What all does a UPS do??

[Shadow_Storm56]

Ok so obviously a UPS has its obvious function.... but what else does it do??? They make heat and when they are under large load a fan comes on. So what are they doing to make heat when there is power? Are they like... adding more stability to the power or somthing? 

[ProjectBox153]

To my knowledge, some can help to "smooth" the outgoing electricity. They are also designed to be able to run loads of a lot of power off of a battery and safely shutdown devices connected. 

[TVwazhere]

Good quality UPS's (from what I understand) "conditions dirty power", or power that fluctuates due to surges, dips in usage or anything that is not a steady constant supply of electricity, which can inadvertently take a toll overtime on electronic devices.

[Shadow_Storm56]

It must condition power weather or not it is ok in the first place. I was just curious what it  was doing is all.

[Kierlan]

Hmm...
It's hard to explain without going into a level of technical detail that is just pointless for anyone not seriously into UPS tech.

 

The big thing as others pointed out is that it conditions power, electricity is sent at a certain voltage and a certain frequency and if it was always like that the world would be a better place but because some houses are old or wired badly or the local power company just DGAF you will find it going out of spec. Voltage spikes being a common one or brownouts etc. The UPS effectively acts like a buffer to that, it takes in the raw current from the wall and then passes onto the PC what it needs and the onboard circuitry acts to filter out the highs and lows and other nasty things which can adversely affect a PC's PSU.

 

Of course there is the obvious “it keeps the power on for X time when the power goes out” thing which is very helpful if you live in an area that commonly has brownouts, doubly so if having a brownout might mean the loss of work etc.

 

Beyond that well.. UPS’s can have all manner of bells and whistles attached, USB power ports, ethernet ports etc.
 

Hope that helps

 

Just to add, 

 

If you ever feel bord and want to listen to something and maybe learn a bit of trivia about this sort of thing, hop over to youtube and give this BigClive a listen, even if your not into Electrical Engineering he speaks plainly enough to be understood and is quite entertaining. He even blows up stuff, just like linus!

[Shadow_Storm56]

3 hours ago, Kierlan said:

Hmm...
It's hard to explain without going into a level of technical detail that is just pointless for anyone not seriously into UPS tech.

 

The big thing as others pointed out is that it conditions power, electricity is sent at a certain voltage and a certain frequency and if it was always like that the world would be a better place but because some houses are old or wired badly or the local power company just DGAF you will find it going out of spec. Voltage spikes being a common one or brownouts etc. The UPS effectively acts like a buffer to that, it takes in the raw current from the wall and then passes onto the PC what it needs and the onboard circuitry acts to filter out the highs and lows and other nasty things which can adversely affect a PC's PSU.

 

Of course there is the obvious “it keeps the power on for X time when the power goes out” thing which is very helpful if you live in an area that commonly has brownouts, doubly so if having a brownout might mean the loss of work etc.

 

Beyond that well.. UPS’s can have all manner of bells and whistles attached, USB power ports, ethernet ports etc.
 

Hope that helps

 

Just to add, 

 

If you ever feel bord and want to listen to something and maybe learn a bit of trivia about this sort of thing, hop over to youtube and give this BigClive a listen, even if your not into Electrical Engineering he speaks plainly enough to be understood and is quite entertaining. He even blows up stuff, just like linus!

I watch clive all the time, just never saw a UPS video. Glad to know it is good for the PC 

[Kierlan]

Well Clive doesnt do any UPS stuff so far, but with all the dodgy chineese stuff he does go into detail on howe badly puttogether power supplies can cause trouble and how in the case of some faulty wiring in the house or elsewhere can cause them to do all kinds of hilariously dangerous things. 

[mark_cameron]

On 22/03/2017 at 0:59 PM, Shadow_Storm56 said:

Ok so obviously a UPS has its obvious function.... but what else does it do??? They make heat and when they are under large load a fan comes on. So what are they doing to make heat when there is power? Are they like... adding more stability to the power or somthing? 

They are transferring electrical power to chemical storage and back again when off/on load. This involves chemistry - specifically exothermic reactions which generates heat.

 

The more power you need the more energy per unit time is needed = more heat generation potential.

 

Plus you are cramming alot of energy into a small box (think x1000's times a smart phone's lithium battery energy).

 

Additionally, high tier UPS condition the power by constantly supplying equipment via battery which is constantly being 'topped up' by the external power until that is cut when it runs on full internal power.

 

Basically, UPS are a God send for people with unreliable power. Who like our Canadian brothers/sisters might be in rural areas. I live in a suburban UK area - but my offices are in a UK rural countryside environment. We now have individual PC UPS to prevent dataloss and also UPS for NAS.

 

A UPS is a brilliant investment if you need it - due to unreliable power. YES, you have to replace the batteries every 2->5 years however that for a business or consumer might be money well spent.

 

It is for me. If I Iose 4 hours of work thats potentiall GB£2000 a time the power goes off. Which would pay for x10 quality UPS each time.

 

A UPS is time and money well spent!

[JJOATz]

Here's a little more in addition to the line regulation (or conditioning) others have mentioned.

 

As far as heating up, the PCB and components produce some heat in addition to the battery. I have no clue how much, only that it does occur. This does happen with or without a device drawing from the battery.

 

There are different kind of UPS, the one's Mark mentioned are double conversion UPS.

 

The cheap UPS you get at retail stores (Wal-Mart, Meijer, Costco, Best Buy, etc) are not double conversion.

 

Consumer grade UPS feed the power directly to the connected device. If it detects that the power has went out it quickly (within milliseconds) switches to the battery for power. Old type of these UPS could cause a surge to the system during switching, but this isn't much of an issue nowadays as the technology has advanced a lot.

 

Double Conversion UPS convert the AC power to DC power to charge the battery, the DC battery power is converted back to AC power and then connected to whatever device is plugged into it. It is called double conversion because it is uses two power inverters; AC-to-DC and DC-to-AC. These lose efficiency and tend to produce more heat (which is wasted energy, which is efficiency so there was no point in mentioning heat).

 

I need to buy a UPS and was looking into getting a double conversion, but it's just not worth the cost. At least not for me.

[mayanktanwar]

UPS, standing for Uninterruptible Power Supply, is an electric circuit (device) which instantly backs up power supply for a gadget.