I use UPSs to maintain power only during short brownouts or voltage fluctuations. If the power goes down, I give it 45 seconds, then shut everything down gracefully. A lineman once told me there is an automatic reset attempt at 45 seconds, depending on the cause of the outage.
 
If the power stays down, I fire up the Onan 20k and bring what I want back up. The genset will automatically switch back to utility power when it is available, and that switch is seamless, so much so I often don't know when the utility is back online.
 
We bought the 20k with the thought that Murphy says outages here in the desert will likely happen when it is 110 degrees, so we wanted enough to run a couple of AC units as well as refrigeration and other miscellaneous stuff (computers, lights, etc.)

I have a UPS unit set up to power my router, computer, and printer. However, I have disccovered that it isn't working now and needs to be replaced.

flashguy

quote:

Originally posted by flashguy:
I have a UPS unit set up to power my router, computer, and printer. However, I have disccovered that it isn't working now and needs to be replaced.

That is a problem I discovered while still working and maintaining always-on servers. The circuit board in the UPS can go bad (get fried), and the unit will still pass utility power straight through, and you don't find out until the power goes south. After being bit by that, I starting using a decent surge protector before the UPS to protect its circuitry, and started charting battery replacement to keep them fresh. I still follow that regimen in retirement.

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:

That is a problem I discovered while still working and maintaining always-on servers. The circuit board in the UPS can go bad (get fried), and the unit will still pass utility power straight through, and you don't find out until the power goes south. After being bit by that, I starting using a decent surge protector before the UPS to protect its circuitry, and started charting battery replacement to keep them fresh. I still follow that regimen in retirement.

It's why you don't use lower end consumer grade UPS units for servers.
The better units will do regular diagnostics and have communication features that can alert you to battery issues.
Electronic issues are rare in my experience - it is almost always the battery.
Additionally they are usually hot swappable for minimal or no down time.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
It's why you don't use lower end consumer grade UPS units for servers.

Stingy company, with very little budget for stuff like that. After some embarrassing failures, I did convince them to move to better UPSs. Now on my own, server-grade is what I use for my desktop machine/monitor. But old habits/suspicions die hard, and I still use a quality surge protector before the UPS.
 
Electronics issues are more common where you have active T-storms and close strikes changing the ground potential. I finally got them to spring for in-panel surge protection as a first-line defense. I use one at home, too.

You really don't need a generator for a stand by power supply. Already mentioned was Ecoflow. There are several portable power manufactures--Jackery, Goal Zero, Ecoflow.
https://ecoflow.us.com/
https://www.jackery.com/
https://www.goalzero.com/

Costco carries Massimo. https://www.costco.com/massimo...oduct.100715826.html

https://www.bluettipower.com/p...rtable-power-station
2000 WattHours
2KW inverter

Arrives tomorrow. I expect this to power the fridge and freezer during an outage for most of a day. That will buy me time before having to deal with the generator.

I can stay inside.
No extension cords from outside.
No noisy generator giving away the fact that we have some electricity.

During an extended outage, I could recharge the unit from the generator. and then lock the generator away while I sleep.

For those with a generator who've had extended outages; did you have sad-looking neighbors hanging around your door with their cell phone chargers?

Just to be clear, I don't think these portable power stations people are linking to in this thread have quite the same end user utilization/intended purpose as a UPS. The former is intended, to some extent, to supplant a generator for mobile, emergency, or temporary or even longer term power sourcing. The latter is a stationary, always connected device, for a defined term ride-through.

Many of these power stations can be used as a UPS.

Even in the case of this Bluetti; in case of a scheduled (or likely) power outage, I could plug the fridge and freezer into the inverter and keep charging the batteries off of local power. Then any black (or brown) out wouldn't affect their compressors. And my food would stay cold.

quote:

Originally posted by Some Shot:
Many of these power stations can be used as a UPS.

Of course they can, but they also have way more "features" completely unnecessary, while missing some that are(communications), at double or more the cost of a dedicated comparably sized UPS.
Which is what this thread was originally about.

Reviving this thread as there's now talk of rolling blackouts in Iowa this summer.

It looks like for a laptop, monitor, router, and modem I'd need about 300W. Is a sinewave UPS better for electronics and worth extra money?

Reviews are making it sound like one isn't getting that much time with even a 1500VA unit, so I'm a bit divided between 600VA and 1500VA UPS. Cyberpower and APC also look about even in the reviews.

If the primary purpose is to keep the modem and wifi alive for a while and avoid outages during power blips, maybe the smaller unit is fine? What's your philosophy for these?

I would figure the maximum load (in Watts) of everything I want to run from the UPS. Then I would decide how long I'd like everything to run after the power is out. Most of the consumer-grade UPSs I've looked at only seem to be rated to run from two-five minutes at their maximum output Watts. Manufacturers often have charts or graphs giving some idea of how long their units will power lighter loads.

For example; I have a Cyberpower ST900U rated at 500 Watts (for two minutes). I use it to backup a desktop PC and a fiber terminal. It has software on the PC to report on the UPS and control a shutdown/hibernate on the PC. Right now it's reporting a load of 82 Watts and an estimated runtime of 47 minutes. If the PC is shut off, the fiber terminal alone will run for a long time.

Many of the cheaper units put out a square wave (or stepped square wave) instead of a nice sinusoidal wave. Some devices are sensitive to that and want to see a pure sine wave. Then it becomes important.