Power Outages

After hearing about the huge storm in the Northeast, I got to thinking about power outages and some kind of back-up battery. What kind of back-up battery is the best to use? I'd like to have one on hand BEFORE I have to spend a night without my machine because of no electricity. I've gotten kind of spoiled now that I get a good night's sleep and would hate to have to go without it.

Thanks for your advice and comments.

The first thing I did was get a good uninterpretable power supply. That stays on my machine at all times. Then I bought an L-ion battery pack - mainly because I needed something light as carrying weight is an issue, and I needed to be able to travel with it. From what I've read there are a lot of MUCH cheaper options out there. If you are traveling, then you might want to get a battery pack that is approved for flight / travel as a medical device.

I keep my battery pack at the head of my bed so that if my uninterpretable power supply ends up past usage and we've lost power, I can do a quick plug in and go back to sleep.

You might want to do a search on 'batteries' to see what comes up as there are a lot of good suggestions already on the forum. I'm sore others will chime in as well. Cpap.com has their batteries (power solutions) listed in the pull down menu under accessories.

Similar to quietmorning, I have a decent UPS that can probably run my CPAP for about 2 hours, plus a battery back that should easily last a couple of nights.

In our neighborhood all the power lines are underground. This helps prevent against storm-related power outages. In 24 years in this house, we've probably had 4 power outages longer than 20 minutes. We had only one longer than an hour. That happened when a vandal broke into a substation to steal copper and ended up learning about basic high-school physics and conductivity the hard way.

John

JohnO wrote:Similar to quietmorning, I have a decent UPS that can probably run my CPAP for about 2 hours, plus a battery back that should easily last a couple of nights.
John

quietmorning and JohnO...What brand of UPS do you have? I have heard when researching them long ago that some will produce a square wave when powering equipment and this can damage some equipment. I don't know much about this and, therefore, have been apprehensive about purchasing one. Do you know anything about this? Would any UPS be safe for xPAP?

lewsterr wrote:

JohnO wrote:Similar to quietmorning, I have a decent UPS that can probably run my CPAP for about 2 hours, plus a battery back that should easily last a couple of nights.
John

quietmorning and JohnO...What brand of UPS do you have? I have heard when researching them long ago that some will produce a square wave when powering equipment and this can damage some equipment. I don't know much about this and, therefore, have been apprehensive about purchasing one. Do you know anything about this? Would any UPS be safe for xPAP?

I have an APC - I will ask my husband when he gets home about what you mention above (square wave). (heh, speaking of which, he just called. He said that most UPS's produce square waves - but he is not convinced that they damage equipment. He said he'll talk to me more about it when he gets home.) I'll give you an update on it when I talk to him.

lewsterr wrote:JohnO...What brand of UPS do you have?

I've got a slightly older version of this CyberPower Pure Sine Wave UPS. It seems to work fine.

http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/produc ... FCLCD.html

http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP850P ... =pd_cp_e_2

quietmorning wrote:I have an APC - I will ask my husband when he gets home about what you mention above (square wave). (heh, speaking of which, he just called. He said that most UPS's produce square waves - but he is not convinced that they damage equipment. He said he'll talk to me more about it when he gets home.) I'll give you an update on it when I talk to him.

Thanks quietmorning...It'll be interesting to hear what he has to say.

JohnO wrote:I've got a slightly older version of this CyberPower Pure Sine Wave UPS. It seems to work fine.
http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/produc ... FCLCD.html
http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP850P ... =pd_cp_e_2

johnO, thanks for the links. I was looking at the one at Amazon. It looks like, based on what I've heard about wave forms, it may work. Not sure what size to consider though.

Lewsterr, you have the same machine I had when I first started - I have the same APS that ran that machine and now runs my 60 series. I talked to my husband, he said the newer computers have to run on Sine - and so need a Sine back up power. He said they just won't run, period, if you have a square wave hooked up to it. He said that the cpap machines that need a sine battery back up should say so in their product information. I believe the S9 machines need a sine battery, but I'm not sure.

I think if you can GET a sine, it would probably be the safest bet - especially with the way technology is changing. My husband said that NEW technology will have to have sine batteries . . .so can't hurt, definitely.

quietmorning wrote:Lewsterr, you have the same machine I had when I first started - I have the same APS that ran that machine and now runs my 60 series. I talked to my husband, he said the newer computers have to run on Sine - and so need a Sine back up power. He said they just won't run, period, if you have a square wave hooked up to it. He said that the cpap machines that need a sine battery back up should say so in their product information. I believe the S9 machines need a sine battery, but I'm not sure.

