Without return pumps and powerheads, oxygen in the water drops and waste builds up in dead spots. Heaters stop and a winter night cools the tank. Sumps can overflow when the return pump restarts if siphons were not set up carefully. Battery air pumps help a little, but they do not move water across a reef, and they do not heat it.
Many tank keepers fear the restart almost as much as the outage, because controllers, dosing pumps and wavemakers can come back in the wrong state. With the battery and inverter in UPS mode, nothing stops in the first place, so nothing has to restart. The fuel cell keeps the battery charged from stored hydrogen, designed to cover multi-day outages rather than a few hours.
How it works →
Reef lighting, chillers in summer, heaters in winter, the skimmer and the RO unit for top-off water all add up, alongside the household. At 15 kW continuous the system is designed to carry the tank and the house together. It charges on cheap night-rate power or from wind or micro-hydro, and loses most of the energy on the round trip, so it protects livestock rather than saving money on running costs.
Hobbyists who keep a quarantine tank, a frag system or a freshwater fish room in the garage can include those in pilot sizing too, so the whole collection is covered rather than just the display tank in the lounge that everyone sees.
It is designed not to. The battery and inverter run in UPS mode, so the supply has no gap. Test your own controller and pumps during the pilot to be sure they behave.
For a short outage on a small tank, sometimes. It does not run return pumps, heaters or lighting. A whole-home system is designed for long outages and the full equipment list.
It runs its own filtered, de-ionised loop, about 9 litres per kilogram of hydrogen, with most given back by the fuel cell. It is separate from your tank's RO system.
Pilot installs go to people on this list first. Rural homes, farms and remote sites especially. No spam, no payment.