Where can I find a battery backup for my lizard cage that will last at least 8 hours?


battery backup
angeldust0931 asked:


I live in an area that tends to have at least 1 major (12 to 18 hour) power outage every year. I’m trying to find a back up system that will power at least 1 of the lights and the under cage heater (approximately 300 to 400 watts) for about 8 hours. Anyone have any suggestions?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Reptiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Where can I find a battery backup for my lizard cage that will last at least 8 hours?”

  1. Iain L Says:
    January 14th, 2009 at 12:19 pm

    What about trying some of these eco/enviro friendly type of things like small wind turbines that store electricity In batteries? I can’t explain the science but I’ve seen them on tv
    The link I’ve given is a bit expensive but it shows the type of thing I mean

  2. Az R Says:
    January 17th, 2009 at 1:47 am

    This is tricky. You’re going to have to look for a UPS power supply and you’re going to have to evaluate it carefully. Most of them list their capacity in VoltAmps or VA. This is rather useless to you. What you want to find is the wattage capacity and the time it can maintain that power output.

    For example, this guy can do 1200 watts for 65 minutes. So if you’re consuming 300 watts, you might get about 4 hours and change out of it. Obviously, the more capacity you get, the more it costs. So you might need to finesse your system a bit - maybe forgo a light in favor of just running the heating pads.

    Another option would be to just get enough capacity to for several hours, and then keep a couple of those chemical heating pads on hand, or a hot water bottle (if you have a gas-based way to heat water). Wrap them carefully in a towel and set it in the cage with your lizard to keep him from burning himself.

    Alternatively, you can make your own if you feel comfortable with that. The advantage of this is that you can get wet-cell car batteries with relatively enormous capacity.

    amazon.com and newegg.com have quite a few UPS devices, though most of them are meant for computers and designed to give you 5-10 minutes to save your work and shut things down.

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