OT - UPS - any experts out there ?

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Bob Eager writes

Indeed. Andy is a good egg.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Bob Eager writes

Agreed.

To the OP: get APC. SmartUPS if you find a model you can afford. 3 basic APC UPSes will cost you 300 euro. How much is your data worth?

It may or may not matter to you, but APC support is in Ireland.

[Andy Burns]

My supply voltage tends to be at the high end, my UPSs spend about 8 hours a day here in "trim" mode (both UPSs agree, but I've never measured with a decent multimeter, I have a mains disturbance recorder somewhere but it's decades out of calibration)

[Andy Burns]

While we're warning people off from low end UPSes can I add the MGE Ellipse range (now owned by Eaton who are otherwise good).

Batteries fail on all UPSes eventually, but on the Ellipse seems designed so when this happens the UPS fails in a off state rather than a bypass mode, even manual button pushing doesnt help, this is not good when a customer has 20 of them powering equipment in remote locations.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Andy Burns writes

It is rather (250.78V average). The upper limit is 253V, so your utility company may be reluctant to get involved. Do you get lots of lightbulbs popping?

[Dave Liquorice]

When I first got my UPS it instantly went into trim mode I thought it was fault until I measured the supply voltage. I then logged the voltage for a while then rang the REC, they came round agreed the high voltage and adjusted the taping on our transformer. The frequency of incandescent light bulbs going pop dropped from one a month to one a year or longer.

From your plot 254v is above the upper tolerance of 230v +10% or

253v. Complain and get that average down to at least 240v, you actuall have a pretty stable suppy at +/- 4v, ours is nearer +/- 10v.

[Andy Burns]

Yeah, I figured for 1 or 2 volts above the limit part of the time I'd be pissing in the wind, sub-station is only about 50yds away, maybe others further away complained about low voltage?

No, I mainly use CFLs.

[Peter Scott]

I support all the good things said about APC. My first UPS was an APC and its still going strong after many years (not sure how many). Others have failed after a time (a Belkin one stands out).

The most recent one I bought sparked internally and failed immediately. So APC is not perfect. However their support service is second to none and I now have a working one. They even reply to emails (no I'm not making that up!) Its an RS800, and a quad core PC and monitor uses 108 of the 540 watt it can provide, with an estimated 40 minutes of time in the battery.

Peter Scott

[Dave Liquorice]

I was going to ask if it was related to the weather. Seems as if it is due to movement of the wires and/or stuff close to the lines. It might be a failling insulator but once they have a track over them they tend to stay "failed".

Yes, you have a bit of software on the connected PC that monitors the UPS and shuts the PC down when given criteria are met. Other PC's also supported by that UPS should also shutdown but not sure how you do that in a windoze enviroment.

Only about the same as the load presented by 800 odd homes but makes a bit of a bang when disipated all on one place. Presumably by "fault current" he meant 80A going to ground rather than 80A of load.

They normally don't at least not fresh growth or small twigs say up to an inch in dia it just explodes. Bigger drier bits may last a lot longer.

We have around 1/2 km of single phase 11kv spur to "our" pole transformer. The three phase 11kv to the spur is about 4km long. Get a decent UPS and you'll be able to log the supply voltage. That may well be quite enlightening.

So do we.

[Adrian Brentnall]

Yes - just wish they'd get thier finger out & find whatever it is that's failing....

Ah - OK.... Are you saying that the ups could handle the graceful shutdown of one win (XP) pc? - 'cos that might be all that's needed..

Maybe run a ups for my office machine and the outside weather station one - my wife's tidier than I am and so her machine tends to be shut down to a win desktop when she's not at it...

Apparently so

I guess walking the line is the only solution..? Mind you - after the gales we've had and are forecast to have in the enxt couple of days, they may be rather occupied with 'hard' faults

Perhaps I can sell ESB the data It's something I've been meaning to log - outside in the studio I use

110v soldering irons for stained glass work - and some days the iron does seem 'hotter' than others.... - might be down to supplty volts...

On days when you can actually see it - recently it's been a bonus to see the front gate! Still - we're not flooded!

Adrian

[Adrian Brentnall]

I take it you're not a Belkin fan then ?

In ascending order of cost - CPC have

(Belkin) Powercom Trust Mustek Liebert APC and then we're up around the 100-quid+VAT-mark

I had a liebert many moons ago - wasn't all that great and their customer support were very snotty!

Any opinions on the above makes ? Thanks

>

[Adrian]

Adrian Brentnall gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

As with the many, many others - APC. Every time.

[Andy Burns]

Yes, XP itself includes basic UPS software (in control panel, power settings) that will talk to a SMARTUPS and automatically shut it down.

You can install more sophisticated software from APC themselves (though they've started charging for some of this now) that lets you use an agent to shutdown several machines other than the one that has the serial/USB connection.

Alternatively there is opensource software called NUT which will allow remote monitoring/shutdown of multiple computers (linux or windows) but maybe overkill for most users.

[Adrian Brentnall]

Might be handy.... Back at cpc I see this range

they claim a backup time of 4 or 2 minutes - or 45 / 25 seconds on full load (barely long enough for windows to shut down) Can this be a typo by the chimps at CPC - or is this for real?

Adrian

[Andy Burns]

I'd scrub everything other than the Liebert and APC.

[Adrian Brentnall]

My only 'loyalty' to CPC is a morbid curiousity to see how badly they can package the next order, and a grudging respect for the fact that their shipping costs are very reasonable...

You'd think that Ireland was just round the corner from Outer Mongolia - the rates some online outfits want to charge!

Adrian

[Andy Burns]

The APC page for the BackUPS CS 650VA gives

35 minutes for 100W/160VA load 15 minutes for 200W/320VA load 8 minutes for 300W/480VA load 5 minutes for 400W/640VA load

[Adrian]

Adrian Brentnall gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

It's utterly believable - but bear in mind that you really don't want to be running any UPS at full load. Better, by far, to over-spec, albeit with an increased purchase cost. The protection will be better, the batteries will last longer.

[Adrian]

Adrian Brentnall gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

International shipping...

[Bob Eager]

Think you'll find there is a single (full load) figure quoted, e.g. 4 mins 45 secs, or 2 mins 25 secs.