UPS: uninterruptible power supply
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BryanFazekas wrote:
I found several articles that recommend replacing the surge protector every 2 years
2 years... :omg: Sounds like articles written by someone selling surge protectors and/or UPSes. Also, Amazon reviews are known to frequently be written by shills working for competing products. Bad car analogy: Looks at the maintenance schedule in you car's owners manual. If you followed it to the letter, your car would be at the dealer for servicing more often than it would be parked in your own garage.
dandy72 wrote:
Sounds like articles written by someone selling surge protectors and/or UPSes. Also, Amazon reviews are known to frequently be written by shills working for competing products.
Nope -- This was on several independent how-to sites. I use Amazon reviews ... but take them all with a 5# bag of salt. Read the article I posted -- it describes how surge protection works. It appears there is no clear-cut way to determine if surge protection is still working, so taking into account how stable power is in your area AND how many joules your surge protection is rated for, the interval will differ. Two years seems too short an interval. I 'spose it comes down to how risk-tolerant anyone is. If you have $2,000+ in equipment, spending $10/year on surge protection seems trivial. Power in my area is typically very stable, yet I had 8 brownouts in a 30 minute period yesterday. Four years ago we had a lightning strike on a tree in my backyard, it burned out my router but didn't destroy the cable-modem. In hindsight, I should have replaced all surge protection at that time. I'm researching units today as I have 2 units that are 15+ years old and a third is 5.
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dandy72 wrote:
Sounds like articles written by someone selling surge protectors and/or UPSes. Also, Amazon reviews are known to frequently be written by shills working for competing products.
Nope -- This was on several independent how-to sites. I use Amazon reviews ... but take them all with a 5# bag of salt. Read the article I posted -- it describes how surge protection works. It appears there is no clear-cut way to determine if surge protection is still working, so taking into account how stable power is in your area AND how many joules your surge protection is rated for, the interval will differ. Two years seems too short an interval. I 'spose it comes down to how risk-tolerant anyone is. If you have $2,000+ in equipment, spending $10/year on surge protection seems trivial. Power in my area is typically very stable, yet I had 8 brownouts in a 30 minute period yesterday. Four years ago we had a lightning strike on a tree in my backyard, it burned out my router but didn't destroy the cable-modem. In hindsight, I should have replaced all surge protection at that time. I'm researching units today as I have 2 units that are 15+ years old and a third is 5.
The way I see it, if lightning strikes are a worry, then a 10$/year surge protector isn't going to do much and you'll need something a lot more bad-ass. That's where insurance comes in anyway. So....... Not suggesting anyone should do without. Just saying if your insurance covers it anyway, I see little problem in stretching the lifetime a bit more than the "recommended" timeframe.
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The way I see it, if lightning strikes are a worry, then a 10$/year surge protector isn't going to do much and you'll need something a lot more bad-ass. That's where insurance comes in anyway. So....... Not suggesting anyone should do without. Just saying if your insurance covers it anyway, I see little problem in stretching the lifetime a bit more than the "recommended" timeframe.
Lightning strikes are not a major concern, just a possibility. I included it for illustration. Note that my router was destroyed, but all my other equipment was on the inside of the surge protection, and all of it survived unscathed. The surge protection DID make a difference. Insurance may cover the cost of replacement, but it does not address the down time until replacements are installed, and it does not address the loss of data if your PC blows between backups. Like many in IT, I'm WFH at this time. I cannot afford down time, in a very literal ($$$) sense, and insurance will not cover that. YMMV
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Yesterday we had 6 or 7 brown outs / electric flickers due to weather and then fix. My cable modem and wifi router (separate units) are powered on the same home circuit and got power-cycled 6 or 7 times also. It was really annoying and sent me on a search for a UPS. But as I read about UPS it seems as if they are all a bit dangerous. So many reviewers say that their units emitted sparks and/or fire and if they had not been home when it happened it would've been disastrous. What is your experience with this? Are these things safe? I was looking at APC ones but then also saw this one which seems good. CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD Intelligent LCD UPS System, 1000VA/600W, 9 Outlets, AVR, Mini-Tower [^] Any experience with any of these? Thanks for any reccommendations.
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Yesterday we had 6 or 7 brown outs / electric flickers due to weather and then fix. My cable modem and wifi router (separate units) are powered on the same home circuit and got power-cycled 6 or 7 times also. It was really annoying and sent me on a search for a UPS. But as I read about UPS it seems as if they are all a bit dangerous. So many reviewers say that their units emitted sparks and/or fire and if they had not been home when it happened it would've been disastrous. What is your experience with this? Are these things safe? I was looking at APC ones but then also saw this one which seems good. CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD Intelligent LCD UPS System, 1000VA/600W, 9 Outlets, AVR, Mini-Tower [^] Any experience with any of these? Thanks for any reccommendations.
I have lots of the APC UPSs at my house. Each time the battery wears out (small battery supplying huge currents) I buy a new UPS right away. Costco has good prices for them. After I replace the battery in the retired one, it moves to protect some other thing in the house. There's now also a UPS on the TV+settop box, the router+modem, the expensive computerized sewing machine, the NAS, my wife's computer upstairs, and (most recently) a lamp in the family room.
