UPS

[ChrisP]

I use an APC BACK-UPS BE350G, which should give me about 13 min on power failure - more than enough.

Anyway, we played an outdoor gig on a generator last Saturday. The UPS beeps when it switches to battery power. It was beeping about every 30 sec for quite a while then finally beeped constantly for a while then shut down. Everything else on stage was working fine.

Anyone?

I use a similar one but it has software integration as well. I can't speak for US rating, but the one I use (suited for India), the software allows to set sensitivity which I have it as "high" is 200-250Volts setting. I think it is safer to set to as high as possible to allow operation within minimal fluctuation.

Regarding the beep, i think your battery ran out completely before it shut down. Not sure about Kronos' tolerance to voltage fluctuation, but i think it is safer to set sensitivity in the Backup UPS to as "high" as possible as opposed to "low". So in your case either the voltage was very high or low which the UPS rightly detected and cut external power.

I use a slightly older version of this http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=21 and I generally get around an hour of back up (without any other load on the UPS). May be you could consider purchasing an equivalent of this one or better which gives more back up.

HTH - Cheers!

[Ojustaboo]

I cant get my brain to work when working out what size UPS I would need.

Have a 88 note Kronos, 60w
Small Mackie mixer, 13w
Hi Fi amp 310w (or sometimes use active monitors with a combined consumption of 260w on full power)
Komplete Audio 6 interface

Del monitor 57w - 120w
2nd monitor 43w

Tagan 700w power supply
Antec 1200 case
EVGA GTX 465
Quad Core 2.66GHz 1333FSB LGA775 6MB cache
Gigabyte GA-EX58-DS4
12 GB RAM
120GB SSD
60GB SSD
2TB Hard drive
750MB Hard drive

Thats what I currently have plugged in under my desk.

Kronos must be protected (want AVR too), doesn't have to be for very long though, just long enough to save and turn off.

Would like the PC to also be protected, even if it's just 2 or 3 mins bakup so that I can shut it down properly in the event of loosing power (even if just one monitor is protected if that helps).

Any suggestions as to how bigger a UPS I need please, or should I get a small one for my Kronos now and save up for something else for my PC?

thanks

Joe

[LZ]

The UPS I have doesn't do AVR, just switches to battery backkup when the line voltage goes outsite of the sensitivity threshold. Again, it was set at 92VAC-139VAC - so obviously, if it was working correctly, it must have been outside that range for it to have gone into battery supply, then shut down when the battery ran out. I'm just leary of setting it to the less sensitive setting of 88-146.

Somebody on another forum suggested I go to the "SmartUPS" line from APC, which is much more expensive, but DOES provide AVR, which would have solved my problem.


In terms of sizing, just add all the wattages of all the devices together that it will need to supply. If it does not show a wattage, but lists a current in Amps, multiply that by the voltage. (1000mA = 1 A). The UPS will have a VA rating, which for all practical purposes is watts (not exactly, but since you aren't going to know or be able to measure power factor, it's good enough). Get the next size larger than whatever your total comes to.

Example: You have a 60W Kronos, a computer with a 200W power supply, and a rack module that says it draws 1A at 120V (120W) - that's 380W. You look at UPS sizes and see one that's 350VA and the next size is 500VA. Get the 500VA.

The other factor is run time. Most will have a graph that will show runtime vs. power. So one that's rated 10 min on a 100W load may actuall run closer to 15 min on a 60W load.

[Ojustaboo]

Thanks.

[guruteo]

I decided to buy an UPS too. I found this to be cheaper (and smaller and lighter) than the APCs:

http://www.nilox.it/scheda/nilox/17NXGCSI14001.htm#

(sorry, the descriprion is only in Italian)

my doubt is that it says it is not suitable for "active PFC" devices. Does anybody know whether this is the case of the Kronos or not?

Thanks.

[guruteo]

Just in case anybody else is interested: I bought the UPS linked in the post above and it works just fine.

[cjj]

I decided to buy an UPS too. I found this to be cheaper (and smaller and lighter) than the APCs:

http://www.nilox.it/scheda/nilox/17NXGCSI14001.htm#

(sorry, the descriprion is only in Italian)

my doubt is that it says it is not suitable for "active PFC" devices. Does anybody know whether this is the case of the Kronos or not?

Thanks.

I don't know specifically about the Kronos supply, but in general auto-ranging switching supplies are APFC (Active Power Factor Correction). So, if the input is a wide range, such as 100V-240V, there's a good bet it is APFC.

I'm not sure why they would have any real problems with different UPS designs, mostly, APFC supplies take the mains input, rectify and filter it to DC and then run an internal "switching" inverter to step the voltage up to a higher voltage which is then switch regulated to the lower output voltage...