inverters and batteries?

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supafuzz
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inverters and batteries?

Post by supafuzz » Tue Oct 06, 2015 2:00 pm

Any one using inversion chargers with batteries to run critical gear in the studio?
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magneticfidelity
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Post by magneticfidelity » Sat Oct 31, 2015 9:17 am

Absolutely. It started off with realising that the mains frequency is not as stable as I would like it to be, so I used a high quality pure sine wave inverter, quartz controlled with excellent stability, to run the main motor of my disk cutting lathe. It is a synchronous AC motor, so speed stability greatly depends on the mains frequency.

We are in a rural area with frequent power cuts and frequent thunder storms. We've already had a direct lightning hit on the building a few weeks ago but luckily all the audio gear survived. The first thing that was ever put into the studio was a custom electrical installation with several layers of protection, noise filtering and stabilisation for all the audio gear. Separate supplies for motors and electronics, and several layers of over voltage protection. The power reaching the audio gear is two phase 230 VAC. All this setup made sure that even a direct lightning hit wouldn't damage the gear, but it still couldn't save the day, when having a power cut or brown out midway through cutting a record.

The goal now is to power all the existing protective devices from a pure sine wave inverter that runs off a massive battery bank. This way it wouldn't make any difference if there is a power cut or not. It's a pretty expensive exercise, but then again, lacquer disks are also pretty expensive. And I've already wasted a few due to power cuts.

It also completely isolates your gear from the neighbouring washing machine, factory, and so on. However, most inverters do not provide very clean power although they do very good in frequency stability. You would still need a voltage stabiliser and filtering between the inverter and your gear and two phase AC makes a world of difference, if you really want to go all the way.
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Post by dfuruta » Sun Nov 01, 2015 7:43 am

magneticfidelity wrote:Absolutely. It started off with realising that the mains frequency is not as stable as I would like it to be
I'm curious about this; in the US the frequency is supposedly stable within 0.02Hz (0.03%). Is it much worse where you're at?

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Post by magneticfidelity » Sun Nov 01, 2015 1:00 pm

yep, much worse. It's not rapidly changing, but it can be different from one day to another. It's not bad enough fro most applications but it is certainly bad enough for synchronous turntable motors. They will still work, but at the wrong speed. I am located in Greece, thing are fairly primitive here compared to the USA.
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