Laverda.... that unit puts out a modified sine wave (pretty much a square wave). It IS NOT AT ALL suitable to run a pump. It will ruin the pump and/or the UPS. There is a real potential for fire in such a setup.
I would suggest either looking into an inverter with a true sine wave hooked up to the pumps via a suitable CONTACTOR (not a $7 relay).... or look into the proper UPS with a true sine wave output. However, that is going to be a BIG expensive problem. Why?
Even if you get an APC BACK UPS PRO (decently formed sine wave output). It will only produce that sine wave during a complete outage. During over or under voltage conditions (brown outs etc.) The unit uses what is called "buck boost" technology. It skews the sine wave to aproximate the proper output voltage. THIS is again very bad for motors, ballasts, or anything else that is a reactive load.
These units are designed to run switch mode power supplies that don't give a damn about the waveform or how "clean" it is, as they are dirty PSUs in their own right.
Now lets talk about HEATERS and a UPS. Heaters are puely resistive and you would think that they don't care about the shape of the wave form either.... and they don't! However your UPS is not designed to run purely resistive loads either. When the heater kicks on it will cause a voltage sag on the UPS output. The UPS will try to compensate by boosting the output voltage... which in turn will cause a drop in available current. This in many cases will have devastating effects on the UPSs output compensation circuitry or the DC bus management portion of the UPS.
Is your 100W heater going to burn down a 1500kVa UPS... most likely not. But you will surely not get the expected run time out of it either.
This is all without talking about power factor and other problem with the APC stuff and your application.
How do you get around all of this? Well you buy a high quality UPS like a liebert GXT2 series that is an ONLINE UPS. The DC bus powers the outputs all the time and therefore there is no BUCK/BOOST and you get a 100% true clean sine wave all of the time regardless of the input voltage or noise (or lack of input voltage).
Where does that leave you? Well it is much cheaper to buy a good inverter and small rack of batteries. MUCH CHEAPER.
If you have an outdoor area with landscaping (close to your AC maybe) and close to you tank room, you can build a small vented battery box (even large rubbermaid container). Put your batteries and Inverter outdoors (you don't want to run low voltage DC long distances without BIG wires). From their run the output of the inverter to a breaker and then to your contactor (relay) that also holds the mains feed.
Then again a 7kw generac natural gas generator is only about $2500 intalled and will keep your beer cold as well as your fish alive... all automatically and without trips to the gas station for fuel. Don't worry about the grimmace from the wife, if you try to sell it as "look honey you can use the electric stove when the power goes out".... well your an idiot. You just say "look honey, we can watch Sandra Bullock movies when the power goes out, all we have to do is order then generator... you will not even miss your favorite scene because it is automatic!" and your in like flyn.
Bean
