Looking for a uninterruptible power supply

[TheInquiring]

IMHO, a properly designed backup power system should always incorporate a cascaded approach to applying surge protection working in conjunction with a UPS. The idea is the first surge unit, (upstream Surge Protection Device) mitigates the brunt of the surge energy while the second unit (the UPS) reduces any remaining surge energy to an inconsequential level. Here a UPS delivers only a second-level protection against surges.

Does this sound like a viable approach?

Even something very affordable like, for example, Amazon Basics 12-Outlet Power Strip Surge Protector providing 4,320 Joule energy rating should adequately protect your much more expensive UPS...

And yet CyberPower recommends the UPS be plugged directly into the wall outlet! They say connecting the UPS to an AC power source through a surge protector MAY affect how the UPS measures and reports incoming line power. This MAY cause the UPS to switch to battery power when it should normally operate in line mode. Additionally, intermediate devices such as a surge protector MAY compromise electrical ground connectivity, which is necessary for the UPS to operate optimally and provide the specified surge protection.

I am just a humble musician, not an electrical engineer... Could you please, dear experts, help me understand what is really happening here?

 

[digitalfrost]

Necroing my own thread because I finally bought a couple UPS. Ended up buying nothing last time because I was still in decision paralysis, but after having had another power outage last week - which seem to occur more frequently every summer - the topic came up again.

I thought I'd need a VI or VFI UPS and most of them are big ugly towers and some have loud fans. In the end I realized all my equipment is using switching mode power supplies, even the amplifiers and the turntable, and this will generally work well even with stepped sinus. I bought Eaton 3S. The smallest one for my fileserver, because it's located away from the other components and only has 300W PSU and the biggest one for the rest. It will take over if voltage is below 184V or above 264V.

It looks like a regular PDU, just a bit bigger. The right side outlets are protected by the battery, the left side ones just provide some lightning protection. Today the big one arrived and I proceeded to connect my PC and everything else including the Hifi to it. It also allows communication to the PC via USB so I did that and installed the software and to my shock:

I was using 340W total on the desktop. Like in Idle conditions. I started 3DMark and the power consumption climbed above 700W and the UPS threw an error that it was overloaded

I put all the non PC stuff away from the battery outlets, that is router, switch, raspberries, 2 power amps, 2 dacs, turntable...it was 100W less. Then I moved "unnecessary" PC stuff away from the battery outlets. Monitors, laptop docking station etc. Now I am below 600W in 3DMark which is fine, but the idle power consumption is still concerning to me. While typing this post, just have foobar2000 running in the background:

Yeah so anyway. So far I'm very happy with these, they are not expensive at all, they look almost like normal PDUs. I might get another one to power the networking and hifi separately. The batteries can be replaced by yourself and they are not expensive.

 

[digitalfrost]

Another update:

Just had my first power outage with the UPS. At first both worked well, but after some time the 850 started beeping, and showing red led/green led every other second. After the power came back, devices on battery were not working. Reading via USB said UPS failure. It smelled somewhat burned when I was near the plugs.

I removed the UPS form the power and it continued beeping and flashing LEDs. I took it to the basement where I thought I would store it until the next day since the beeping was just too annoying and pressed the power button one more time. There was a loud pop and it smelled really burned. I took it outside just to be on the safe side. Amazon said I should send it back for repair but after talking to support about being concerned sending somethíng like this, they refunded my money.

The lowest UPS worked fine as far as I can see. I haven't powered the server up yet because it takes some effort, but it did it's job. So I just might buy another one. But yeah....UPS man. Not the first time I heard they give more things to worry about than they solve. Imagine this thing smelling burnt inside your house and nobody is there to notice.

 

[Salt]

I do have Eaton UPS of different capacities all around at work and never had any problems, besides some exhausted batteries to be exchanged.
They all survived the one and only outage so far.