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Questions about Standby Power
Our team of sales engineers (who can be contacted every day during UK business hours), will be pleased to answer your enquiry. However, you may find the following FAQs valuable.
FAQs
Q: "What can a UPS do for me?"
A: Every UPS will supply power to a load (such as a computer, telephone switch or medical equipment) when mains power fails. It may also condition the power and prevent spikes, brownouts, interference and other unwanted problems from reaching the supported equipment.
Q: "How long can a UPS keep my equipment running for?"
A: As long as you want, providing you buy enough batteries and the charging system is up to it. After about four hours it's usually more cost-effective to buy a generator, with a short runtime UPS to bridge the generator start-up gap.
Q: "How does a UPS work?"
A: Please see 'Understanding UPS'
Q: "What's the lifetime of a UPS?"
A: Most plug-in UPS are good for at least five years. We'd advise you to change the batteries every three to four years. With larger equipment (and more substantial investment), the lifetime of the equipment increases. We maintain equipment that's twenty years old and still going strong.
Q: "How do UPS work with generators?"
A: A well-maintained generator will start within around twenty seconds of mains failure. Many modern electronic products are computer-based and will 'crash', usually requiring a back-up to be reloaded before work can restart. A UPS bridges the gap between mains failure and generator start-up
Q: "Is a generator and UPS the ultimate solution?"
A: No, it's a good solution if you're prepared to either close down your data centre or take a risk when it come to maintenance time. Both a generator and a UPS have to be taken off-line for maintenance. A solution for a 24/7 data centre must include redundant UPS and generators to allow maintenance to be carried out whilst remaining protected. An additional benefit is that in the unlikely event of failure of a unit the spare unit(s) will take up the load.
Q: "My office is unmanned at night. How will I know if the power has failed?"
A: Many UPS can be fitted with an auto-dialler which will call you in the event of power loss. Equally, we can send emails or SNMP messages anywhere in the world, flash lights, sound alarms and generally find you anywhere you want to be located.
Q: "Will my UPS protect my equipment from a lightning strike?"
A: It's not designed to, but depending upon the proximity of the strike and the quality of the unit it may well do so. Much damage to IT equipment comes from strikes on telephone lines. Some small UPS have comms line surge suppressors as an accessory, and these will also help. Lightning strike protection should properly be treated separately to UPS support. Our engineers can help you with that.
Q: "What's three-phase electricity?"
A: Electricity is delivered around Europe as three-phases. Between any phase and neutral we get roughly 230 volts. Between any two phases we get about 415 volts. Large office premises and industrial sites usually have all three phases supplied in order to run heavy equipment. We supply both single and three-phase systems.
Q: "We’re on the fifteenth floor. We can’t use the roof space, and there are no car parking spaces we can use. How can we get extended runtimes for our equipment?"
We have super-silenced generators that can be fitted in your office with just an exhaust pipe out of the window, or in some instances we can use Fuel Cell systems which are completely silent and need no external exhaust.
