UPS failure

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mdooher

Hmm, what to write...
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#1511743 12-Mar-2016 09:06

If you are going to buy an APC brand get the "smart" series not the "backup" series. The smart series puts out an actual sine wave, the backup series is basically a square wave "like a Dynamix".

Ok if you are running a PC it is not going to be much of a problem but if you have any expensive equipment with built in power supplies running off your ups you might care quite a bit. These modified sine waves (basically square waves) contain high frequency harmonics which can stress the components (filter capacitors etc) leading to premature failure.

Same reason you don't use a cheap Bunnings genset to run a flat screen TV ... Well you might get a few uses out of it...

Matthew

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#1511751 12-Mar-2016 09:14

k1w1k1d:

"I cheated a bit with the old one and plugged an anti-surge gang board into it to run the lighter load items."

I thought that this was a no-no?

It's not a problem if you keep under the rating of the UPS, and in reality you want to keep the load to under 50% of the UPS rating otherwise your battery is exhausted much faster. e.g. if you are running the UPS at 50% load (500va worth of drain on a 1000va UPS) your battery light last 10 minutes. If you run 1000va load on a 1000va UPS you won't get 5 minutes out of it - more like 3 minutes..

Te risk you run with a power board attached is a non-technical user coming along and plugging a vacuum cleaner into it. The cheap UPS go bye bye and maybe takes your house with it.

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Jase2985

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#1511844 12-Mar-2016 10:47

I have a cordless phone, my VDSL modem and my PC and monitor plugged into it. The UPS is rated at 750VA and 500w.

The PC has a 650w PSU, 6HDD's and a GFX card in it and with the monitor on its drawing 29% from the UPS and with the monitor off its drawing 25% of the UPS's load.

The Charts suggest i would get about 15mins with that load on the UPS.

Linuxluver

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#1511851 12-Mar-2016 11:00

Dynamic:

Te risk you run with a power board attached is a non-technical user coming along and plugging a vacuum cleaner into it. The cheap UPS go bye bye and maybe takes your house with it.

The instructions on my Blazer III specifically say not to plug in things like printers and scanners because of the surge they require when starting up. I read that and thought about vacuums, heaters, kettles and the like as being a great way to destroy the UPS. :-)

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Geektastic

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#1511944 12-Mar-2016 13:02

mdooher: If you are going to buy an APC brand get the "smart" series not the "backup" series. The smart series puts out an actual sine wave, the backup series is basically a square wave "like a Dynamix".

Ok if you are running a PC it is not going to be much of a problem but if you have any expensive equipment with built in power supplies running off your ups you might care quite a bit. These modified sine waves (basically square waves) contain high frequency harmonics which can stress the components (filter capacitors etc) leading to premature failure.

Same reason you don't use a cheap Bunnings genset to run a flat screen TV ... Well you might get a few uses out of it...

The Smart one is $1200..!

Any comment on the Riello SEP 1000 model? It's 1000VA/800W with Supercaps and sinusoidal waveform.