Safety First

[andywg]

Just been browsing through the Tunze page and came across this product:

Other power supply units for Turbelle® nanostream® 6055 - safety connector.

Turbelle® electronic 6055 has been fitted with an electronic motor. The pump can be operated on any direct-current source (battery, solar cells) from 10 V to 24 V. For a safe connection to the pump, we recommend the Turbelle® Safety Connector 6105.50, which contains a 4 amps fuse. The safety connector permits normal operation with the TUNZE® power supply unit, but in case of a power failure it will automatically switch over to a car battery or a direct-current source.

I like both sides of that. The first is that if you have a warm climate you can be run on any DC source, such as from a wind turbine or solar cell. This actually has me wondering whether you could recover some of the energy from the sump return pump by installing a water turbine on the drain and use that to generate electricity to drive the tank's flow (you would be saving very little on a pump which uses from 4-18W, but every little helps).

The alternate use (which again is nice) is the ability to connect up a redundant emergency power supply (example used is a car battery) which is used when the mains power us cut off. If this is capable to charge a battery then it would be amazing for anyone worried about power cuts.

This, to me, is a huge advantage of using DC pumps, it seems strange that so few companies (if any) are using DC pumps.

 

[idlefingers]

I have a 6055 but couldn't see how you can connect a battery to it (it mentions it in the instructions but didn't say how to).. do you need some other thing to be able to hook it up?

 

[andywg]

I have a 6055 but couldn't see how you can connect a battery to it (it mentions it in the instructions but didn't say how to).. do you need some other thing to be able to hook it up?

I don't have a 6055, but do have a DC unit (my wavebox). The plug on this goes into a transformer before going into the controller unit. The controller unit then connects to both the pump and the control panel (with the controls for feeding mode and pulse length). I would assume that one could connect a battery to the controller unit instead of the power supply, though the website shows it as just being connected to a separate box (6105.500 is the part number)

 

[idlefingers]

Ahh, I see. Cheers for that.

 

[chrissaysyes]

Good info! Considering adding this to my setup now as power cuts are a big worry of mine.

 

[SkiFletch]

This actually has me wondering whether you could recover some of the energy from the sump return pump by installing a water turbine on the drain and use that to generate electricity to drive the tank's flow (you would be saving very little on a pump which uses from 4-18W, but every little helps).

Interesting idea. Drains are tricky though, too much restriction and well, we know what can happen then.