UPS for general use?

[AzzaB]

This may be a dumb question and I may be looking at the completely wrong product for the use, but I wanted to know about using a UPS for general use?

 

Long story short, I plan on traveling and using my laptop + other devices that require mains power for periods of time at weekends in my car. So i was looking into ways of having a large storage of power in my car boot that I can plug mains sockets into. Would a UPS be suitable for this or are they not ideal for slow power draw? If not what is available on the market for this, or if it is what exactly should I be looking for and steering clear of?

 

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[LukeSavenije]

ups generally need a power source to load

 

you probably want a generator, not a ups

[Bishop Crane]

Your biggest issue will be that many UPS's will refuse to power on if they have no mains power, despite the battery being full.

UPS's are primarily designed to deal with handling that short period between the power going off and it coming back on again.

If its for your car you may be better off with an AC Inverter, the idea is that it powers itself from the vehicles 12V supply and then converts that to an AC outlet.  The issue here is that you need to size it properly to your cars engine and for it to be effective your engine needs to be on.

 

You may be better off with a portable generator, just making sure you match your wattage requirements to the generator size.

[ewitte]

I'd look for a lithium powerbank  with a wall plug you can get them as large as you want but will get big/expensive.  Find something with 100-200W available power it shouldn't be too big or expensive.  Very important it is lithium or your power draw will hugely cut into available power and you want to stay over 50%.

 

Something like this https://amzn.to/2MB2AOq

 

Also here is a graph of what happens with SLA (this is a huge 12V 120Ah car battery)

 

 

 

[AzzaB]

Thank you all  for your advice! I'll start doing some research into some suitable portable generators!:)