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UPS for home use, which one?

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Karel:
Hi everybody,

I want to buy myself a UPS to deal with the power surges here. It needs to be an active one that protects also against very short voltage fluctuations (brownouts).
A backup time of 5 minutes will be enough. Linux support is a pre. Any recommendations?

I'm thinking about something like this:

https://www.cyberpowersystems.com/product/ups/pfc-sinewave/cp1350pfclcd/

Thanks,
Karel

Wuerstchenhund:

--- Quote from: Karel on May 06, 2020, 10:15:43 am ---Hi everybody,

I want to buy myself a UPS to deal with the power surges here. It needs to be an active one that protects also against very short voltage fluctuations (brownouts).
A backup time of 5 minutes will be enough. Linux support is a pre. Any recommendations?

I'm thinking about something like this:

https://www.cyberpowersystems.com/product/ups/pfc-sinewave/cp1350pfclcd/

--- End quote ---

How bad is your power line? Because Line-Interactive may or may not be the right UPS.

There are essentially three categories of battery-powered UPSes:

- Standby: the simplest form. If the power drops below a certain level then they switch to battery mode.
- Line-Interactive: like Standby, but also monitors input voltage variations and can compensate for certain under- and overvoltage conditions (i.e. brownouts) as well as power factor.
- Active (usually called  'online'): uses a constant AC-DC-AC conversion where the batteries remain connected to the inverter, which means it doesn't have to switch between battery and mains supply. Unlike the other two types, the active UPS provides truly uninterrupted power, and can compensate for a wide range of line issues.

The disadvantage of the online UPS is its power draw as the constant AC-DC-AC conversion causes some loss of power (and heat, which is normally removed by a fan, so there's usually also some noise).

While I wouldn't recommend a Standby UPS for a computer, a Line-Interactive is usually fine if the power grid is generally reliable (and computer PSUs can easily deal with the short switchover event). If your local power line is poor however I'd recommend to get an online UPS.

As to brands, I'd normally look at Tripp-Lite, Eaton Powerware, Liebert/Emerson, Xtreme. Wouldn't recommend APC as we had lots of problems with them over the years. But that is mostly for professional use.

If it's for home use then there might well be other brands which would do fine, and the one in the link appears decent.

Karel:
Thanks Wuerstchenhund.

It's for home use and compared with the country I origin from, the powergrid here is pretty bad.
Sometimes it's ok for more than a month. Sometimes we have a surge once a week.
The surge can be relatively long, up to a minute or very short, less than half a second.

And you are right, the continuous conversion wastes energy but makes it easier to provide a stable voltage and waveform.

KaneTW:
I have an Eaton 9PX 1500i. It's an online UPS, although I run it in energy-saving mode most of the time (the network grid is fairly stable here).

Stock fans are rather loud for a quiet home office environment, but I replaced them with Noctua fans. Personally, I'd go for the quietest, lowest RPM fan you can find. The heat load isn't particularly big.

Mechatrommer:
you can buy any UPS that you think the brand is legit and the price is within reasonable figure etc but dont make mistake like i did, i have 3x ~500VA UPS in the store waiting to serve the right device for them after i pulled them out from my PCs. i thought 500VA can deal with my 450W PCs, wrong. i thought the first one is bad brand or bad design, then i bought the second different (better) brand, behaved the same, during power blackout, they are not 100% protecting my work. then i bought the 4th unit, now i beefed up to 1000VA, works charming until now, its just a matter of replacing expired batteries, this is unavoidable maintainance that we have to take care, SLA battery can die in just a matter of 2-3 years. as for how long it can protect your work in blackout it depends on how big the SLA battery is. i modded the earlier unit to take car's battery, but since the bottleneck is in the 500VA circuitry, then it didnt make any different at protecting from surges, but car battery could last maybe 15-30 minutes. i never have a need to mod my 1000VA since it has 2 batteries inside so i have plenty of time to do last minute editing and save my work before getting along with the blackout. ymmv.

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