That DIY heavy-load UPS is beginning to sound like a good idea.
At what point do we storm the EPA and throw the bastards in the Potomac?
5 Replies to “Maybe I ought to reconsider.”
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A "surly curmudgeon[], suspicious and lacking in altruism." (Robert A. Heinlein)
I’ve been wondering how much a generator that produces sufficient quality power for electronic devices costs. Either gasoline or natural gas powered. I’m sure I wouldn’t want my computers anywhere near the cheapest model, but I’m thinking a UPS may not be good enough.
My guess is that you won’t find one that is suitable for electronics use without significant down-stream modification of the power it generates.
In my (admittedly limited) experience, most portable generators have cheapie inverters that make square-wave AC, which your electronic equipment is not going to like. That’s why the guy makes a point about needing a true sine-wave inverter.
Bobbi is probably the one to weigh in here, though. I am only an egg when it comes to electronics 🙂
Oh, and as far as natural gas generators go — they might be a better bet (probably have better inverters because of the design environment), but then you have to worry about whether or not you have a sufficient gas supply to your home to run the generator, your furnace, and your water heater all at the same time. Many homes don’t. Fixing that problem could be pretty expensive.
Units that use real alternators to generate the power should do OK. And there are a lot of options out there: After all, they use ’em to power everything from RVs to rock concerts.
Kohler
Cummins-Onan
Yeah but I’m talking about portables or residential-sized standbys. Although even the big Cummins we have at the office for the computer room is run through our enterprise-sized UPS, for voltage regulation and filtering.