Ups Question

[Gary A]

I have a small UPS and it works fine except it will only give me about five minutes after the power goes off. Unfortunately my main power fails often but usually for five minutes or less. I have my monitor and speakers on a switched plug and turn off the monitor and speakers keeping power to only the computer itself.

My question is if I buy another small unit and plug it into the first unit, will it give me another five minutes for a total of ten minutes? Does anyone see any problems with that idea? If my main power does not come back on within five minutes, I would still have time for a shut down.

Would using two units be better in case of a lightning strike and massive spike?

[Guest Reimar]

I have a small UPS and it works fine except it will only give me about five minutes after the power goes off. Unfortunately my main power fails often but usually for five minutes or less. I have my monitor and speakers on a switched plug and turn off the monitor and speakers keeping power to only the computer itself.

My question is if I buy another small unit and plug it into the first unit, will it give me another five minutes for a total of ten minutes? Does anyone see any problems with that idea? If my main power does not come back on within five minutes, I would still have time for a shut down.

Would using two units be better in case of a lightning strike and massive spike?

Quick answer: NO!

What you need is an UPS with bigger Batteries. If you use USP with 500VA they mainly having a small 12 V battery with 10 Amp/h which brings you a max of 6 min if the battery is new.

Get an UPS with 800-1000 VA and they using bigger 12 V batteries with 14 Amp/h which bring you about 10-15 min.

Cheers.

[Daffy D]

If you have 2 UPS you could have one for your computer and one for your monitor and speakers. This would split the load and give you more time as the UPS ratings are usually for a system, computer monitor and everything.

The computer alone should take less power than the rest of the stuff so if you have two equal UPS the monitor would go down first giving you enough time to shut properly down the computer.

If the monitor is off you can set your system to shut down the computer by hitting the keyboard power button. Right click on your Desktop screen - Screensaver - Power - Advanced and set the buttons accordingly. Assuming you have XP

[Crossy]

Hmmm, I thought I'd replied to this, maybe going senile here

Anyway, I don't really see any reason why you should not do this. Get the biggest UPS you can locate, plug your existing one into it and when the smaller unit goes on battery shut down the PC.

If you have two units the same you won't double your run time, you'll still be charging the batteries of the 'slave' unit whilst the master is on battery so I'd expect an increase in runtime of maybe 75-80% using two identical units.

As noted, you could extend the runtime of your exiting unit by using bigger (external) batteries but watch going to more than double the current capacity as the internal charger may not be able to cope. Likely to be a cheaper option but make sure you fuse your battery pack near the batteries, it may only be 12 or 24 volts, but those lead-acid batteries can shove a LOT of current, easily capable of starting a fire

Edited October 24, 2008 by Crossy

[JetsetBkk]

...My question is if I buy another small unit and plug it into the first unit, will it give me another five minutes for a total of ten minutes?...

That's exactly what I've done for my TV, speakers and UBC box. A couple of old PC UPS's that appeared not to give me good mains filtering are now stacked, one on top of the other, and connected in series giving me about 25 minutes of TV if the power goes off.

Can't see anything wrong in that.