with 240v charging.
Are people using Battery Backup PSU's, Car Load dual battery isolators, Solar charge controllers with Power supply instead of PV, I've heard and seen people using a car battery charger and a 12v battery.

I don't mind getting my hands on a soldering iron if we're talking a couple hundred difference for a simple solution.
I'd just like to steer away from running back up to mains then back down to the desired voltage.

Remote sites can vary with AC availability and how clean the ac voltage waveform is, just because it reads for example 230v with a multimeter doesn’t mean all is ok – it could contain spikes and RF hash which if not filtered can show up on the DC voltage,

As regards power I always ask what is the total load and how long if running on say batteries is the maximum time they will have to supply power before AC or charging source or solar + wind or hybrid can charge the battery bank,

At present as all of my boards are dc driven, I use a 27v (variable) SMPS unit which I connect 2 X 12v batteries to and with ac loss it changes over to the batteries, with this unit I have charging also it recommended by other users to have 2 SMPS units with steering diodes both wired in parallel, now if one smps fails it will not take down the DC line as the steering diode will ioslate each unit from each other and you have power redundancy and the best bit it is a very cheap and effective solution.

More info in the thread http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=42017

http://www.interprojekt.com.pl/155w-swi ... p-570.html

I totally understand the waveform issues, It's not even clean 230 coming out, I had a site with ~260 for a week straight before the power company resolved it. UPS was constantly carrying on.

Which is why I was looking for something to feed the batteries that wouldn't particularly care about input voltage or quality, I also tend to triple the power usage estimate with batteries, So some sites could run for 4 - 5 days without power, Which will never ever happen (Except for Zombie Apocalypse )

Thanks for the links, I'm reading them now.

I totally understand the waveform issues, It's not even clean 230 coming out, I had a site with ~260 for a week straight before the power company resolved it. UPS was constantly carrying on.

Which is why I was looking for something to feed the batteries that wouldn't particularly care about input voltage or quality, I also tend to triple the power usage estimate with batteries, So some sites could run for 4 - 5 days without power, Which will never ever happen (Except for Zombie Apocalypse )

Thanks for the links, I'm reading them now.

Because most items today are built to price and not best performance, I would not assume the power supply would have sufficient filtering built–in but very basic and you may have to add additional inline filtering.

Hey can I get an opinion on a setup?

http://www.mini-box.com/Y-PWR-Hot-Swap- ... Controller

Plugged into Either of These
http://www.mini-box.com/picoUPS-100-12V ... egory=1264
http://www.mini-box.com/DCDC-USB?sc=8&category=1264

The second one has a USB connector, So could be potentially monitored.

What do you reckon on these devices has anyone used these?
I've used a PicoPowersupply for a 12v atx connector. It worked as advertised.

Also as mentioned in another topic I found in this forum, Does anyone claim any validity to "Excercising" Batteries by turning off power for a minute or 2 a day.

I'll post my working setup once I've got it all sorted, I do however love the idea of using an extremely cheap Voip adapter(Or similar network device), Which is powered directly from the onsite power, If it drops, The power is down, Extremely clever solution to a complex problem of UPS's not providing good monitoring outputs.

artie11: 4 or 5 days i also thought was impossible. But that little tropical storm that just came through NY had me running my facility off the generator for almost 2 days. Some people still dont have power and its been 4 days! This was not a devistating storm, it did little damage and wind speeds were low! So always be prepared.

Me...I have a big kohler Diesel genset (500 amp 3 phase) with a lot of APC 3000's...

--John

if budget is not a problem then use solar power and use dc to dc conversion for your radios and network appliances.

you can find some dc to dc poe injector here and some poe device.
http://tyconpower.com/products/POE.htm