Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem, looking at a very specific corner of the house that usually has about five different lights blinking at me.
And I am Herman Poppleberry, the man who installed most of those blinking lights and then spent three hours cable managing them so Corn wouldn't trip.
Which I appreciate, Herman. Truly. But you know who else has been looking at that corner? Our housemate Daniel. He actually sent us a voice memo this morning about that very setup. It seems our recent deep dives into networking and digital preparedness got him thinking about the literal foundation of all of it. Power.
It is the ultimate bottleneck, right? You can have the best router in the world, a mesh network that reaches the back garden, and a satellite link for backup, but if the electrons stop flowing, you are just left with a very expensive collection of plastic boxes.
Exactly. And Daniel was specifically asking about the humble Uninterruptible Power Supply, or U-P-S. He has been using them for his desktop and his networking gear, and he noticed something interesting. While a U-P-S might only keep a power hungry gaming P-C alive for fifteen minutes, it seems to keep the router and some emergency lights going for hours.
That is the low draw advantage. It is a completely different ballgame when you are talking about ten watts versus five hundred watts.
So the question he posed is, can we treat a U-P-S, or a variant of one, as a sort of lightweight generator? Can we scale this up? And importantly for Daniel, who is very conscious about the environment, are there options that do not involve throwing away a heavy lead acid battery every two years?
This is such a timely topic for us specifically, Corn. I mean, we live in an older building in Jerusalem. We know the Friday afternoon struggle. Everyone is home, the ovens are on, the heaters are cranked up because it is January, and suddenly, the circuit breaker decides it has had enough.
Oh, I remember that one Friday where we were trying to record and the dryer kicked in at the same time as the air conditioning. Everything just went black.
And that is exactly where the U-P-S saved us. But Daniel is right to push the boundaries here. Most people think of a U-P-S as a bridge. You use it to save your work and shut down gracefully. But if you shift your perspective, you can see it as a reservoir. A small, silent, indoor friendly power plant.
Let us start with the basics then. For those who might only know a U-P-S as that heavy black brick under their desk that beeps when the power flickers, what is actually happening inside that box?
At its simplest, a U-P-S is three components in a trench coat. You have a battery, a charger that keeps that battery topped up from the wall, and an inverter. The inverter is the magic part. It takes the Direct Current, or D-C, from the battery and turns it back into the Alternating Current, or A-C, that your electronics expect.
Right, and there are different types, right? I remember you telling me that not all inverters are created equal.
Definitely. This is a huge point for anyone looking to use these as mini generators. Most cheap U-P-S units use what we call a simulated sine wave or a modified square wave. It is a chunky, stepped version of electricity. It is fine for most power supplies in computers, but some sensitive motors or high end audio gear really hate it. They want a pure sine wave, which is smooth and looks like a perfect rolling hill on an oscilloscope.
So if Daniel wants to run his networking gear and some lights, does he need that pure sine wave?
For a router? Usually not. Most of those use a little power brick that converts the A-C back to D-C anyway, so they are pretty forgiving. But if he wants to run a high end fan or some specific medical equipment, he would want to look for a pure sine wave unit.
Okay, so let us talk about the lightweight generator idea. Daniel mentioned using it for networking, lights, and phone charging. That is a very specific, low energy profile. How long can a standard U-P-S actually last on that kind of load?
Let us do some back of the envelope math, because I know you love it when I get the calculator out. A standard, modern entry-level portable power station in twenty twenty-six usually has a capacity of about two hundred and fifty-six watt hours.
Okay, two hundred and fifty-six watt hours. And our router uses what? Ten watts?
Exactly. Ten watts for the router, maybe another five watts for a modern L-E-D bulb. So you are drawing fifteen watts. In a perfect world, that is seventeen hours of power. But, and this is the big but, inverters are not one hundred percent efficient. They lose energy as heat during the conversion. Usually, modern units are looking at about ninety percent efficiency. So you might get fifteen hours of internet and light from a small portable unit.
That is actually more than enough for most local outages we see here. But Daniel asked how large these can get. If he wanted to survive a twenty-four hour outage, or even a weekend, what are his options?
This is where we cross the bridge from a traditional U-P-S into what the industry calls Portable Power Stations or sometimes Solar Generators. They are essentially massive U-P-S units. Instead of two hundred watt hours, you can get units that are one thousand, two thousand, or even five thousand watt hours.