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Yesterday we had 6 or 7 brown outs / electric flickers due to weather and then fix. My cable modem and wifi router (separate units) are powered on the same home circuit and got power-cycled 6 or 7 times also. It was really annoying and sent me on a search for a UPS. But as I read about UPS it seems as if they are all a bit dangerous. So many reviewers say that their units emitted sparks and/or fire and if they had not been home when it happened it would've been disastrous. What is your experience with this? Are these things safe? I was looking at APC ones but then also saw this one which seems good. CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD Intelligent LCD UPS System, 1000VA/600W, 9 Outlets, AVR, Mini-Tower [^] Any experience with any of these? Thanks for any reccommendations.
I have used APC UPSes for many years, on both sides of the Atlantic. Other than needing batteries replaced, I have only had two fail on me - one after almost 11 years of continuous use (it stopped charging the battery), and one after a couple of weeks' use (persistent error indication). I called APC's support up about the latter and, after I described the symptoms, they shipped me a new one out overnight express, with a prepaid shipping label to return the defective one in the same packaging. I did once buy a 'store-brand' UPS, and it died within 18 months. I have no experience with CyberPower. I have also certainly never seen a UPS fail in the exciting way described by the reviewers you quote.
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Yesterday we had 6 or 7 brown outs / electric flickers due to weather and then fix. My cable modem and wifi router (separate units) are powered on the same home circuit and got power-cycled 6 or 7 times also. It was really annoying and sent me on a search for a UPS. But as I read about UPS it seems as if they are all a bit dangerous. So many reviewers say that their units emitted sparks and/or fire and if they had not been home when it happened it would've been disastrous. What is your experience with this? Are these things safe? I was looking at APC ones but then also saw this one which seems good. CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD Intelligent LCD UPS System, 1000VA/600W, 9 Outlets, AVR, Mini-Tower [^] Any experience with any of these? Thanks for any reccommendations.
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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?"
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Some mobile phones have known to burst into flames.... :-\
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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.
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Great advice. I was thinking the same thing. I hope I'm not too lazy though -- because it will mean walking all the way down to the basement and flipping the circuit breaker. :laugh:
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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).
Riz Thon wrote:
your UPS's battery converted to AC 100/240V then converted back to DC around 5 to 12V)
I know. I thought about that too and it is very interesting because you could have a very small battery running the wifi router and cable modem since they both have external adapters that convert to 5 or 12 V. The challenge is to have the battery kick in when the 120V is lost. I've done some Arduino and electronics stuff so I'd like to look into building something.
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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)
So old that I did my first coding in octal via switches on a DEC PDP 8
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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.
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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...
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I have always had a UPS and never had problems with sparking. The problems I have had are batteries dying after a few years resulting in battery replacement when economical or unit replacement when not, failure to kick in quickly enough form some early APC units and figuring out where to place them and the tangle of power cords.
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We get many thunderstorms where I live. Power is glitchy even w/o the storms. I used an APC 1400 SmartUPS for many years. One thing to make sure you a unit with the capacity to handle the load you have on it. I replaced the tower machine I used at the time with an HP Z800 with an 1100W power supply. Never gave the size of the APC unit a thought until the Z800 killed the UPS. Discovered that HP recommends a 2200VA unit for the Z800. I got the APC 2200 SmartUPS unit. It gets delivered by a tractor trailer on a skid. Unit weighs 110 Lbs. Took two people to lug it up to my ROG. And they typically take a special power cord. Mine required an L5 outlet. Normally, you'd want that load on a 220V circuit, since the ROG is the 4th bedroom I didn't think it would be too wise to have a 220V circuit in what might at some point (after I am out of the house) revert back and become a child's bedroom. Even if you aren't using a machine as large as the HP, best to make sure that you match the capacity of the unit to the equipment you are plugging into it. And keep in mind the UPS will likely outlast you computer, so it is probably wise to get a unit larger than your immediate need.
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I have lots of the APC UPSs at my house. Each time the battery wears out (small battery supplying huge currents) I buy a new UPS right away. Costco has good prices for them. After I replace the battery in the retired one, it moves to protect some other thing in the house. There's now also a UPS on the TV+settop box, the router+modem, the expensive computerized sewing machine, the NAS, my wife's computer upstairs, and (most recently) a lamp in the family room.
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I have used APC UPSes for many years, on both sides of the Atlantic. Other than needing batteries replaced, I have only had two fail on me - one after almost 11 years of continuous use (it stopped charging the battery), and one after a couple of weeks' use (persistent error indication). I called APC's support up about the latter and, after I described the symptoms, they shipped me a new one out overnight express, with a prepaid shipping label to return the defective one in the same packaging. I did once buy a 'store-brand' UPS, and it died within 18 months. I have no experience with CyberPower. I have also certainly never seen a UPS fail in the exciting way described by the reviewers you quote.