Linking UPS's

[ahenobar]

Last night the power went out at my house, but thanks to my UPS I still had the computer for a while and a lamp. I shutdown the computer and then did some reading for about a half hour before the lamp went out as the UPS was drained.

That got me thinking, can you plug one UPS into another in order to increase the amount of battery life?

So if you have one UPS (X) plugged into another UPS (Y) that's plugged into the wall, when the wall connection looses power will Y drain first then X?

I was thinking of buying another UPS, but thought it might be an interesting way to leverage the first purchase.

 

[SuperNaruto]

Bad idea.. harmonics can damage equipments..

-Harmonics can cause equipment to overheat which damage insulation
http://www.mgeups.com/techinfo/techpap/articles/Harmonics_2007_59.pdf

http://nam-en.apc.com/cgi-bin/nam_en.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=uz6B5zsh&p_lva=&p_faqid=397

 

[ahenobar]

Thanks. I figured there'd be a problem.

On a related matter, if you had two plugged into different outlets, could you run one UPS down with a lamp and then take it over to the next one and run it down with the same. Or does the UPS only maintain the charge for a limited time. In essence, is it a battery?

 

[jkresh]

yes the ups is basically a battery, you could move the lamp to both of them, if nothing was plugged into the second ups it should hold its charge or a while.

 

[ahenobar]

Thanks for the info.

I put off getting a UPS for years until a power surge fried a motherboard. Since then I've found getting a UPS to be one of the most handy purchases I've made.