Need Electrical Ideas

[midgetwaiter]

Originally Posted by Snaz

BE VERY CAREFUL with APC/UPS as they can often cause the very problem they are supposed to prevent. Our company does network support for a well known national restaurant chain; this chain installed hundreds of APC/UPS on the networking gear(modems, switches etc.) in hopes of preventing downtime in case of power failure. Now one by one around five years after the UPS were installed they are starting to fail and when they fail the circuits they are supposed to protect are DOA resulting in prolonged downtime until the batteries are bypassed or another APC is installed. Some of these restaurants are down for 2 -3 days until another UPS/APC is shipped and installed even though the power to the restaurant is fine!

A good UPS is a continuous power UPS, this means that whatever you have plugged into runs off the batteries all the time and they are constantly recharged. This way there is no interruption, however brief, when the power goes out. Unfortunately it also means that the batteries wear out eventually, every continuous power UPS has this problem just like a laptop, cellphone or camera does. 5 years is about average.

Every UPS I can think of also has a USB or Ethernet jack so you can use the included software tools to monitor the health of the unit and test the status of the batteries. You could even get a piece of software called a SNMP server (free) that will alert you when there is an issue. If you have a problem you could maybe plug your stuff into the wall or something rather than wait 2 or 3 days.

How a national restaurant chain employs a consultant that doesn't a) know this and b) plan for it amazes me.