Thankful Thursday

[mdlbear]

Today, and specifically this evening, I am grateful for:

• Batteries. We're having a power outage. Hardly notice. I wonder how long the UPS will keep my CPAP up.
• A backup drive that doesn't require a separate power supply. That may be what killed the last one.
• An electric car with lots of range. (It does significantly better in warm weather.) But what in blazes were we thinking?
• Colleen's scooter -- likewise.
• Electric toothbrushes. Teethbrush? The dental tech said that my teeth were a lot cleaner than last time. I have no idea what I'm doing differently.
• Always having something new to learn.
• My family's health and safety. That's not something we can take for granted anymore. If we ever could.
• Being far enough north that twilight lasts a long time.

Comments

[archangelbeth]

I hope the power comes back before the CPAP battery wears out!! And everything else, ack.

[mdlbear]

It's back -- was only out for an hour. I'm reasonably sure that my UPS will keep the CPAP going all night. Can't prove it because I don't have the UPS spec handy. The CPAP pulls about 80 watts, which is probably the maximum and something of an overestimate.

As for everything else, yeah. Ack.

[archangelbeth]

Whew for the power back!! (Spouse does not have a battery for his CPAP; if we lose power for too long, we wind up needing to get a hotel. See also the windstorm around last Halloween, where the power... kept not coming back, so we wound up in three different hotels over the duration of that one. "Surely the power will be back sometime today!" we say. And surely... it is not. So I go researching hotels on my phone (or the computer, wifi-tethered to my phone), and make a reservation. *SIGH*)

Sorry, too much babbling. ...We need solar panels. O:(

[johnpalmer]

I did see that some CPAPs have a 12 volt adapter, and that it's much, much more efficient to use that when it's there - I've seen reports of 3 nights versus <12 hours on "camping batteries". This makes perfect sense if the CPAP is using its power brick to step down household voltage to 12v DC. (Which always makes me wonder why none step down to 12v Marvel.)

[mdlbear]

I really wish somebody would put a 12V outlet on a UPS.

Hmm...

[johnpalmer]

You know, I hadn't thought it through, but I just realized when you said "UPS," you probably meant an honest-to-goodness UPS. There are "CPAP camping battery" search results on Amazon that are basically BFBs with a few output ports. They usually have a 12v output, and obviously, if you're shopping with the CPAP keyword, you're far more likely to find one that has at least one major CPAP brand that has an adapter of the right sort.

(BFB="Big Frigging Batteries", if it wasn't obvious.)

[mdlbear]

Yeah; that's probably what I need to look for.

[moem]

Ooh, an electric car... that's great. We're interested too, the solar panels on our roof would be a great source to charge it from!

[mdlbear]

Chevrolet Bolt EV -- I'm currently getting ~3.9mi/KWh = 16KWh/100Km. It performs much better when the weather is warm, presumably due to reaction kinetics in the battery.

[alatefeline]

<3