I'm running Everything On Batteries, Power supply

[madaboutlawns]

Hi Guys,

It seems I just can't keep still.
Every day I'm trying little upgrades.

This one might sound a little off the wall but I'm sure in this day and age that I'm not the only one doing this.

I have 9 250w solar panels on one of my roofs.
I have these running into 10 2880w batteries.
I then put this bank of power through an inverter to make A/C power. It's a full off grid system.
I have enough storage to last the whole house about 4 days, if the sun went out.
I was running my house from it - apart from the kitchen, kettle, oven, fridge freezer etc - I use LED lights and the only other stuff I use is LED TV's, HIFI, laptop / phone chargers.
Now I just run my HiFi on this power and I've put the rest of the house back on to mains. It sounds great.

Can somebody please help me understand the whole power, clean power thing. Does my theory of running my system on clean DC batteries converted to A/C 240v seem right? Is off grid going to be cleaner, less polluted signal etc.
There's plenty of power, and it will power my system for about 2 weeks before it runs the batteries out, although it's being topped up all day every day.
Should I go back to mains power?
I got the idea from a magazine article in the 90's I saw a Japanese was running his system from batteries.

I first bought the solar system because my wife never turned anything off and left everything plugged in, so I invested in the solar system a few years ago and told her now it's free, use as much as like.

Thank you everybody for your comments and help.

[angelface]

Bel canto used to run their source, pre and DAC components for something called a virtual battery supply.

It makes a big difference to performance!

This avoids the DC --> AC --> DC problem that regenerators and it seems your system use.

I imagine it is more important for sensitive components such as DACs, streamers and CD transports.

[madaboutlawns]

If I can figure it out, I'll post a few pics

[madaboutlawns]

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[madaboutlawns]

Pics could be better, but It gives the general idea.

[madaboutlawns]

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[madaboutlawns]

I'll start having a look at what people like Bel Canto are doing with stuff like Virtual Battery Supply.

It'd be good if I knew anything about electronics.
Like the HiFi basics, What is a cap? etc

[Starwarsmike2422]

Hi, very good idea. I’m an ASR audio owner. Both my amp & phonostage run from external battery packs. When I switch to non-battery you can hear a reduction in sound quality.

Only point I’ll make is, & as per ASR manual. You’ll need to ensure the batteries are all in good order, & replaced every xx amount of years.

Also good to get another person to give opinion to what sounds best, mains or battery.

[hifinutt]

yes , i have no idea why bel canto stopped doing their virtual battery supplies . they are brilliant and i have had a bel canto pre 3 on mains and now use a vbs pre 3 which is very good indeed .

[mojo]

I believe that the "running on batteries" idea is meant to be based on driving the audio equipment straight off battery DC.

In your situation you're actually passing the battery DC into an inverter that simulates the mains AC power supply network, and then running that through the mains power supplies in the audio gear back down to DC to run the amps, etc.

The idea behind using batteries is that it should avoid all of the noise generated by the AC-DC power supplies - which you are not. You are adding a DC-AC inverter into the mix as well!

[madaboutlawns]

Yes, I was a little concerned as to how clean the power from my inverter would be.
I was of the opinion that being off grid takes out noise from the grid.

Is it possible to power my system with direct DC?
I can't think of a way it would be.

[mojo]

Yes, I was a little concerned as to how clean the power from my inverter would be.
I was of the opinion that being off grid takes out noise from the grid.

Without some pretty expensive analytical equipment there's no way of knowing how much noise there is on the grid where it enters your home. In many countries the majority of generation still comes from colossal rotating machines, and this should generate a very "clean" AC sine wave. Compared to this your inverter will certainly be very noisy.

But of course the mains network may bring in noise, both from other forms of generation (e.g. other solar arrays near to you) and from other power consumers - if you are near an industrial area this could represent a lot of electrical noise, while if you're in a mainly residential area it could be very little.