Using a solar panel and wall outlet to charge UPS?

[Anonymous user]

I'm working on a project for college where we need to design the backup communications system for a local town using routers in a big mesh configuration. Because it is an emergency backup it will need a battery to keep the router/amplifier working for at least an hour (about 6~10W). I have a small 20W 12V solar panel and I plan to purchase an APC UPS to provide the backup power. Would it be possible to charge the UPS from both the wall outlet and the solar panel 120V inverter?

UPS - http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BE550G%2DCN&tab=models

Solar Panel - http://www.eshops.gr/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=11262

Solar Panel Inverter - TBD

Message was edited by: coolguy

[BillP]

i asked around a bit to see if anyone had any ideas. If you want to provide two independent power sources to the UPS, maybe an Automatic Transfer Switch would be helpful so you could switch between the inputs to the UPS. If you do land and solar separately, you would just need to make sure your solar inverter has a pure sinewave output.

[Anonymous user]

Hey thanks for the response. I did some research and I found [http://www.invertersrus.com/powermax-pmts-50.html] . I think it may be the solution to our problem, but i'm going to continue looking for something maybe a little bit smaller since we don't expect to be pulling a lot of current.

Message was edited by: coolguy

[BillP · Accepted solution]

sounds like we were on the same page 🙂