I think if you can GET a sine, it would probably be the safest bet - especially with the way technology is changing. My husband said that NEW technology will have to have sine batteries . . .so can't hurt, definitely.

Thanks so much to you and your hubby. I will definitely go the Sine route. I feel a lot more confident now that I'm not going to mess up the machine.

quietmorning wrote:He said that most UPS's produce square waves - but he is not convinced that they damage equipment.

Hi,

The issue with the two machines that I have is that the humidifier uses a circuit that varies something called the "duty cycle" of the power to adjust the temperature of the heating element. That circuit depends on pure sine wave A/C. I believe that I can use both of my machines (M-Series BiPAP Auto and ResMed S8 VPAP 25) if I use only the blower unit and don't attempt to use the humidifier. I know that one or both of these companies made very expensive DC adpaters, and at least one of them finally came out with a DC capable humidifier. I am not up to date enough on the newer machines to know what they require. Either way, I wouldn't want to take chances with either of these machines on square wave power since they are so very expensive, and I cannot function without them.

-john-

jweeks wrote:

quietmorning wrote:He said that most UPS's produce square waves - but he is not convinced that they damage equipment.

Hi,

The issue with the two machines that I have is that the humidifier uses a circuit that varies something called the "duty cycle" of the power to adjust the temperature of the heating element. That circuit depends on pure sine wave A/C. I believe that I can use both of my machines (M-Series BiPAP Auto and ResMed S8 VPAP 25) if I use only the blower unit and don't attempt to use the humidifier. I know that one or both of these companies made very expensive DC adpaters, and at least one of them finally came out with a DC capable humidifier. I am not up to date enough on the newer machines to know what they require. Either way, I wouldn't want to take chances with either of these machines on square wave power since they are so very expensive, and I cannot function without them.

-john-

John, thank you for the information about the humidifiers - I'll talk to my husband about it, I may well switch to a sine wave ups as I really need my humidifier.

If you will read further down, my husband went more into detail - we both think that because technology is changing so fast, getting a sine wave ups vs a square wave would be the way to go - and now the with the humidifier . . . probably the best way to go, absolutely.

I'm going shopping.

A Simpler Plan: Power goes out, sleep in the car. Still out in the morning? Take a drive and top it off.


EDIT: In my 4 yrs on CPAP, the power has gone off for more than a few seconds exactly ZERO times.

LinkC wrote:A Simpler Plan: Power goes out, sleep in the car. Still out in the morning? Take a drive and top it off.


EDIT: In my 4 yrs on CPAP, the power has gone off for more than a few seconds exactly ZERO times.

Ours goes out nightly for a few seconds here and there - and since I've had my cpap machine, the power has gone out for 28 hours the first time, two days the second time and four hours the last time. And a week during my trip to CT. So, I use my battery and my UPS quite a bit. We live in an area that gets bad bad weather and all the power lines are still above ground. So, it's pretty much a necessity, here.

Lol. . .if I slept in the car with the kind of power outages we have, I might getta meet Mr. Oz.

quietmorning wrote:Lewsterr, you have the same machine I had when I first started - I have the same APS that ran that machine and now runs my 60 series. I talked to my husband, he said the newer computers have to run on Sine - and so need a Sine back up power. He said they just won't run, period, if you have a square wave hooked up to it. He said that the cpap machines that need a sine battery back up should say so in their product information. I believe the S9 machines need a sine battery, but I'm not sure.

I think if you can GET a sine, it would probably be the safest bet - especially with the way technology is changing. My husband said that NEW technology will have to have sine batteries . . .so can't hurt, definitely.

The "square wave" inverters/UPS units use the deceptive term "modified sine wave" or MSW. It's a variation of a square wave, and can damage some equipment or cause it not to work.

There's documentation from ResMed in my signature line links.

ResMed S9 blowers and humidifiers have no problem with MSW inverters. S8 series blower units are OK, but the humidifier will be damaged by MSW.

Respironics is silent on the issue. Personally, I'd assume PRS1 blowers and humidifiers are OK, and previous blowers are OK. I wouldn't used MSW on earlier model humidifiers.

Sine wave inverters are probably less efficient than MSW inverters, but that probably varies a lot between models. Some may claim good efficiency, but that's only true for full power usage. Low power loads like CPAP may be much less efficient.

I have a similar question to the OP, what do I do in a power outage that last for 2 weeks...? I was hit by Sandy, knocked my power out for 2 weeks and... my sleep was... needless to say, uncomfortable... Keep in mind that I don't have a car nor a driver's license.. lol.