UPS: uninterruptible power supply

raddevus

Thanks for the info. From the reviews it made it seem like they happened quite often. But I understand reviewers often have bad setups, incorrect wiring in their homes, etc. Just wanted to get a feel for what other people experienced.

Lost User

Hosting them in the chimney, should be a safe place :laugh:

It does not solve my Problem, but it answers my question Chemists have exactly one rule: there are only exceptions

David Crow

raddevus wrote:

What is your experience with this? Are these things safe?

I've never experienced any such thing in all the years I've had a UPS. All electronics have the potential to be dangerous. That's just the nature of the game.

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Rick York

I got a good-sized APC unit quite a while ago at a very good price. Eventually the batteries wore out and I replaced those last year and it's still going strong. I think it is a 1500VA unit. I find it difficult to believe stories of sparks being emitted because how could a unit possibly acquire UL or CE rating with that kind of behavior?

"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"

pkfox

Hi Paul if you ever get around to buying another UPS give me a shout and tell me what you've decided on - I use a SBC as a jenkins and local nuget server for my home and shared projects and it's on 24/7 , I know it's not on the same scale as powering a server but the dear litle box is very useful and a PITA to rebuild ( despite my having an image of the base build )

"We can't stop here - this is bat country" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP

raddevus

0x01AA wrote:

Hosting them in the chimney, should be a safe place

That's really funny and actually indicates smart thinking. I really like that idea, because it shows vertical thinking. :thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

raddevus

David Crow wrote:

I've never experienced any such thing in all the years I've had a UPS.

Very good to know.

David Crow wrote:

All electronics have the potential to be dangerous.

I agree. It was just that there were quite a few reviewers mentioning sparks and fires so I wanted to get another random sampling of intelligent users...and even though I wanted intelligent users, I came here to CP. :rolleyes: Of course, I am kidding. CP Lounge is really full of a lot of great people with vast years of experience. Thanks for the info.

raddevus

Thanks very much for the info.

Rick York wrote:

I find it difficult to believe stories of sparks being emitted because how could a unit possibly acquire UL or CE rating with that kind of behavior?

That's exactly what I thought! If this happened even in 1 out 10,000 it wouldn't be a valid product really. :thumbsup:

Marc Clifton

I bought a cheap "UPS" from Staples, which was a mistake. No sparks, but it's not a true "UPS" - it takes a few tenths of a second to switch over to battery, by which time the devices on it have powered off. So, make sure you get a UPS that actually generates the AC from the battery and doesn't do a "switch over" from the mains to the battery. Can't tell if that CyberPower model does that or not.

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Joan M

I've owned or managed at least 30 or 40 of those things (2 at home others at companies where I worked for years) and never ever they emitted anything that was not expected. Of course they die without further notice, their batteries die... But in my experience they are safe. It's a relatively simple device... I fail to see how brands like APC, EATON and others could do this kind of mistake... which would make them illegal in most cases...

www.robotecnik.com[^] - robots, CNC and PLC programming

raddevus

Marc Clifton wrote:

but it's not a true "UPS" - it takes a few tenths of a second to switch over to battery, by which time the devices on it have powered off.

Thanks for the info. I was trying to determine the same thing. Is this the option where it is sine wave versus square wave? I just can't tell. The flickers are the exact thing I'm trying to get rid of.

raddevus

Joan M wrote:

I've owned or managed at least 30 or 40 of those things (2 at home others at companies where I worked for years) and never ever they emitted anything that was not expected.

Thanks for the great info. This is what I was looking for...various people chiming in who've had a lot of experience with them. I too wondered how it would be a valid product if that sort of thing happened even 1 in 10,000. Thanks again.

Rick York

One additional piece of advice : test your UPS periodically. I work for a rather large manufacturing company and we have UPS' on probably every system in the factories but no one ever tests them so I am willing to bet a majority are useless. The last service call I had to deal with was because of corrupted files that resulted from a power loss where the UPS immediately died because its batteries were shot.

"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"

Riz Thon

I had several APC over the years. As others have stated, the batteries die after several years. Also I find they don't allow for prolonged used without electricity (the ~USD100 ones can give you power for 15 minutes). What I've been wondering for my own setup here is whether it would be possible to have some battery powered modems and routers: you would avoid useless conversions (your UPS's battery converted to AC 100/240V then converted back to DC around 5 to 12V).

