How-To: run ups's in parallel successfully ?

[locksley]

Hi Guys,

I know the obvious answer is no because of the regulators once on back up power so I'm looking for a little creativity here, i want to talk about the goal as apposed to the method.

My Goal:

I have 10 x 2.2kw ups's almost brandnew I got them from a friend who was closing a small office datacenter so i didn't pay for them.

I want to be creative and would like to explore options for running most of the circuits in my house of them. I live in the country and while the right answer is to go and buy a 10kw or may be slightly less UPS and genset. I want to see if i can leverage the UPS's i have some how.

Why you might ask would i need to ups my house and not just transfer to Genset:
(partly just because i like to think out side the box, and partly because i have a ton of computer equipment through out the house and saltwater fish tanks plus tv's projectors etc... and have lost them in the past due to power surges transferring to genset or electrical spikes of the grid.

What i already know:
I know you cant simply build a bus in the back and connect that as a feed to the main panel as you would with a large UPS.
I know your not supposed to UPS after the panel in a central location as that would make your UPS's the life saving breaker/burn your house down if you overload the circuit or plug your self in, safety net.
I know i don't want to put these ups's through out the house as they are rack mount units and noisy.
I am renovating the part of the house that has the panel and main feed for the building so i have access to the panel and can move, change and make additions.

My Question:
Can anyone think of a creative way to set this up so it would work?
Is there another piece of equipment (besides a UPS) any one has heard of that can use after the ups's to build a bus to feed to the panel ?

The only suggestion i can think of:
is putting 10 x 20amp breakers in my panel and go from there to the UPS's and then from each output from the UPS's into discreet small panels (4-6 breakers) then out to the house circuits ? messy and probably not the cheapest but thats why I'm here any suggestions ?

 

[corkyg]

UPS's (even 2200 VA) cannot support heavy appliances such as stoves, refrigerators, dishwashers, etc. Further, the batteries will all require replacement in about 4 years or so. I would connect clocks, radios, TVs, phones, or other low VA devices locally and enjoy some resetting relief from power flickers and outages. Yje noisy, rack mounting devices may not lend themselves to that either. Stay away from your breaker boxes - they are not designed for that. I would consider selling them to a small business with several PCs in their office.

 

[VirtualLarry]

UPS's (even 2200 VA) cannot support heavy appliances such as stoves, refrigerators, dishwashers, etc.
I would consider selling them to a small business with several PCs in their office.

This.

 

[Mark R]

UPSs cannot be paralleled except where designed for parallel/redundant operation.

Where hardwired, you should have a sub-panel coming off the UPS with appropriate circuit protection (AFCI, GFCI, overload) and an isolator. This protection should be appropriate for your critical load.

In general, you should not aim to protect all circuits - only critical circuits. This helps contain faults. E.g. if you plug in a vacuum cleaner and it trips out the UPS, you lose power to your critical circuits. Ideally, anything non-critical should be separate to avoid fault cascades.

If you want to do this, then run 2 dedicated circuits from your main panel - 1 to each UPS. The the output of each UPS should run to a sub panel. From each sub panel, you can run 3 or 4 circuits of appropriate capacity for your loads to outlets (if your intended load is TVs or fish tanks, maybe make the breakers as low as possible - 6A or so, so that if one outlet gets overloaded, it trips the breaker not the UPS). Ideally, make sure your outlets are labelled as UPS, or color coded a different color so that they are easily identifiable. Make sure people know not to plug in vacuum cleaners or space heaters into these outlets.