Sunday, October 27, 2019

The Shoemaker's Children Go Barefoot (no more)

For someone who makes the bulk of her income working with power quality, my own computer systems have been fairly under-protected for many years.

I picked up a stand-by UPS (APC Model ES550) many years ago (maybe 10? hard to say, might have been my second device); it has served me reasonably well. And even though I'm well aware of the nature of stand-by UPS (time delay before inverter switches on, step wave inverter output) it's done a pretty solid job of keeping my computer up and running.

A few days ago, my home office lost power for a bit - clocks were reset, the computer switched off - and I realized it was time to upgrade the office UPS. I picked up another APC - a line interactive, sine wave output model RS 1000MS - rated for 1000VA / 600W.




It's got plenty of juice for my needs - sitting at about 20% of load / 37 minutes of battery time with my desktop, monitor, cable modem, and a small backup server and peripheral hard drive. I'm much enamored with the front panel LED screen and the PowerChute software. And while I have not set my computer up to hibernate at the command of the UPS, that's a possibility.

I go back a long ways - when a buck a watt was perhaps a reasonable price to pay for a small UPS. So to get all this for about $150 - well, I'm not complaining.





And I took the time to run my house cable through the internal TVSS and the Ethernet from the cable modem back to the computer through the UPS - so I've got a better chance of surviving nearby lightning strikes / transients - related to both transient voltages and ground potential issues. I'm not at the point of driving a ground rod and connecting an external ground though. I'm down in a basement and close to the residence service panel, so not super worried about ground issues.

And I've also spent some time separating critical loads (computer, monitor, cable modem, exterior drives / servers) from less critical loads (printers, speakers), plugging these latter into the TVSS only outlets. And while I was down there with the system off, untangling the cable spaghetti, wrapping and tying off cables, neatening things up.

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