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Recommend a UPS
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Recommend a UPS

jhjh Member

We have a small office in a small town. The whole town is powered by one substation and the substation is in a flood prone area. Somehow, the local authority and local townsfolk don't see this as a problem.

Anyway, we've had about 3-4 power outages in the last year, averaging 2-3 hours each. I'm trying to weight the costs and benefits of investing in some UPS units as an alternative to sending the staff home.

My guess is that each person's PC, screens etc. probably draw about 150W but we might be able to get that down to nearer 100W by investing in smaller / more efficient power supplies.

So it seems that we'd need something in the 2000-3000VA range - but it seems that the runtime of UPS units can't be easy compared with just the VA rating. For example, APC's a 1500VA UPS from APC's SMT range runs for about twice as long as a similar spec unit from their SMC range.

Can anyone recommend any decent units / suppliers in the UK?

Comments

  • MikeAMikeA Member, Patron Provider
    edited March 2018

    I have a 1500VA/900W UPS with PC and one monitor using it, with my PC doing everything I do normally on it, lasts just over 1 hour on battery. So something around 2500-3000VA to be safe.

  • erkinerkin Member

    Why a ups and not an electric generator? I am using a diesel version which works upto 12 hours incase there is a power outage.

    Thanked by 3Aidan sureiam kkrajk
  • AidanAidan Member

    @erkin said:
    Why a ups and not an electric generator? I am using a diesel version which works upto 12 hours incase there is a power outage.

    This.

    A UPS is to enable you to safely shutdown in the event of a power loss or to keep you up and running until you start a generator.

  • I use an ancient small UPS, but modified it to take a 115VA marine battery. You won't want to fool with that stuff probably, but I can report that it held up for over 4 hours one day with fair sized monitor, main computer, wireless radio, and router all running. There was still juice left when I got back.

    I'd suggest doing something similar, but commercial offering. Go ask one of the solar installation shops since they have all the stuff to do this even though you obviously won't need the solar panels. They specialize in battery installations and converters.

  • Traditional battery UPS are for brief outages, and in the case of a longer outage, to keep the stuff running long enough to get the generators on line. If you don't want a generator, maybe try something like a Tesla Powerwall?

    But, if power is out in the whole town, people probably would like to get home and deal with their refrigerator etc. I'd go ahead and let them, if you expect the outage to persist longer than an hour or two.

  • MikeAMikeA Member, Patron Provider
    edited March 2018

    @willie said:
    maybe try something like a Tesla Powerwall?

    Well, that's much more power than just wanting to keep your PC hardware on for a while. Also they raised the price of the Powerwall recently, not worth unless you want to save money for your elec bill w/ solar or want to power your house in an outage.

  • MikeA said: Well, that's much more power than just wanting to keep your PC hardware on for a while.

    OP seemed to want to keep an office running. I hope they don't expect people to keep working just because the PC's are powered, if the lights and a/c and fridges are off. It looks like the Powerwall 2 has 13.5 kwh storage, 5kw sustained output capacity, and costs around 7k. That's somewhat bigger than OP's request but still seems within reason. OP wanted 3KVA so 5kw gives a bit of headroom, and the storage capacity at 3kw is 4.5 hours which doesn't seem excessive.

  • jhjh Member
    edited March 2018

    Thanks for all of the comments. We don't have anywhere to put a generator otherwise that would be the best option. AC isn't an issue in the north of England and we can do without fridges and other niceties for 2-3 hours.

    Tesla Powerwall looks great but it's too expensive.

    UPS units seem to get really expensive above about 2000VA so I'm thinking about getting something like an APC BX1400UI or Cyberpower VALUE2200EILCD for each PC and trying to use smaller PSUs wherever we can.

    Problem is, especially in the APC range, the VA rating and runtime rating seem to diverge depending on the model.

  • @willie said:

    MikeA said: Well, that's much more power than just wanting to keep your PC hardware on for a while.

    OP seemed to want to keep an office running. I hope they don't expect people to keep working just because the PC's are powered, if the lights and a/c and fridges are off. It looks like the Powerwall 2 has 13.5 kwh storage, 5kw sustained output capacity, and costs around 7k. That's somewhat bigger than OP's request but still seems within reason. OP wanted 3KVA so 5kw gives a bit of headroom, and the storage capacity at 3kw is 4.5 hours which doesn't seem excessive.

    Keep in mind that it might not be able to output power when it does not detect any power coming from the grid, to prevent you back-feeding into the grid, possibly electrocuting whatever electrician is working on it.

  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    @JH,

    Some questions:

    1.) How much power does your office essentials need? Presumably that's lights and computer equipment?

    2.) How long do you need the power to last?

    3.) What's your budget?

    I think even a modest solution would cost a few thousand dollars at least.

    We use a number of 6KW UPS. The UPS itself (without batteries) cost over $1,000. The batteries scale to whatever size you need. Lead Acid is the cheapest option but it will take a lot of space and weigh a ton for even a minimal setup.

    A 6KWH battery bank (so 1 hour at full capacity) would probably set you back $1,000 - $1,500. So all in you're looking at about $2,000 - $2,500 for a small setup.

