From owner-freebsd-isp Wed Feb 21 11:53:44 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from federation.addy.com (federation.addy.com [208.11.142.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E4C5F37B401 for ; Wed, 21 Feb 2001 11:53:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jim@federation.addy.com) Received: from localhost (jim@localhost) by federation.addy.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA62714 for ; Wed, 21 Feb 2001 14:53:38 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from jim@federation.addy.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 14:53:38 -0500 (EST) From: Jim Sander Cc: freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: Redundancy... final(?) summary In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > solar The problem I see is you still need big batteries. It's unlikely that output from panels will be enough to run significant amounts of equipment, so you're really just extending the run-time of your UPSs. (probably only fractionally) Plus, if your power is out due to a storm there's not going to be a lot of sunshine, so you get zero benefit. I can't imagine having cells to back you up between holes in the clouds, and having high enough capacity panels to quickly recharge the batteries would be very affordable. Again, an emerging technology to watch- but supposedly affordable and useful fuel cells are much closer at hand. (depending upon who you believe of course) > http://tripplite.com/whatsnew/powerverter_aps.cfm I'm not sure of the technology limitations, but I bet you could use sealed cells (no fumes) or non lead-acid batteries, at (greatly) increased expense of course. (teleco grade cells, not automotive) Again, you'll need literally a room full of batteries for long-term outage protection. It's another possibility though, even if it's an expensive one. So that brings us back to fuel-cells which seem like the perfect merger of short-term and long-term power interrupt protection. Until then, or something else interesting becomes available I guess UPSs on every box, and a generator for long-term use is still the most reasonable solution. -=Jim=- P.S. Random thought... the other way to attack this problem is to reduce consumption. Single-chip servers with flash storage could be powered by flashlight batteries. :) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message