Clumpco

Great experience over the years here with EATON - have used APC at work but was never happy with their battery life (I suspect that they ran too hot). We're in a small hill village with many overhead power lines radiating out over the surrounding area, so whenever there is a storm anywhere nearby brownouts or 1-2 second blackouts are guaranteed. All the puters, NAS, switches, modem etc. are on "domestic" UPS units (we have 4) and they switch over just fine during brownouts. My favourite: Eaton Ellipse. Really easy to change the batteries (contrary to some Chinese units). Note that most domestic UPS use 12v 7Ah sealed lead acid batteries that you can find very easily at £12 to £20 ea. (e.g.Yuasa NP7-12L)

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dshillito

I have an APC Back-UPS PRO 550. This one is 3 years old. I have had many others over the last 20+ years. Mostly from APC. I used to have hard disk drives fail before that. Never since. The main benefit is the clean power. On the occasions when there is a blackout I get a few minutes of runtime. If I am around at the time I shut the system down cleanly before the juice runs out. I agree with the other reply that said the main hassle is replacing the battery every few years.

Wizard of Sleeves

Some mobile phones have known to burst into flames.... :-\

BryanFazekas

My personal unit is an APC 550 which I've had for about 9 years. I got about 3.5 years from the first battery and the current battery is 5.5 years old. [Either I got lucky or the batteries are better.] This unit beeps and warns when the battery is failing, and it was easy to replace. My work unit is a Tripp-Lite ECO580, and it's about 4 years old. Yesterday I discovered the battery is completely dead when I experienced 8 brown outs (very unusual), and my monitors went dead each time. The monitors are plugged into the battery side while the laptop is plugged into the surge protection only side. Before buying a unit, ensure the battery can be replaced. My first unit (cannot remember the brand) did not have a replaceable battery, so when the battery failed I had to recycle the entire unit. Both it and the APC cost about $75 USD, while the price for the battery for the APC was $25. BTW: the units I'm familiar with have 2 rows of outlets -- one is surge protection only and one has surge protection + battery. Plug only necessary items into the battery side. My personal unit has the CPU, monitor, cable-modem, and wifi router plugged into the battery side -- other items are plugged into the surge-only side. The battery power of a home unit is limited, so the more devices you have on battery, the faster it is expended. Use the home unit to protect from brown-outs and provide time to gracefully shut down the system in the case of a full power failure.

BryanFazekas

I did a quick search on surge protection. While the UPS has surge protection, one article suggested buying a separate surge protector to protect the UPS. A strong surge can damage the UPS, and a surge protector is cheaper to replace than the UPS. This makes sense. The surge protection capability of a device is limited an erodes with usage. An old surge protector is nothing more than a power strip; it's necessary to replace surge protectors on a periodic basic. This article[^] explains how surge protection works. I found several articles that recommend replacing the surge protector every 2 years, and if the unit is 10 years old, it's worthless as a surge protector. It's a good bet my APC has no surge protection left, and the surge protector on my main TV is 15 years old and the one on my smaller TV is even older ... so I'll be making purchases this weekend.

SickPup404

I've got: - A basic CyberPower CP425SLG 425VA just for bench duty (brownout are common where I live) - The same CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD 1000VA you're looking at for the wife's desktop. (PC and 2 monitors on battery, speakers surge only). - A CyberPower PR1500SWRM2U 1500VA with 2 critical load (CL) outlets and 4 non-critical load (NCL) for everything else. Outlet spacing matters. Take a look at Power Splitters/Spiders to get those power "wall warts" away from the back and allow more plugged in. That "everything else" list grows when you get a UPS. My list: - (CL) Server for Plex, Minecraft, etc. - (CL) My desktop development rig - Power spider with speakers, monitor, & USB hub. - Power spider with 2 Gigabit switches, Vera Edge, HD dock, and phone base station - Power spider with cable modem, router, & Vonage adapter - Power spider with 2 WD EX4100 NAS boxes I'm sure some would call this overloaded, but I figure the wall warts for most stuff I have plugged in don't draw too much and I tried spreading the load across all the outlets. With the above setup, I just got 46 minutes run time in a test last week on 8 month old batteries. You do need to change batteries every couple years or so. Be sure to use the monitoring software that comes with the unit you get. And don't plug in a laser printer to a UPS. Not sure where I heard that advice from years ago, but I stick with it...