UPS for home network during power outages

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

Hi,

I'm looking for an uninterruptible power supplies for a home network. My home office is in a place where power outages are frequent and unpredictable, but short. So I'm looking for one or two UPSes to keep the modem, router, VOIP phone (I'm thinking Ooma, but that might be a separate thread), and desktop PC + monitor up and running (for at most 30 minutes).

Do you have any recommendations?

 

[Couperin47]

Hi,

I'm looking for an uninterruptible power supplies for a home network. My home office is in a place where power outages are frequent and unpredictable, but short. So I'm looking for one or two UPSes to keep the modem, router, VOIP phone (I'm thinking Ooma, but that might be a separate thread), and desktop PC + monitor up and running (for at most 30 minutes).

Do you have any recommendations?

You are not going to find anything at reasonable cost for home use that will hold up the average desktop PC, a 'standard' 24" monitor, router & modem for 30 mins. For around $120-160 you can find a ton of good 1200-1500VA UPS units which are the minimum you want to support that sort of load... but they will all only keep your setup powered for about 12-15 mins tops. Most units that are even twice that size/power will cost a lot more, but still probably not get you much more than 20 mins. What these units will do is filter/smooth your power such that unexplained instabilities disappear, but after 5-10 mins tops they need to be thought of as buying you the time to shut off the PC normally. As I suspect you already understand, the one thing you do NOT attach to any UPS is any printer.

APC, Tripplite, Belkin all make good units. These are basically boxes with sealed lead/acid batteries and one board of electronics...what you want is a sale with free shipping...they weigh a lot. In many cases, on a good sale, a new complete unit will be just a few bucks more than the cost of replacement batteries. On average the batteries in these units last 4 to 5 years.

 

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

Thanks, Coup. That helps. I'll rethink whether I need to incorporate the desktop and the monitor into the workflow at all, and see if I can goose the uptime by switching instead to a laptop with a decent battery.

 

[jayhoz]

Research pure sine wave UPS and determine if that is something you feel you need. If so, Cyberpower makes good units.

 

[SumnerH]

You are not going to find anything at reasonable cost for home use that will hold up the average desktop PC, a 'standard' 24" monitor, router & modem for 30 mins. For around $120-160 you can find a ton of good 1200-1500VA UPS units which are the minimum you want to support that sort of load... but they will all only keep your setup powered for about 12-15 mins tops. Most units that are even twice that size/power will cost a lot more, but still probably not get you much more than 20 mins.

If 1200VA is enough to power his setup, it's enough--the voltage-amp measurement is power draw (how big a load the UPS can deliver), and has no direct relation to how long the battery can supply that power for. The latter is dependent on the battery's amp-hours (AH).

E.g. the APC SMT1500 and SMC1500 are both 1500VA. But the SMT has a much higher capacity 18 AH battery and will run 400 watts for 33 minutes while the SMC will only run for 16 minutes at the same load.

 

[Couperin47]

Research pure sine wave UPS and determine if that is something you feel you need. If so, Cyberpower makes good units.

Quality of psudo-sine wave and speed of switchover used to be issues with some equipment, at the really high end are UPS which effectively are AC-DC-AC conversion on all the time so there is no switchover at all. Very expensive and inherently way less efficient. Modern digital switching power supplies and flat screen monitors are much less sensitive to these issues and I can't recall the last time I heard of a modern home desktop that had any issues with the commonly available inexpensive UPS units. Otoh plugging any cheap digital clock into such units produces comically inaccurate results when they operate.

Sumner is, of course, correct: it's all about how big a box of what quality batteries you're willing to buy: in the above example the SMT weighs 8 pounds more in the same case and costs over $125 more.

 

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

I'm leaning toward this APC BR1500G unit with an external battery pack. It sounds like that should be enough to keep me online and on conference calls for 20ish minutes, and give me enough time to do a proper shutdown of a connected PC.

 

[crystalline]

the voltage-amp measurement is power draw

Voltage-amps are what all the cool kids are using instead of watts these days?

Edit: ah ignore me, I see now- watts are average power and V-A gives peak power considering the reactive nature of the load

 

[Couperin47]

I'm leaning toward this APC BR1500G unit with an external battery pack. It sounds like that should be enough to keep me online and on conference calls for 20ish minutes, and give me enough time to do a proper shutdown of a connected PC.

