[bennelson]

It looks like I got the UPS working!

I wired up 4 mis-matched batteries, which were only about half-charged, in series for 48V and ran them to the unit.

It looks like I can turn the machine on or off manually, whether it has AC connected to it or not.

Checking with my Kill-a-Watt, and a 60 watt lightbulb as a test load, the AC output from the inverter measured almost dead on at 60 hz (59.9)
Output voltage from the inverter was right about 117V AC.

I still don't have anyway of knowing for sure what the shape of the waveform it puts out is. I have heard terrible things about non-true waveform inverters and electronics like modern battery chargers. A friend of mine has an oscilioscope. Is that what is needed to check out the waveform of the inverted AC?

I would like to use the solar panels and a solar charge controller to recharge the 48V battery pack, and then use the UPS as an inverter to make AC from those same batteries. I imagine leaving the UPS OFF except when I need it for making AC.

The charging circuit in the UPS and the solar charger shouldn't interfere with each other, should they? I would think that both decide how much to charge based on the voltage of the battery. If the sun is shining, the solar charge controller would charge the batteries. If I flipped on the UPS then, it shouldn't charge the batts, because the solar charger would be raising the voltage.

On the other hand, if I was using the batteries a lot, and found that I was dropping the voltage on the whole pack, enough to want to recharge, and it is winter and cloudy for weeks, so the solar charging isn't doing anything, all I would have to do is plug in the UPS (to the existing grid-tie wall AC), and it would recharge the battery pack.

What I want to do is be able to take my garage "off-grid". Solar panels on the roof supply the 48V battery pack with power through the solar charge controller. AC power is supplied from the battery pack, as needed, through the AC outlets of the UPS.

Ideally, I would like to be able to charge the electric motorcycle, Citicar, or Metro through this system. I know the limit there is going to be how many amps those chargers take on initial draw. The battery charger I have been using has an analog pot adjustment, which can let you lower the amperage. If I just set this to less than what the UPS can supply, I think that will work fine.