APC UPS Question?

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I have been doing some reading on this forum regarding which UPS to buy. The discussions have focussed on the Wattage or VA rating of the UPS units. However what about the Joules rating which is linked to the capability of the unit to protect against power surges? I find that most of the lower VA rated UPS units have very low - 300 to 500 Joules. I think you have to balance the battery backup wattage rating with its Joules rating if you need the surge protection too.
 
Is it safe to plug a UPS into a surge protector like Pure AV ? I thought there was a problem when you daisy-chain these devices. What model of Pure-AV do you have and is the UPS on a switched line ?
I have a Pure-AV PF31 and also have a Belkin5ooVA PSU, but plugged the PSU to the wall socket.
 
Yes it's safe to plug a UPS into a surge protector. It will work just fine. There is really no difference between a surge protector and a regular outlet under normal operation. The surge protector has a MOV (metal oxide varistor) tied to ground. If a surge occurs that exceeds the MOV's threshold, then it routes it to ground.
 
The serge protector i have is a f9a923-08(above the upc?) according to the box, it has no writing that i can see on the front. 150 000amp max spike 2655 joules. It also says level 1. so there is one over 4000 joules in "Level 2"

Its this one(but cost about 30$ i think)

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=22008&vpn=F9A923-08&manufacture=Belkin

The only time daisy chaining stuff is a problem is if you draw more power then the first power bar can handle.

So if you take a 3 x 6 outlet power bars(the cheap ones without a built in breaker) connect 5 computers to the first one. 5 22inch CRT's the the second one and 6 laser printers to the last one. Then the wires one the first bar may overheat and cause a fire...

BUT.....

this should never happen since your house has breakers or fuses that should blow/trip first.... still, don't do it....

In the end i have 2 external DVD burners and a few low power devices on the bar and everything else is on the UPS....so for the most part the power bar is acting like a surge protector and not a power bar....all the big stuff is on the ups....
 
I thought he was already aware of the fact that you can't run the whole house off of one outlet, maybe not.

This is always a bad idea.
ElectricalMaintenance_02.jpg
 
dont laugh.... my setup looked worse then that before....as long as its not over 15 amps(For me) it is fine

I had piggy back plugs with transformers bricks on then and all kinds of stuff...

Stuff piggy backed on one another....:)
wiredej3.gif
 

What he said.
 
 



Thanks for the valuble information malam, I read both links and will think twice about using a surge protector with my UPS. Any others have a comment on this?
 
Link one - IMO the outlet was bad or the connection to the house cabling was loose. The poor connection led to increased resistance and heat causing the outlet to burn. This was also addressed by one of the posters below the OP. It had nothing to do with the surge protector on the output side of the UPS, I call BS.

Link two - The document makes perfect sense. Nowhere in the document does APC warn against fire. That's because there won't be any. On the input side they are concerned with yahoos overloading the surge protector/power strip and that the UPS would see a low voltage condition and trip to "back up" and back again frequently. They are overstating the obvious, and apparently they have to. Everyone should know the rating of the outlet(s) on the circuit, and avoid running the circuit at close to it's maximum. If you want to draw a lot of power then verify which outlets are on the same circuit and different circuits and split the load up. Pretty much just basic common sense aye?

As for putting the surge protector after the UPS the same applies. Everyone thinks they can buy a 500VA UPS and then just load the he!! out of it and it will handle the load with no problem. Again, use a little common sense and don't exceed the rating of the UPS, preferably leave a little head room as well. The only problem that they indicated was with a surge protector that additionally employed EMI/RFI filtering. Their concern in that case was that apparently this caused distribution problems in the surge strip so that some loads would not receive an adequate current. So they say use a power distribution unit. I assume they are talking about a standard power strip, but I can't be sure. If you use a surge protector without EMI/RFI filtering it would be the same. As I stated in my post above the only difference is the MOVs tied to ground, and they don't conduct unless there is a surge. I use one after the UPS, but not for protection just because it was handy and I needed additional outlets. Also plug the computer into the UPS directly and the peripherals e.g.,speakers, routers, modems etc. into the power strip, because they draw less current and are less sensitive.
 
That's a nice one. It's rated at 850 watts, you don't really want to run your UPS at max anyway. That unit gives you 13.1 minutes @ 432.5 watts, so it looks like you chose the right size. Also, it leaves you with a little head room. I'm sure you will find something else to plug into it.
 


Hmm... That means that you are pulling about 4.125 A from the wall at 120 VAC. I am dubious.

Are the batteries fully charged?

Have you installed the APC software?

Have you run the self-test / diagnostics?

Something's wrong here, there is no way that your piddly system can be pulling that many watts. Don't mean to offend, but I've seen some pretty mean servers with rather large drive arrays that don't pull that many watts under heavy load.
 
on a rough guess his base system is about 300W give or take. Add the monitor, that he probably has plugged in and that adds 85W. Add the router, modem, speakers and sundry USB goodies and you are approaching 500W. So it could be at 500. I'm sure you just have the server boxes plugged in w/o all the additional goodies.
 
I am glad that the postings above have provided a lot more information about these devices than one could find
at the vendor's website. One aspect of the UPS that is still confusing to me is the different types available (off-line, line-interactive etc) and the advantages of each time. Any ideas guys ?
 
I'd like to amplify and perhaps add some simplification to what supremelaw had to say about the PowerChute software that comes with the APC brand: It allows you change frequency and voltage specs to limit variations and provide smoother power to your components. As systemlord mentioned, many believe that these minor changes in voltage/frequency just might be why we see significantly decreased life of not only our computer components but also our other electronics.

Wanted to throw out another recent experience. I have an AR power strip/supressor on my large screen TV. I noticed a squeal from the strip and thought maybe it was defective. The squeal turned out to be the ground alert. Upon further investigation, found that none of the outlets on that circuit were connected to ground. It appears that when the circuit was installed, the electrician relied on the wall box to provide a ground and not the outlet post. Unfortunately, these were plastic boxes!

It seems to me that the circuitry protection and monitoring with line smoothing (not line conditioning) along with surge supression are critical functions of the UPS.
 


I have 4 hard drives and the CPU and both video cards are overclocked. Also my speakers are plugged into it and the take 50watts by themselves.
 


Although I knew the wiring in my building was bad I found out when I hooked up the UPS that the plug is only delivering 112volts rather than the standard 120.
 
USA is typically 110-120VAC, at 60Hz.
A reason for not plugging a surge protector in after a UPS is because it may react unpredictably to the waveform of the UPS when it is on battery. Better ones (like APC) approximate a sine wave, but cheaper and/or older UPS units used to provide more of a square wave, and the usual methods of figuring RMS didn't apply.
 
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