"T i m" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 29 Aug 2019 15:21:20 +0100, "Commander Kinsey"
wrote:
snip

I've had files corrupted which were being written to when a powercut
occurred. Therefore I got a UPS and have never experienced the same
again. I then realised since the UPS has much more output than the
computer needed, I could run my lighting circuit off it aswell. My LED
bulbs now last 5 years instead of 6 months. It not only removes spikes,
surges, and brownouts, but it will adjust the voltage when it's wrong.

I'm considering getting a UPS for my computers, router, Raspberry Pi etc
because our village gets an inordinately large number of supply
interruptions: I've logged 5 in the last week. Typically they only last a
couple of seconds, but that is enough to make computers reboot.

I've complained to phone number 105 (for Northern Powergrid) and been told
that it's due to "work on the HV supply", "bird strike on a cable", "tree
falling on a cable" and "lightning strike" (the last even when there's not
been a storm in the area). I think it's a random excuse generator. If "bird
strike" and "falling tree" are genuine, they must be *very* unlucky for
there to be 5 power cuts since 24 August - plus all the ones before I
started keeping a note of them.

Next time I'll ask to speak to someone more senior who can tell me *why* our
village is affected so badly by power interruptions, and what Northern
Powergrid are doing to make their system more resilient to such faults.

So far I've been very lucky to avoid corrupted files, because on one
occasion I was defragging a hard disc at the time the power went off, but
being NTFS it was more resilient to corruption, though the first thing I do
after each power cut is "chkdsk /f c:" for each drive letter just in case
(and I've never yet seen it say that it has had to correct any errors).

First rule of any UPS is to check periodically that the battery is holding
its charge, and to keep the battery charged. My wife bought a UPS when she
bought a PC about 10 years ago, and we never got round to connecting or
testing the UPS for about 18 months, by which time it was out of warranty.
When I tried it, I found that the battery would not supply AC mains even for
a 60 W bulb for more than about 2 seconds :-( We should have kept it
plugged in to keep the battery charged, and tested its output every so often
by switching off the input - that would have detected dead-on-arrival and
premature failure.