UPS Battery Backup for your Security Camera System – Featuring CP1500AVRLCD

Today I am adding a critical piece of hardware to my security camera setup.  An Uninterrupted Power Supply will keep your system powered up during an electrical failure.  Let’s look at one such power supply unit and see how long it will power various security cameras systems during an outage.

If you are using PC or Mac software to record your footage, you could take advantage of CyberPower’s software which would shutdown your machine gracefully when there is like 5 minutes of backup battery power remaining if the power is out for an extended period of time.  Unfortunately, at this point, the UPS cannot tell a dedicated Network Video Recorder or NVR to shut down properly, but we can still use a UPS to power all the components of your camera system during an electrical interruption.  But how long will the battery last?

This CP1500AVRLCD UPS is by Cyberpower and has a capacity of 1500 Volt Amps / 900 Watts.  This one is available on Amazon for about $140US, but they come in various sizes. Links will be in the description below and on my blog.  There is an LCD display panel on the front showing the capacity, load and run time information.  On the back, there are 2 sets of plug-ins.  One for serge protection and one for serge protection and battery backup.  There are 2 sealed lead acid batteries inside which normally last 3-5 years depending on the usage and number of discharges.  Since the batteries will recharge as soon as power is restored the battery should not be damaged by a full discharge. Also, the manufacture may have an additional safety net in place to prevent the battery form discharging past a certain point.  Use the included software to check in on the battery health.  Replacement cells are available, again on Amazon.

There are formulas you can use to figure out the expected runtime for a UPS.  I wonder if I can create a formula based on the actual results of my testing.  Yeah, maybe I’ll create a UPS calculation tool for security camera systems for my blog.  We’ll see.

In my testing, I will try to cover several security camera configuration scenarios and see how long this backup power supply will last in each.  I’ll measure the wattage requirements of each device I’ll be backing up beforehand to help understand the relationship between the power demands and total battery time.

Since the front LCD screen cannot be turned off in battery mode, let’s see what the runtime is with no electrical devices plugged into the unit.  Just the LCD screen will drain the battery in about 16 hours.

1. Let’s keep it simple and hook up a camera and start with this is a basic setup of 1 camera recording continuously to an SD card.  If the power is knocked out, your network will be down, so you won’t be able to access it, but the camera will keep recording.  This camera uses 3.2 watts of power and lasted 7.1 hours on 1 full UPS.  Wow, that’s impressive.  Seems like the LCD screen uses more power than this camera.
2. Next, we’ll look at a more common setup of an NVR with 1 hard drive and 4 cameras continuously recording.  All of the cameras are plugged into the NVR meaning they receiver power from the NVR.  Again, no other devices (monitor or switch or modem) will be backed up.  The NVR lasted 2.8 hours.  That too is much longer than I expected… awesome!!
3. Let’s say you have a monitor that always on displaying you 4 cameras from your NVR.  The equipment lasted 1.6 hours.
4. Let’s say you have 4 cameras connected to your NVR but they are LAN cameras powered by a PoE switch meaning they receiver power from the switch.  To make this a network, you’ll need a router which will need to be backed up.  The system lasted just over 2.5 hours.
5. When we add a monitor to this setup, it’s shortened it to 1.77 hours.
6. Let’s drop the monitor and include the modem so we can access the NVR from out of town during the outage.  The NVR, PoE switch (with 4 cameras), router and modem lasted over 2 hours.  That’s great!
7. What if you are using a computer to record footage instead of a dedicated NVR?  Without using CyberPower’s software, let’s see the maximum time that the UPS provides power for.  I’m backing up a PC, PoE switch with 4 cameras attached and a router.  The UPS died after 1.58 hours.
8. As soon as I turn the monitor on and back that up, that shortens the battery runtime to just over an hour.
9. Now let’s turn off the monitor and add the modem as if we are recording footage but we are away and want to access the PC remotely, like over Team Viewer. That lasted 1.55 hours.
10. Lastly, let’s look at a more extreme setup.  I have the more powerful PC as an NVR, the router and PoE switch with 10 cameras.  That’s a total of 222.6w and it lasted 33min.

I did notice that when the camera’s IR night vision lights are one, each camera uses an additional watt of power.  If you want to know how long your system will last with a UPS, I figured out a formula and created a power usage calculator for backup power supplies on my Blog based on my experiments.  Simply punch in the number of devices you required backed up and their actual wattage usage, if they are different than mine, which will be pre-populated in the individual wattage fields.  In the summary, I’ll should you how long various UPS models should last given your scenario.  It’s an estimate and your results may vary based on power fluctuations, the temperature, the battery life and so on.

All in all, I am impressed with how long this UPS keeps my equipment running during a power failure.  The LCD screen is perfect in providing all the information I need, like the capacity, load and estimated runtime.  In any case, backup power is an important part of any security system.  I hope that you found this information helpful, if so, please like this video and please subscribe to be notified when I publish more security camera related videos.