I’m looking to buy ups as I have few power outage (last between 1 to 5 seconds max) where I live but I have never used one so don’t know what specs should I check for
Ideally I will plug my 3d printer (about 100-160w when printing), a pi 4 with nvme drive (no idea of wattage) and a mini pc with n100 processor (around 10-20W)
Thanks for your advices
Noise! They are louder then you think.
Ability to mute the alarm.
Bonus points if you can connect it to a computer to automatically shut it down cleanly.
Optional, battery expansion out of the back
Keep in mind, UPS’s should be in well ventilated areas, they can off gas hydrogen and other explosive fumes depending on the battery type
How safe is it to keep a lead acid battery UPS in a relatively/loosely closed space about the size of 8 of those UPSs?
A typical UPS uses sealed lead acid batteries. Those don’t vent hydrogen unless something goes really wrong like severe overcharge or a short circuit.
Just make sure it has enough ventilation to keep it from overheating. They are usually around 80% efficient, so it will produce around 40 watts of heat with your load while it’s on battery.
Ah, you’re right, it’s a gel battery. Good point on overheating. Thanks!
just have some ventilation so any hydrogen can escape (remember its lighter then air, so it will go up and out)
Didn’t think about noise and that’s important to me so thanks, is there anything special to look for the battery to make sure it can support my 3 devices at the same time? Like amp or other electric specifications?
A note on noise in case there is some misunderstanding.
The UPS is silent during normal operation (at least, all of them I’ve ever seen are, maybe super heavy duty ones will have a cooling fan but I’ve never seen one and even that can’t be too loud), the only time it will make noise is when the power goes out and it switches to battery or if you are pulling too much power to keep the battery fully charged it will beep to warn you.
If you are expecting a few outages that last a few seconds, you probably don’t need the beep warning, so as the other person said a mute option would be nice as the beep is usually very loud, my first UPS did not have this option so I just opened it and cut the lead to the speaker…
I will look for a fanless ups as I’m kinda sensitive to noise and everything is setup in my living room…, I will make sure I have the mute option available.
Another small note regarding fans, I’ve never actually seen a UPS with a fan before I just figured there’s probably some out there, if you’re looking at something and it doesn’t say anything about being fanless or silent or anything I’d just assume it doesn’t have a fan.
Look for devices, and read their specification sheets. They will tell you how much wattage they can support and how long they can support it for. They might do it in different units you can convert to wattage.
Do you need your devices to stay on for prolonged periods of time off the battery? Or just long enough to shut down? That will have a huge impact on how expensive your UPS will be.
You can add up the wattage of all of your devices, and see what the maximum is. Or you can get a $3 power meter and measure it empirically. Most UPS’s will set off an alarm if you’re drawing more power than they could support if they had to switch to the battery
Power outages are usually very short (few seconds max). Are fanless ups ok or should I stay away from it. The one I’m looking out at the moment is Eaton Ellipse eco 500
If you only need it to skip the power outage, I would look at something in the range of 800W to 1000W in an online ups.
This wattage should run your devices for 5 minutes or so, as you have quoted them. The online UPS will always run its load off on the battery, so there is no swap over time. Other types will be fine for a PC or normal electronics, but the hitch in power could cause a defect in the 3D print.
Thanks
Fanless is great, they are quiet.
Usually the fanless ones have power power restrictions, or only kick in when the power goes off