Using battery power to go off the City's power grid

There is always risk with anything electrical. Even when everything is plugged into the wall there are power surges and lightning strikes that can overwhelm any audio system. One reason I use a Shunyata power conditioner is because it has an electrical breaker built in to mitigate surges. Regarding the inverter, in my almost two years of going off grid, none of my audio equipment was ever damaged. I did however manage to damage the inverter and the battery charger. For the Giandel inverter, one should never plug and unplug equipment with the inverter on. I think I damaged it by doing this in a moment of haste. I was able to get a new 5000W inverter under warranty. I now always power all components off, then the conditioner, then the inverter, when I need to reconfigure the AC setup. Giandel they actually say to remove the positive cable from the battery. After making the change, I would power on the inverter first and then verify the AC voltage is back to 120V (US) before I power on the conditioner or any component. Regarding the Progressive Dynamic battery charger, I must’ve crossed the polarities at some point because the reverse polarity fuses blew. Fortunately, the fix was simply replacing the fuses which is not costly. The Ampertime battery has been very solid this whole time. It always runs cool.

For what it's worth, here is a listing of features under "Safety and Stability" from the Giandel website:

1. Isolated Input/Output Design
2. Soft Start Tech
3. Over Voltage
4. Low Voltage
5. Overload
6. Short Circuit
7. Overheat
8. Polarity Reverse Protection (Fuse)

I used the Venom V16 for source and Denali V2 for amp because the the Denali V2 has the QR/BB technology that helps with amps. With that said, for cost reasons and simplification I’ve sold both conditioners and now I’m using a single Shunyata Typhon T2 for DAC, preamp, and amp. I also have a pair of DC power supplies connected directly to the inverter and they power the Lumin streamer and other auxiliary devices such as network devices.

I bought a Zavfino Silver Dart power cable and I modified one end to connect to the high current terminals on the Giandel inverter. On the other end I installed a Furutech 20A plug. I prefer this cable over the modified Furutech DPS 4.1 power cable I was using earlier.

For all you people "Using battery power to go off the City's power grid', does your stereo sound as good in the daytime as night?

People often say their stereo sounds better at night. Is it dirty power from the grid or something else?

Thank’s 

I intend to buy a giandell 2000 w to power only my front end .

Does the improvement brought by the Shunyata in sound quality is really significant since going off grid is already a big plus .

Have you tried cheaper power conditioner such as puritan ? 

This is just my educated opinion but I think there are a few key things that a powerful battery/inverter system offers over the average 15A wall outlet. It’s separated from what can be a noisy grid. It can offer more dynamic power (from a large bank of capacitors?) and it can offer higher maximum power (30 amps plus). Lastly, it can offer a better AC sinewave (better THD) to power supplies that were designed with perfect AC sinewaves in mind. I believe all of these points matter in a good sound system. Where the battery/inverter and 15A wall outlet may be at the same level is in the area of component to component noise. I’m talking about the noise from the streamer’s power supply travelling only a few feet across power cables to interact with the preamp’s power supply. This type of noise may be more problematic than anything on the grid. So this is where an excellent power conditioner comes into play. Some well designed power conditioners tackle this type of noise and they tend to offer outlet to outlet isolation at some level. I have tried Shunyata’s top of the line conditioners (Everest on down) on a battery/inverter and it makes a big difference. I have also tried Puritan conditioners and they make a noticeable difference as well. Value wise, the Puritan conditioners are hard to beat but I’ve found Shunyata TOTL to be better than Puritan TOTL. I can recommend both.