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Ask HN: What's a good electrical UPS for a home dialysis machine?
3 points by nitred on July 10, 2024 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments
I'm asking here as well since there's a higher concentration of electrical engineers who would know these things.

I've been desperately searching for a good and affordable UPS solution for a home dialysis machine for my father in law (FIL). There's been several power outages due to storms where he lives and he's lost all blood in the machine on one occassion.

I've created a reddit post [1] as well with more details. But to summarize we're looking for a UPS solution with a power rating greater than 2000VA that can last upto 90 minutes. So far we've settled on APC SmartUPS products since they provide a 4ms switching time which I expect to be a good. The products cost around $4000.

Any additional info would be much appreciated! Any better UPS out there more suitable for medical equipment? Any cheaper UPS units other there with the similar quality to APC?

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dialysis/comments/1dztvgk/nxstage_system_one_electrical_power_outage_ups/



Not an expert, but...

What does the manufacturer of the dialysis machine recommend? (Either specific brands/models, or generalities about the quality of power needed by their machines.)

In many areas, "power failure, and resident needs power for a home medical device" is a situation that the local Fire Dept. / EMS / Utility regularly handles, or has protocols for. I'd check with them. If nothing else, if things really went sideways and they were responding to your FIL's home, having a UPS that they were familiar with could be a real benefit.


Just got back a reply from the manufacturer that they cannot recommend any UPS. They clarified the specs the UPS should have which is 1200VA + sine wave + 120V.


D*mn! ...but 100% understandable, from a liability PoV.

Though I might still be tempted to ask them if they could anti-recommend any UPS's. Saying that they heard of someone using a FooBar X2400, but it didn't end well, could still be useful. Especially if you'd tentatively decided on a FooBar X2400.


UPDATE:

The requirements have been brought down to 1200VA so the APC SMX2000LV (2000VA) seems to be a good choice for UPS. It's much cheaper on Amazon too.

There's a company called mediproducts that offer UPS units for medical equipment but their pricing is opaque at the moment.

Ideally I'd love to chain an affordable battery backup solution like EcoFlow or Anker Solix along with a good APC UPS. But I'm concerned about chaining two sine wave generators (they become sine wave generators when there's a power outage). But I have no clue if that causes any cascading issues or not.


You might want to look into EcoFlow. I use their River system to provide backup power for my home equipment (I have frequent power outages, usually about 2 hours in length). I can't tell you whether it'll work for medical equipment, though.


I checked out EcoFlow a few weeks ago along with the Anker Solix range. Anker's switching times are around 20ms and I wasn't able to find EcoFlow's switching times. The switching times indicate the UPS performance. It needs to be quite low for sensitive equipments like a dialysis machines. The APC SMX range provides switching times of 4ms.


Have you considered hiring a local electrical engineer of the sort that works on buildings?

I mention this because your loved one might be better served by an actual design rather than generic suggestions and construction rather than shopping. I mean this is kind of life and death. Good luck.




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