Perfectly reasonable selection, and APC software will allow you to configure for both file saving or even complete automatic shutdown of the PC before the UPS gives out. Also be aware that if/when the batteries start to go, APC uses very commonly available sizes which can be obtained for far less than APC charges for replacements. I have a pair of APC units that are relatively ancient (they were sold for dirt as surplus from the old Compaq labs), I've replaced the batteries at least 3 times and they still run perfectly.

 

[LoweTek]

...a new complete unit will be just a few bucks more than the cost of replacement batteries. On average the batteries in these units last 4 to 5 years.

Hmm. I've never had a UPS battery last near five years. Also, 8ah generic brand replacement batteries for a 1500VA UPS can be had for under $30. You need two so $60 tops to replace the batteries. A new 1500VA UPS will cost well over $100.

I have had very mixed results with APC. Several just died. In particular the expensive LCD models 1300 and 1500, I had two of each and they were all gone in three years or less. I currently use both APC and Tripp-Lite models. I use UPS for both computer and AV gear. I also strongly recommend them for pricey TVs for the voltage regulation (AVR feature in a UPS). Avoiding power sags and spikes will add years to the life of a TV.

 

[Couperin47]

Hmm. I've never had a UPS battery last near five years. Also, 8ah generic brand replacement batteries for a 1500VA UPS can be had for under $30. You need two so $60 tops to replace the batteries. A new 1500VA UPS will cost well over $100.

I have had very mixed results with APC. Several just died. In particular the expensive LCD models 1300 and 1500, I had two of each and they were all gone in three years or less. I currently use both APC and Tripp-Lite models. I use UPS for both computer and AV gear. I also strongly recommend them for pricey TVs for the voltage regulation (AVR feature in a UPS). Avoiding power sags and spikes will add years to the life of a TV.

MY APC's are 20 years old, each uses 4 batteries and they are built like and weigh as much as a tank, of course they were built in the US. As it happens I also have a TrippLite Smart1500 which has also given exemplary service, is much smaller though I wish it didn't require a fan. The fact that my old APC's though rated at only 900watts use 4 batteries may explain why I'm getting near 5 years out of them. OTOH I'm reasonably sure from the size my Tripplite also only uses 2 and it's over 4 years old and still working OK. I also inherited a 500w Belkin which is OK, I split the load so the Belkin is only powering my monitors since a one battery 500w unit is really marginal for any but the most minimal PC.

 

[Red Sox Physicist]

I'm leaning toward this APC BR1500G unit with an external battery pack. It sounds like that should be enough to keep me online and on conference calls for 20ish minutes, and give me enough time to do a proper shutdown of a connected PC.

How new is your PC? Most modern power supplies do power factor correction for efficiency and require sine wave input. That one won't work if your power supply does active power factor correction.

 

[SumnerH]

How new is your PC? Most modern power supplies do power factor correction for efficiency and require sine wave input. That one won't work if your power supply does active power factor correction.

Corsair's own techs say that simulated sine UPSes work fine with their active PFC supplies, and in the comments section of that Amazon page you can find plenty of people who are using that power supply successfully with modern active PFC power supplies.

The "stepped sine waves don't work with active PFC" thing may have been true of older power supplies that had an extremely squared off power output, but modern simulated sines should work just fine in 120v AC countries.

 

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

How new is your PC? Most modern power supplies do power factor correction for efficiency and require sine wave input. That one won't work if your power supply does active power factor correction.

Sorry, took my eye off this thread. Haven't made the purchase yet, but for whatever its worth my power supply is this Corsair 750W CX750M.

 

[SumnerH]

As noted above, the idea that modern power supplies don't work with simulated sine UPSes is mostly rubbish propagated by UPS manufacturers trying to sell more expensive products*--see the link I posted above for a Corsair tech confirming it's not a problem with their power supplies.

*It was a more legitimate issue with much older square-wave UPSes

 

[Couperin47]

To confirm Sumner, my APC 800RT is a 20 yr old design, when 'psudo sinewave' UPS designs were significantly more square-wave than any current designs. I have used this with all sorts of modern desktop builds and a wide variety of flat panel monitors. It also currently has attached my Moto/Arris 6121 modem and Netgear 3700 router. Thanks to rural storms I average a power loss about ever 2 months. Everything connected to this unit works perfectly and always has, there are no issues operating anything you connect with any of the current crop of UPS designs from any of the major companies, all of which are using far more compatible circuitry than my antique battleship.