Back up power for a room

I'm looking for possible backup power to run a dehumidifier in my fishroom. The room is really well insulated and holds heat, and the dehumidifier heats it. They send out air 2 or 3 degrees above room temperature, and all winter, the baseboard heaters don't come on. If I were to have a longer power outage, I could go without all power for a few days, as I stock my tanks lightly. But heat is the great worry - the fishroom is an insulated construction inside a larger, unheated outbuilding/garage. If I could run the dehumidifier, I could heat the room without having to rewire for a generator.

In Canada, cold will be an issue for the next few months.

Any suggestions for a rechargeable battery system that would be economical, but good for a few hours running a standard energy efficient dehumidifier? I'd like to keep costs down, so a basic set up in terms of size.

Gary, I too run a small dehumidifier (720 watts) in my fish room. But I live way south of you where if we lose power for a few days no big deal. One of those emergency power systems would work well for you but the problem is a rechargeable battery system is pretty expensive. Byrony makes one but it is expensive. You might try searching camping sites to find something that could work. Another option is using hand warmers under your tanks. They sell them in the camping section in the box stores. They work well and last for about a day or so.

I’m assuming you get enough snow that would complicate a basic solar panel???
We had a basic inexpensive solar panel on the top of our family ice fish house, and a car battery with an inverter, that would run a color tv… I think the panel deep cycle battery, and inverter were around $250.00 several years ago… I know batteries are more expensive today, but expect the panel and inverter are cheaper… if you are in a dryer area, or not afraid of the maintenance of brushing off the panel, that may work for you…

Also the other day I saw a new battery powered tool from Milwaukee a small inverter that fits on one of their tool batteries… as I use that brand of tools, and have some of their bigger batteries I may have to buy one of those, the whole thing is the same size as their tool batteries, so the whole unit is the size of 2 batteries you would put on a drill

We’ll see if that link works… but in looking for that, looks like most all the tool brands offer inverters for their tool batteries, which would allow you to charge somewhere else or change out multiple batteries if needed

What is the duty cycle of your humidifier. 750 watts at even at a 20% duty cycle will require 3600 watt hours of power storage for a 24 hour period. I don't think there is an inexpensive way to provide a backup for this.

You don't care if the living space gets cold? A generator or a Tesla/e truck make the most sense to me. A 1500W Inverter connected to a running car could work, will use a fair amount of fuel.

For staters look at the label on the dehumidifier. It should list the power consumption in watts. then multiply that by the number of hours you want it to run on a battery. That will give you the watt hours of soft torage you need. For example if the dehumidifier says 1000 watts (1 kilowatt) and you want 6 hours of backup power you need a battery with 6KWH of storage. The power you need wil likely be less than this but I have no way to know. Then look for battery backup system with a watt hour or kilowatt hour rating that size or larger. That 18 volt battery pack is probably too small. There are battery backup units the size of a large book to a suite case in size.

i don't have a battery backup at home but at work i had to maintain equipment with them. It is a good ideate periodically (monthly) to unplug them forman outlet to verify they are working correctly.

This is my biggest tool battery, I don’t know their code, but this is at least equivalent of 3 of their normal batteries… it’ll run my drill/ driver for a week of work, or part time on the weekends , for more than a month…. Be curious how long it would run an inverter with a normal appliance on it???

I live in a place where power outages are common. Most last for a matter of hours. But in 2011 and 2012 we had a hurricane come up the east coast and hit us in NY. Both times the power was out for 13 days. I live in the woods and there were a lot of downed power lines.

Fortunately, we had installed a whole house back-up generator prior to those events. We did this because we were caring for an ageing mother (in her 90s) with dementia. She could not survivie an extended power outage during either extreme heat or cold and had a full time health aide. Hotels are not plentiful in the area and they fill up fast when outages are extended. But what sealed the deal for us getting the gennie was the fact that iIhad been working with zebra plecos and was pretty successful. I came to the realization that between the breeding stock and the offspring there were many $1,000s worth of fish in just a few of my 15 tanks .

Now the problem with out solution was cost. No battery or solar system can provide what we needed and at the time we installed the gennie there were not great option for battery storage of electricity on a whole house scale. The nice part of our system is that it will come on automatically if the public power is out for 20 seconds and turns off when the utility supply returns. Our back-up power is hooked to the incoming power line before it reaches the house, so no internal rewiring was needed.

Now as for other options as have been mentioned, most are not prictical in the majority of power outages. If they last for more than a few hours, i.e. days and days, using batteries would not be cheaper than a gennie and woult not provide a week;s worth of power. Moreover, if you lose power in the dead of winter in Canada you will need to drain your pipes of water or they will freeze and that will result in pipes breaking and, when the ice melts, the home floods. And how long might the power be out? Who knows. But are you willing to live in a house that is basically as cold as it is outside if the fish space was OK?

Our gennie had been deliverd but it was not yet all hooked up when we had a power outage in cold weather. It only lasted about 6 hours, but with no power to tanks I was rotating my battery powered air pumps between tanks. But my tanks with the zebra plecos needs to be no cooler than 78F or a tad cooler for the most part and I normally run them anywhere from 82 to 92. So air was not the problem, heat was. I had no idea how long we might be without power. My solution was to scoop out a pot of water from the tank, then take it outside and heat it on our grill. I then returned warmed water to the tank. I do not know what I could have done if that outage was a day long and not just hours. The house was cooling pretty quickly.