Kesava
Active Member
Firstly, I'd like to educate you on the power situation where I live in India. You see the government things that it is perfectly acceptable to tax the people by turning off the power for hours a day and selling that power off to make money. The result being that the power goes off multiple times a day here. Sometimes it is really just a problem. But how many problems can you have in one day?
Back in Australia the power rarely went off. When it did it was a big thing. But here it can go off up to 10 times a day, sometimes for hours at a time. Some days it doesn't of off at all or maybe just once or twice.
Anyway so I found myself in need of a UPS in order to allow me to save my work and so on and not lose everything everytime the power goes off.
This UPS that I have isn't very good though. I mean it only lasts for around 10-15 minutes. Which is fine for saving work except it takes around 8 hours to charge. So if the power goes off multiple times a day then it ends up not working because it is being drained too much and doesn't have enough time to charge.
I also have an inverter which is used to power the lights and fans and so on when the power is off. This is powerful enough to run the computer, however because it takes a few seconds to kick in, you can't have the computer running off it and expect it to stay on.
What I need, is a way to run my computer through the UPS and then once the power goes off and the inverter has kicked in, change my computer from running on the UPS to running on the inverter.
I was thinking of having a box made up with 2 male plugs, one for each source and one female connection for the computer to plug into. I'd then have switches installed so that normally the computer would draw power through the UPS. Then when the power went off and the computer was drawing power from the UPS, I'd click one switch which would also allow the inverter power to be supplied to the computer, then I'd flick the other switch to stop the UPS from supplying any power. That way the power source would have been swapped without the computer losing power. However there are problems.
1. During the time that both sources were powering the computer, would it be receiving 440v instead of 220v? Is that a really bad idea?
2. Because the UPS output would be connected to the Inverter output for that short period of time, could something be damaged by having the power from something going into the others output when the electricity is supposed to be going out that way instead of in?
If neither of those things are a cause for concern then is there any reason why this shouldn't work?
Thanks for your input.
Back in Australia the power rarely went off. When it did it was a big thing. But here it can go off up to 10 times a day, sometimes for hours at a time. Some days it doesn't of off at all or maybe just once or twice.
Anyway so I found myself in need of a UPS in order to allow me to save my work and so on and not lose everything everytime the power goes off.
This UPS that I have isn't very good though. I mean it only lasts for around 10-15 minutes. Which is fine for saving work except it takes around 8 hours to charge. So if the power goes off multiple times a day then it ends up not working because it is being drained too much and doesn't have enough time to charge.
I also have an inverter which is used to power the lights and fans and so on when the power is off. This is powerful enough to run the computer, however because it takes a few seconds to kick in, you can't have the computer running off it and expect it to stay on.
What I need, is a way to run my computer through the UPS and then once the power goes off and the inverter has kicked in, change my computer from running on the UPS to running on the inverter.
I was thinking of having a box made up with 2 male plugs, one for each source and one female connection for the computer to plug into. I'd then have switches installed so that normally the computer would draw power through the UPS. Then when the power went off and the computer was drawing power from the UPS, I'd click one switch which would also allow the inverter power to be supplied to the computer, then I'd flick the other switch to stop the UPS from supplying any power. That way the power source would have been swapped without the computer losing power. However there are problems.
1. During the time that both sources were powering the computer, would it be receiving 440v instead of 220v? Is that a really bad idea?
2. Because the UPS output would be connected to the Inverter output for that short period of time, could something be damaged by having the power from something going into the others output when the electricity is supposed to be going out that way instead of in?
If neither of those things are a cause for concern then is there any reason why this shouldn't work?
Thanks for your input.
