A Good Investment

[mishalak]

One week ago I purchased a power backup system. Three days ago I got around to plugging it in and getting it all set up with all my computery stuff plugged into it. Today the power went out at three while I was working on my computer. I was able to save everything and shut down in good order instead of worrying if my computer would work when I turned it back on.
 

Comments

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, our power went out for about an hour about three hours after yours did. Everything came back up fine except my cookie file and I can live with that.

[gomeza.livejournal.com]

UPSes are fine things to have. Note: most consumer UPSes are under-designed / over-rated in order to hit a low price point. Also: very few UPSes, even expensive ones, protect well against surges & spikes no matter what they say on the promotional material. They should strictly be used to provide backup power. In fact, it's not uncommon for large surges/spikes to nuke the UPS too. I have a Brick Wall brand surge/noise/spike filter upstream (line side) of my big UPS, since I can't afford to replace my UPS any more than I can afford to replace my computer gear.

[gomeza.livejournal.com]

I meant to expand on the under-designed / over-rated comment, but forgot to. By that I meant that the battery(ies) in most consumer-grade UPSes are undersized and will only last for a few outages.

Furthermore, the amp-hour rating of a battery or UPS is based on very low drain rates. So, from a 100 A/hr system you, might get 1 amp for 100 hours, but you WILL NOT get 100 amps for 1 hour, or even 10A for 10hrs.

What this means is that you should get a UPS with a higher power rating than you think you need (a minimum of 2X the loads you have) to get the longest life from the batteries in your unit.

And when (not if) your UPS finally does stop supplying power during outages, don't replace the whole UPS, just take it down to Car-Go Battery and have them replace the battery for a fraction of the cost of a new unit - it is nearly always the batteries that fail, not the electronics.