HI Folks We seem to be getting more & more short duration (5 seconds, maybe) power outages (local Electricty folks looking into it - but apparently it's somewhere on a 5km stretch of cabling between here & the village - and, as it's self-resetting, it's difficult to trace / fix).
So - thinking UPS for the 3 pc's here. The two in the office are entry-level Dells, and could (perhaps) be fed from the same UPS box ?? The one outside spends most of its time uploading data from the weather station up to the web - and is probably too far away to share the office UPS..
So - looking at CPC's website (only because they offer very reasonable carriage rates to this part of Ireland) - there's a bewildering array of units....
Any recommendations from what's on offer ? personal experiences - ones to avoid..?
To be honest - it's probably less of a long-term UPS that's needed - more of a 'keep the PCs running til the mains trips back in' device..
Since your runtime requirements are small, the issue is VA rating.
Look on Ebay Ireland for refurbished APC SmartUPS 600 or 1000, just make sure the batteries with it are new. You can always sell at nearly the price you paid when the problem is fixed.
I run a PCs and two Belkin UPS. They work fine doing a similar job to the one you need. My weather station runs on a laptop which in effect provides backup for that part. The ADSL router and wireless access run off their own UPS. If you are buying secondhand beware that the batteries may be knackered. Feel free to contact me off group if you wish.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Adrian Brentnall saying something like:
'Cos they're made in Naas, or somewhere.
I've been using an APC 1000VA unit for years, bought after intermittent power outages seriously wrecked a PC. It's been marvellous, saving such a thing happening again and only now is the battery showing signs of needing replacement, after 7 or 8 years.
Always assuming that the auto recloser always resets. The one in the
11kv line that feeds us does *unless* it trips 3 times in less than a minute or something like that. If does get too many trips in a period it latches off and has to be manually reset, hopefully after the fault has been found and cleared.
Having the connected PC's shutdown gracefully on power failure (or a minute or two after) is sensible. Not sure how one would arrange that with a USB UPS connected to a window box. I think there is only a NUT client for doze.
As for the REC "looking into it", yeah sure they are... 5 clicks is a nice short walk. Walk the line and see if there are any bits of tree within a couple of feet of the line (think wind blowing a twig against it). It's the wrong time of year for tree growth though, that's normally a late spring early summer problem and a single bit of fresh tree doesn't normally create more than a few outages as it gets blown up and killed when it touches the line. A bigger older bit of tree will last longer of course.
Yup, no problem doing that if it can hack the loading.
I always for for APC units. They seem well made work well enough for me.
Some factors to look at: The total loading supportable (measured in VA rather than watts. So if you are supplying a mixed bag of computer bits n bobs then its probably safest to divide the estimated total power by about 0.8 to arrive at VA), and run time. The run time is a result of the loading and the battery capacity. So you may find a UPS with bigger or more batts can support the same total load, but run it for longer.
The holdup times quoted are usually at full load. Often these can be quite short - say 5 mins. But that time will lengthen if the load is less.
The other difference you will see is the type of UPS. The simplest ones are backup devices. They do nothing much (they may filter some spikes out of the mains) until the power fails. They then switch to supplying power quick enough that the load does not notice. APC "Back UPS" devices are like this; fairly cheap and well suited to mains that is ok but fails from time to time. Historically the high end ones were "online" types - these run their inverter all the time and supply the supported kit from their own simulated mains at all times. Good at curing a variety of dodgy power problems and not just providing backup power. APC also do a middle tier technology they call "line interactive", which are like a mix of both technologies. They attempt to augment the mains as they pass it though - filling in glitches and brown outs, clipping surges and spikes. These are good for mains supplies that are generally more flaky even when on.
Some examples: I use a pair of 1kVA units on my main systems. That's two PCs, two screens (one LCD, one *big* 23" CRT), a bunch of external peripherals (couple of scanners, inkjet, print server, external drives of various types etc). In reality one of the 1kVA units is enough to hold up the lot, however I have the monitors on a second one because I found the switch on surge on on the CRT would very briefly overload the UPS - and that glitch was long enough to drop a PC. Hence if the monitor was off when the power went, I could not turn it on to see what I was doing to shut the machine down gracefully. With the pair, I get a run time of 15 to 25 mins.
I have a smaller 400VA UPS[1] that holds up my comms cabinet. That supports a PABX, gigabit switch, backup NAS device and external hard drive, plus a ADSL router, and a ADSL modem talking to a pair of broadband lines. That one is nowhere near its full load, and will hold up for a good 45 mins or so.
So it's a matter of reading the ratings labels on the back of the kit..? All the ofice screens are lcd, so I guess that helps with power consumption.
When I mentioned UPS's about the house, it was suggested that backing up the power to the Sky+ box would also be a Good Thing..... So I guess it's a matter of deciding whether to go with one or two BIG boxes or a scattering of smaller units....
Well - I know that last night was a bit wild out here (understatement!) but the mains tripped out three or four times between 7:30 and 9:30 - varying lengths of time - longest being about 10 mins
Yes - it would be advantageous. Is that what the serial / usb connection is all about - the box tells the PC to shut down in a tidy fashion ?
Speaking to the engineer the other day - he reckoned that there was 'something' that was tripping the circuit - and the data recording stuff was registering a fault current of 80A (at 11kv!) just before the thing tripped out. He commented that bits of tree don;t last all that long in that situation - but didn't say that he'd found the fault....
We're on the end of a wire - two of us sharing a poletop transformer - and I suspect that the mains isn't all that clean, as various bits of electrickery have failed in the last 3 years...
Thanks. The only Irish-based one I can see at the moment is a 1500VA - start price 1 euro - buy it now 400 euro - lots of phtots but no mention of battery condx.
As said before, they're rated in VA and not in watts. You therefore need a UPS with a VA rating about 20-25% greater than the max watts you will draw. I'd personally oversize it quite a lot to get increased run time.
I use APC kit here and it's been fine. Not perfect, but there we are.
The APC Smart-UPS range is a little more expensive, but it handles low and high volts. At specified points, it'll kick in and provide the
*correct* voltage - useful if something on the network goes awry and starts supplying 260 volts or 200 volts!
Yes, I have older models as they monitor through serial ports rather than USB. I have a SmartUPS 1400, a SmartUPS 1500 and a SmartUPS 700 (the last one runs the whole central rack).
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