batteries – Graves On SOHO Technology

Welcoming the first cold front of fall 2026

The past few days have been a welcome break from the longest, driest summer in recent memory. The first cold front of the fall came a little early. That means that last week’s daytime highs in the 90s gave way to highs of just 72F over the weekend. And overnight lows in the high 50s. It’s most welcome.

Julio, our ten-year-old Dogo Argentino mix, finds this change in the weather most invigorating. He’s not the only one. Our air conditioner is getting a welcome break. I woke early one morning to dead silence. The condenser of our air conditioner, which sits outside our bedroom window was idle. Normally, that sort of thing would be cause for concern. Has it failed? Not in this instance. It was simply not required. Just blissful silence.

Oh, bother. Where art thou? Base Power

I first wrote about Base Power back in May 2024. Inspired by Doug Lewin’s Energy Capital podcast, I signed up for the companies mailing list, in the hope of learning when they Austin-based company would be offering service in Houston. In fact, I’ve signed up twice!

We’ve received literally nothing from the company. Putting our address into a page on their web site they report “Great news! Base is coming to Houston soon! We’ll be installing in your area later this year.”

Our Two UPS Have Gone Down

December 30, 2014
Michael Graves
infrastructure

Belkin UPSs We have a pair of uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) on the property. Both are somewhat vintage models from Belkin. A 1000 VA model (F6C1000) in my office rack powers our network core. A smaller, 900 VA model (F6C900) in a central closet, powers those network components that live in the house. Both of them have been misbehaved in recent weeks. At this very moment they are basically non-functional.

I’ve long believed that the network core should survive minor power line irregularities. This belief stemmed in part from our migration to IP-based telephones for home & office. Our phone service should survive a power line bump. With both UPS in their fault-riddled state a loss of line power, even just a power line switching bump, caused our entire network to go down. This situation eventually had to be addressed.

The sealed batteries is consumer UPS such as ours have a fixed lifespan. At a certain point they simply cannot retain a charge, and the device throws an error. From that point onward they become nothing more than an overweight outlet strip.