I used to love the APC Smart UPS range. Fully line interactive, they’ll work of nearly any input power and give perfect output power. They don’t cut to batteries unless there is basically no input whatsoever, so brownouts or out of frequency gensets don’t bother them in the least, or even flatten the batteries. Just what you need living on a minesite, or somewhere the power is often dodgy. I still like them for server rooms, very flexible solution, but not for home.
I recently bought a power meter and the results were not good…..
264W – UPS running 2 PC’s, a laptop and a few other bits.
126W – Same equipment, same conditions, no SmartUPS
126W – Same equipment, same conditions, Offline Powerware UPS
The UPS was fully charged, all equipment was at idle and 30+ minutes after a clean boot. The APC was less than 50% efficient.
It’s gone now. I’m trying to be somewhat green and using DOUBLE the power to run my computers is not a good tradeoff. I’m sure APC could have done better if they had tried.
The digital power meters are available from Jaycar
Can you add the lead lag times for the two up’s, plus show the VA levels of each this will allow for a better comparison
I did the same tests with a pair of UpSonic Ups’s I had at home, one on the video monitoring system and another on File server (DVD Archvie system).
The video monitoring system was using about 80W (1Pc, 4 CCD camera’s and 4 wireless receivers). UpSonic 700 UPS constant draw of about 160W.
File server with 5 Disks. by itself uses about 85W (depending on disk activity) Again UPS pulling about 150W
No longer using UPS’s.
(Just holding Acronis images incase a power outage ever kill on of them).