On 27/07/18 10:00, Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Fri, 27 Jul 2018 09:10:25 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

Who makes good domestic UPSes these days? Looking for about 500VA (need
to put a power meter in to be sure) and 30 mins runtime.

Most small UPS's are designed with an up time of about 10 minutes at
full load, ie long enough to see if the power comes back ina minute
or two and long enough for things to shutdown nicely if it doesn't.
So your looking at a 1500 VA unit.

OK Thanks - I must get a power measurement before I work out the
actual spec (500VA is a wild guess, I suspect it may be a good bit less).


Also be aware that UPS's are far more sensitive to overload than the
mains. Switching on a CRT monitor did't bother the mains but the UPS
would instantly shutdown.

But it's more about which make and possibly series are any good?

Now that I've got at my APC Smart UPS 700 to stop it cooking

I've heard of the battery cooking problem. Didn't know there was a
setting to solve it though.

batteries it "just works". It did before but would kill a set of
batteries in 3 to 4 years. Charge rate far too high for the
temperature of the batteries. In March 2014 I fitted a fan, reduced
the charge rate and replaced the batteries., That set of batteries
are still working fine. The cheapo PC slot exhaust fan has just
needed to be replaced but that's only a fiver versus £50 ish for a
new set of batteries...

Although mods like this are what I'm trying to avoid - and are putting
me off APC a tad.


Battery cooking is a well known trait of APC UPS's, so unless you
willing to dive in and mod your new UPS or can find real evidence
that a given model doesn't cook the batteries I'd avoid APC.


OK - I guess Eaton MEM is the next "well known" one to look at?