The Last Straw

[kevin_standlee]

Our tiny power failure yesterday convinced us that the time was past to get a UPS for the home office. Using a Kill-A-Watt gadget that I bought a few months ago after seeing it used on MythBusters, we measured the power demands in this room by the expedient of turning off and unplugging the three power strips, then plugging them in to the Kill-A-Watt, turning the strips back on, and turning on every device on the strip. This gave us the maximum power demand on the circuit -- about 300 Volt-Amps. During our shopping today, we went by Fry's and bought a UPS rated at 330 550VA. We figure this should cover us, given that we rarely have all of the computers and associated stuff turned on at once. I haven't set it up yet, but will do so this evening.

We can't plug the lamp into the UPS, though, because it's plugged into a wall switch and is the main light in the room. Cheryl points out, however, that in case of power failure, we'll be able to see by the glow of the computer screens.

Update, 21:50: Error in VA rating corrected.

Comments

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

we'll be able to see by the glow of the computer screens

and you can always get a little key chain light that you can hang up on somewhere conveniently located, so you can easily move without tripping to where the battery powered lantern is.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Good luck with that!

The shelf above me holds three computers and one 650, one 900, and one 1500 VA UPS. Of course there used to be a 21" and a 17" CRT, and one of the computers has 6 hard drives in it. (And one is powered down and out of service, but it and its UPS are still sitting on the shelf).

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

The UPS documentation says that we should allow at least sixteen hours for it to fully charge. It's tempting to try, after it's fully charged, unplugging it with all of the machines turned on and find out just how long before they fail. Ten minutes is fine; we can do an orderly shutdown in ten minutes. I expect that we'll install auto-shutdown software on the one desktop machine that's always on. The other computers are laptops anyway, and therefore have their own batteries besides the UPS power.

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

ewhac expresses concern that you have underestimated your UPS needs, based on what you've said, and that the UPS will not offer you enough power to last any reasonable amount of time. Apparently, you'll be able to see by the glow of the screens, but only for a few moments.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, I typoed the original, anyway -- we got a 550 VA box, not a 330. In any event, the documentation says that we should expect at least ten minutes even with everything running. We rarely have everything running at once. We just turned everything on to find out what the maximum pull was. And ten minutes is plenty, I think. The point of the UPS is not so we can keep working for hours with no power; it's to make sure we have enough power for an orderly shutdown and don't lose our work.

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

Oh, 550 is *much* more reasonable! The 330 is what bothered us, as that wouldn't have given you 10 minutes, or probably even 5.

[mwillmoth.livejournal.com]

We use a TrippLite UPS for Jean's computer, monitor, television, VCR and DVR. We use a APC UPS for the broadband modem, firewall and switch. The floortop computer doesn't have one (yet), but the laptop we share has a battery backup by nature. Additionally, we rarely have a power outage and that's usually in the summer when loads are at max in Phoenix.

<== Mike ==>