Five thousand watt hours? That is huge. That is not a brick under your desk anymore.
No, at that point, it usually has wheels and a handle like a suitcase. But the principle is the same. The difference is the battery chemistry. This addresses Daniel's second point about sustainability and replacement.
Right, because the traditional U-P-S uses lead acid batteries. The same stuff in a car battery. They are heavy, they do not like being drained completely, and they die if you leave them empty for too long.
Exactly. They are basically nineteenth century technology. If you want a generator style experience, you have to look at Lithium Iron Phosphate, or L-i-F-e-P-O-four. This is the gold standard right now.
I have heard you mention L-i-F-e-P-O-four before. Why is that the winner for a home setup?
A few reasons. First, longevity. A lead acid battery might give you two hundred to five hundred cycles before it loses significant capacity. A Lithium Iron Phosphate battery can give you three thousand to five thousand cycles. If you used it every single day, it would still last you over ten years.
That is a massive difference. So it is more expensive upfront, but you are not replacing it every two years.
Precisely. And they are much safer. They are very stable. They do not have the same thermal runaway risks as the lithium ion batteries in your phone or laptop.
But Herman, Daniel specifically asked about sustainability. Is there anything even better than lithium?
Actually, yes. Just this month at C-E-S twenty twenty-six, we saw the rise of Sodium-ion power stations. Sodium is everywhere—it is basically salt. These batteries do not use lithium, cobalt, or nickel. They are incredibly sustainable, and they work in extreme cold, down to minus forty degrees, which is great if you are in a place where the grid fails during a blizzard.
Sodium-ion? That sounds like a game changer for the environment. Are they as heavy as the old lead bricks?
They are a bit heavier than lithium, but much lighter than lead. And they are safer because they are almost impossible to set on fire. For Daniel, who wants sustainability, Sodium-ion is the new frontier.
So, if Daniel gets one of these portable power stations, can he still use it like a U-P-S? Does it just sit between the wall and his gear?
Some can, and some cannot. This is a critical distinction. A true U-P-S has a very fast transfer time. When the power goes out, it switches to battery in less than twenty milliseconds. Your computer does not even notice. Most high-end portable power stations now have a twenty millisecond switchover, which is fine for a router or a desktop. But you have to check the box for U-P-S mode.
That is a really important detail. So if the goal is uninterruptible, you have to check the specs for that transfer time.
Exactly. But for Daniel's use case, keeping the essentials going, a slightly slower switch is a small price to pay for having ten times the capacity.
Let us talk about the easily replaceable part of his question. One of the frustrations with modern tech is that the batteries are often glued in. Is that the case with these larger units?
It depends on the brand. While you can't usually swap the internal cells like a double-A battery, the industry is moving toward modularity. Companies are now making stackable battery blocks. If your capacity drops after ten years, you just buy a new battery module and click it onto the existing inverter brain. We also saw the first bio-based plastic housings this year, which reduces the carbon footprint of the box itself by twenty percent.
I want to go back to the low draw gear for a second. We talked about routers and lights. What about phone charging? People always worry about their phones during an outage.
Phone charging is incredibly efficient on these units, especially if you use the built in U-S-B ports. If you plug your phone charger into the A-C outlet on a U-P-S, you are doing a double conversion. You are going from D-C battery to A-C wall power, and then your phone brick is going from A-C back to D-C. You lose a lot of energy in that process.
Oh, so if the power station has a U-S-B-C port built in, you should just use that directly?
Absolutely. You can charge a smartphone dozens of times on even a small power station if you stay on the D-C side. It is much more efficient.
That is a great tip. Now, Herman, let us address the size question. Daniel asked how large these can be. We mentioned the suitcase sized ones, but is there a limit? Could someone run their whole house on this?
Technically, yes. You start getting into Home Backup territory. You are looking at things like the Tesla Powerwall three or the EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra X. These are units that can be wired directly into your home's electrical panel. We are talking thirty, forty, or even one hundred and eighty kilowatt hours of storage.
One hundred and eighty kilowatt hours? That is huge.
It is enough to run a whole house for a week. And in twenty twenty-six, these systems are becoming part of what we call Virtual Power Plants.
