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Power Failures and Surges |
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Written by Nathan Woodcock
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Friday, 30 January 2009 |
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If you've been listening to the news at all this week you would have heard about the terrible heat waves in South Eastern Australia at the moment, so bad they have caused mass power outages. Here on the Sunshine Coast we're certainly not immune to a power outage - in fact just as I sat down at the computer now we lost all power in the street for around 30 seconds! This wasn't a problem though as I have UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) devices on all my computer equipment which kept everything running for the entire length of the blackout.
Here at home I run an office and also have a workshop in my garage where I can work on several computers at the same time. As these computers are usually customer computers it's very important that they are protected against the somewhat dodgy power up here. Blackouts, brownouts and spikes are common and when the power just went out I had two customer computers on the bench running quite important diagnostic scans, the type where if the power went out midway it could have caused real problems. When the power did drop, I heard beeping from every room as all my UPS devices (three in total) started their warning beeps advising me the power was out but they were still running the equipment. Of course as well as providing battery backup during power outages, UPS's these days also provide clean power (even power output) and surge protection.
Had the outage lasted longer, say more than 5 minutes, the UPS in my office here would have automatically shut down my computer to avoid any damage by it being turned off instantly when the UPS battery went flat.
A decent UPS to protect one computer will set you back around $140. I prefer Powerware UPSs as they are great value. Drop us a line if you’re interested in one. They only need to work once to save you time, money and headaches.
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