3rd World Power Supply Question

[MyJanine]

OK, Maybe rural Mexico isn't actually "3rd World" but the place we live every winter seems to have frequent "brown-outs" and other power supply oddities. Should I be concerned? The power rarely drops entirely... but somewhat more often than in WA State USA.

[Wulfman...]

I don't know if something like this may work or not. But, the subject came up in this other thread.

viewtopic/t101637/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1 ... 98#p949798


Den

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[sleepy1235]

You might consider a Universal Power Supply (UPS) system. They are often designed with batteries.

What they do is take the varying electrical input in and then supply a constant electrical output. They are used in factories to support equipment during power glitches such as voltage drops. They come in small units to some really humongous units.

They sometimes have batteries to provide electrical output over a power outage or brownout for a specified amount of time.

Also, electrical input can have other problems such as over voltages, frequency variations, and electrical spikes. That is voltage surges.

So a UPS might be the thing to have. Probably people locally there have practical experience in equipment they use. In particular a unit that doesn't cost a lot.

I would have your CPAP unit on a surge protector as a minimum.

[cathyf]

This is sort of a silly thing to pay attention to, but make sure that if you get a battery backup you get one that allows you to disable the alarms. My office has a diesel generator, and every Tuesday we fire up the generator, switch over to it, run the place on generator for an hour, and then switch back. The cut over is not instantaneous, so we have batteries to keep all the computers up during the 2-4 second cutover. So every Tuesday I about jump out of my skin when the alarms all beep, and then jump out of my skin again an hour later. These batteries tend to chirp, beep, etc, pretty continuously, so you are NOT going to sleep through them! While this insures that you won't have apneas during the power outage (because you won't be asleep), that's not exactly what you are looking for...

(I used to live in South Carolina, where the electric company, Carolina Power & Light, was known -- not affectionately -- as Chernobyl Power & Light. At random points, usually several times per week, all the batteries in my house would alarm. They kept the computers up, which is what they were supposed to be doing, but not without wear and tear on my nerves.)

[Guest]

I use a car jump starter - no alarms to turn off or wake you up - sleep right thru a power outage

[Muse-Inc]

Solar rechargeable batteries. I have a GoalZero for power outages.

[archangle]

You might consider a Universal Power Supply (UPS) system.

The correct term is Uninterruptible Power Supply.

Drawbacks/limitations:

1) Reasonable sized/priced ones don't tend to run a CPAP machine for many hours when the power goes out. It will still get you through short outages.

2) The most common ones are "standby" units that only kick in if you have a fairly severe brownout. I would expect most modern CPAP machines to be reasonably resistant to minor brownouts due to the way the "worldwide voltage" power supplies work.

3) Many of them put out Modified Sine Wave (MSW) or "Stepped Approximation to Sine Wave" voltages. These can damage some CPAP machines, most notably the humidifier in older units with AC powered humidifiers like ResMed S8 and (maybe) Respironics M series or Legacy.

If the problem is bad enough, a good backup battery with a good charging system could help you a lot. Your PRS1 machine will run directly off of 12V DC.

[Guest]

The correct term is Uninterpretable Power Supply.

Not quite, no not at all, but I will let you figure it out.

[archangle]

The correct term is Uninterpretable Power Supply.

Not quite, no not at all, but I will let you figure it out.

Wow, you actually said something useful! Mark this down on your calendars.

Yes, I shouldn't trust autocorect. "Uninterruptible," not "Uninterpretable."

[Guest]

Wow, you actually said something useful!

still waiting for you, aGuest, to say anything useful and not talk in circles. still waiting