    With that in mind, Lead Acid Batteries do not last long and the rate capacity is sort of theoretical. If you start of with 1KWH battery, you'd be lucky to be able to pull >800wh from it, and it will basically fall to <100wh within around 5 years. Lithium Ion batteries will last longer but probably cost you about 3-4 as much up front.

    6KW is not huge, but if you're using energy saving lights, and high efficiency equipment, it might be enough for a small office?

    Lets say you're talking about 1 room and 4 workers/computers. Lights probably use less than 50watts (if LED) and energy efficient / modern computers + monitors and peripherals and each computer probably uses at most 200watts each? So that's a total of around 850 watts all in. If you had a 6kwh battery bank (of which 4.8 are usable), then you could probably squeeze 5-6 hours.

    But with each passing year, your battery capacity will probably drop about an hour.

  • pcanpcan Member

    So you want to retrofit a centralized UPS solution in a existing commercial/office building? We tried that several times on our smaller offices and the the main issue is always the same: either you install a completely independent UPS power distribution system with separate outlets for computer/monitors, or you need a bloody expensive massively oversized UPS to cope with laser copy-printers, electric stoves, the 1000W vacuum cleaner etc. that random people will try to plug in the office outlets sooner or later. They will fry any smaller UPS. The cheaper solution is to buy a small individual UPS for each computer/monitor, or even better to ditch desktop computers and use laptops. The external monitor will be switched off and the printers will not work during the outage, but you usually can cope with that. You will then need only a small UPS to power the server and the Internet router/network switches. To get some light during the outage, simply replace one of the ceiling fixtures with a emergency light.

    Thanked by 1willie
  • randvegetarandvegeta Member, Host Rep

    @Zen said:
    You can build your own powerwall using 18650s for considerably cheaper if you're willing to invest the time.

    Where can you by 18650s?

  • I don't have any idea about whether the OP is technically inclined or not, but there really is not a lot of skill needed to put together a large battery with a cheap UPS. A decent deep cycle battery made for such things is under $200 and a suitable UPS for the 300 Watts that a single station needs is maybe $80. Setting up such for each worker is not a lot of trouble or money really. This will give at least 4 hours working time for each person. It doesn't get any cheaper than this unless there are a lot of workers involved, in which case running a separate circuit off a battery bank will be more economical, but that would possibly require hiring an electrician with appropriate expertise.

  • Second the generator idea. Otherwise get ready to retrofit an office electrical system with a very large battery so you can keep the lights on. Otherwise get everyone a 1500va ups battery and plan on getting ultra small form PCs next time. That'll run for hours and hours for sure.

  • sureiam said: so you can keep the lights on.

    Many places are fine without artificial lights during the day. When available, windows can be a reliable technology. :)

  • Ole_JuulOle_Juul Member
    edited March 2018

    sureiam said: 1500va ups battery

    What kind of office uses that kind of computer! 300va is fine for a powerful system plus monitor, and you can keep that up for 5 hours with a 150ah battery or less. I'm just talking from experience though.

  • @jh If you’re not particularly happy with the reliability of your town’s power generation, you can get a natural gas generator (high upfront costs though) to feed the building when the power dies.

  • jhjh Member

    Thanks for all of the suggestions. The office is in a shared building so anything that involves messing with the built-in electrics or installing a generator is sadly not possible.

    There are only 6 of us and each of us really only have a SIP phone, a PC and 2 screens. I'm going to do what I can to make the PCs more efficient but I think we're going to have to make do with an off the shelf UPS under each desk.

    I've ordered an APC 1400VA unit. Reviews on Amazon vary wildly in terms of runtime for similar equipment. I'll try it out and see what I can for one of our PCs. I still have no idea if its a good choice for an off the shelf UPS. The price is really good for 1400VA but I think their mor expensive lines have better quality batteries and are more efficient.

  • sarahsarah Member

    @jh said:
    Thanks for all of the comments. We don't have anywhere to put a generator otherwise that would be the best option. AC isn't an issue in the north of England and we can do without fridges and other niceties for 2-3 hours.

    Tesla Powerwall looks great but it's too expensive.

    Have you considered an inverter+battery? They are pretty compact, noiseless and smoke free. It's very affordable like 200 bucks and you are set for the next 5 years..

  • sarah said: Have you considered an inverter+battery?

    Doesn't go on automatically. That's essentially why I suggested a cheap UPS + battery. Just run a one foot wire to a larger battery and take advantage of the special UPS cirtuitry. I use a 120AH marine battery and get 4hr plus for decent machine and monitor and some other stuff.

  • AlexanderMAlexanderM Member, Top Host, Host Rep

    Have you considered using laptops + dock/monitor rather than a UPS for every PC?

  • jhjh Member

    @AlexanderM said:
    Have you considered using laptops + dock/monitor rather than a UPS for every PC?

    Yeah. Thing is most of the devs use Linux and I heard DisplayLink on Linux is a can of worms. Might be worth trying to find laptops that have a decent selection of ports but I think most of the decent ones are going the Apple way.

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