Need a UPS that won't cause an outage.

[FeuerFrei]

Can someone point me to an uninterruptible power supply that doesn't cut power to connected devices when the batteries fail? They have to exist.
As long as AC power is up, there's no reason a battery failure should cause the shutdown of connected devices.

Recently a computer in the office here shut off when the UPS it was connected to failed, taking an unsaved email with it. There was much gnashing of teeth. It's infuriating when a device causes the very problem it was bought to prevent - power loss. It is a 22 month-old 1500VA TrippLite.

I don't know much about power backups, so I'm wondering if you have to lay down the big bucks to get that functionality. It'll power two computers + router + modem.

 

[13Gigatons]

Same thing happened to me. It should simply notify the user that the battery needed replacement.

 

[FeuerFrei]

Same thing happened to me. It should simply notify the user that the battery needed replacement.

Seconded.
Thing is, the 22-month-old TrippLite model I mentioned above failed to indicate battery failure when it died, even though it has a indicator light on the front to signal faulty/low battery condition. I even pulled the batteries out, tested them with a multimeter, and they seemed charged. In disgust I started researching a new UPS.
A couple days went by and I realized I should try swapping in the spare batteries I had on the shelf, before throwing it away. That did the trick and the TrippLite is now back to normal - but how was I to know fresh batteries were all it needed? Trial and error baby - it's the only way.

I just bought a new CyberPower CP850PFCLCD UPS to pair with my other pc - hopefully it'll do a better job at notifying the user, if not fail more gracefully. Today it revealed my pc only draws 61W @ idle, 26 of that is the monitor. Shocking.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You'd need to look at something more enterprise worthy, perhaps with hot swap batteries (I think they exist). That or a more beefy dual conversion setup. Though that's not cheap by any means.

I can't say I've seen this happen with APCs though, they just "hold" a beep non stop if the batteries are toast. In enterprise environments this tends to be left unattended because management wont approve an outage, and it drives everybody nuts when they pass by the core networking closet or other equipment that is affected. :awe: I can confirm that those beeper speakers can run for years non stop without failing. :twisted:

I have a Tripp Lite inverter-charger at home for my server stuff and it works great (keeps my stuff up for hours) but there is a warning that if I disconnect the battery the AC side will fail which is interesting as yours is a Trippe Lite too. Must be something with the circuitry they use, that absolutely requires DC power to still be present. With a dual conversion setup the DC/inverter would always be on so if the rectifier or battery fail it does not really matter, as long as they don't both fail. Those also take up a full room, though. :biggrin:

 

[rsutoratosu]

The enterprise apc i use doesn't do that.. you can hot swap replace battery also.

 

[FeuerFrei]

Thanks for the tips. I had a feeling something enterprise-grade might be more intelligently designed. I've no personal experience with APC, but I know they have a good rep and are priced accordingly. Who doesn't want a UPS that can beep eternally?

:hmm: Come to think of it, my personal 5-year-old CyberPower UPS at home works just fine on AC with a dead battery ... and it's a cheapo consumer-grade 550VA model.

Maybe it's a brand thing then. We'll be avoiding TrippLite in the future. The first OMNIVS1500 we had basically caught fire after 4 years of use. A bridge rectifier inside blew up and popped smoke. Fortunately I was nearby and pulled the plug immediately, stopping the fireworks.

Behold the problem child:

TrippLite OMNI VS1500

 

[Red Squirrel]

Hmm that actually looks like it should be a decent UPS. I'm guessing that because it's line interactive it uses the battery much more, and is almost like a dual conversion, so with the battery being toast that's why it failed. You would think it would switch to simple AC mode though.

I'd almost be curious to try pulling the battery out one a working unit to see if it does the same thing. Could very well be it was defective too.

 

[13Gigatons]

My first and only TrippLite started smoking after a few weeks. I switch to APC after that. One thing I noticed about APC is that there basic models don't have the same amount of bells and whistle of cyberpower but the battery is MUCH larger.

Also the cyberpower battery lasted for only two years and the APC is 7 years old and still on the same battery.