Wait, I have heard that term. Is that where the utility company pays you?
Exactly! If you have a big battery at home, you can sign up for a program where the utility company borrows a little bit of your power during a heatwave to keep the grid from crashing. In some places, homeowners are earning over two hundred and fifty dollars a year in passive income just for letting their battery sit there.
That is fascinating. So my little backup unit could be part of the solution for the whole city.
We are moving toward a decentralized grid. It is the same thing we talked about with networking in episode two hundred and thirty-seven. Moving away from one big central point of failure to a mesh of smaller, resilient nodes.
It all connects. The data, the hardware, and the electricity.
It really does. And I think Daniel's instinct to look for sustainable, replaceable options is where the whole industry is going.
So, if you had to give Daniel a getting started list for his lightweight generator project, what would it be?
First, audit your gear. Get a little Kill A Watt meter and see what your router and lights actually draw. Second, look for a unit with Lithium Iron Phosphate or the new Sodium-ion chemistry. Do not buy lead acid in twenty twenty-six. Third, make sure it has the outputs you need, specifically high-wattage U-S-B-C ports.
And what about the size?
For a survive the weekend setup for networking and lights? Five hundred to one thousand watt hours is the sweet spot. It is portable, relatively affordable, and will give you a massive safety margin.
I think I am going to look into getting one of those for our recording setup too. Just so we don't have another Friday afternoon disaster.
I have already been looking at a few models, Corn. Don't worry, I have a spreadsheet.
Of course you do. You know, it is interesting. We often think of preparedness as this intense, prepper thing with bunkers and canned beans. But what Daniel is describing is really just digital comfort.
It is resilience. It is the ability to maintain your quality of life when things get a little sideways. Whether it is a storm, a grid failure, or just too many people in Jerusalem cooking at the same time, having your own reservoir of energy is a game changer.
It reminds me of what we talked about in episode two hundred and twenty-two regarding data brokers and how much of our lives are online. If our digital selves are so important, we have to protect the physical infrastructure that keeps them accessible.
Exactly. No power, no internet. No internet, no digital self. You are basically back in the nineteen eighties, which was great for music, but not so great for getting work done.
Hey, I liked the eighties. But I do like having high speed internet more.
Fair point.
Before we wrap up, I think we should mention that if you are doing this, you really need to be careful with the wiring. Herman, you always say do not daisy chain.
Oh, absolutely. Do not plug a U-P-S into another U-P-S. Do not plug a power strip into a U-P-S and then fill it with ten different things. You can cause a fire or just trip the internal breaker. Keep it simple. One unit, one set of essential gear.
Good advice. And hey, if you are listening and you have a setup like this, or if you have found a particularly good sustainable brand that Daniel should know about, let us know.
Yeah, we love hearing about the D-I-Y setups too. Some people build their own using marine batteries and separate inverters. It is a bit more work, but it is the ultimate in replaceable parts.
That might be a bit much for Daniel, but it is good to know the option exists.
Actually, I think Daniel would love the D-I-Y route if he had the time. Maybe that is a future project for the house.
One project at a time, Herman. I still haven't finished the smart mirror you started in October.
Hey, that is waiting on a specific part from overseas!
Likely story. Well, I think we have covered a lot of ground here. From the chemistry of the batteries to the physics of the inverters.
It is a deep rabbit hole, but a very practical one.
Definitely. And before we go, I just want to say, if you are enjoying these deep dives, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It genuinely helps other curious people find the show.
It really does. We see every single one and it makes the research hours feel worth it.
You can find all our past episodes and a way to get in touch at our website, myweirdprompts.com. We have the full RSS feed there for subscribers too.
And thanks to Daniel for sending this in. It is a good reminder to look at the foundations of our tech.
Absolutely. Keep those prompts coming. We will be back next week with another one.
Until then, keep your batteries topped up and your curiosity high.
This has been My Weird Prompts. Thanks for listening.
See you next time!
Bye everyone.
Take care.
Oh, and Herman?
Yeah?
Don't think I didn't notice you trying to sneak that spreadsheet into my inbox already.
It is just for your reference, Corn! Purely educational!
Right. We will see about that.
It has graphs!
Goodbye, Herman.
Goodbye.
