I live in a rural area where power can sometimes be very iffy so I use a UPS for my computer network. Since my new layout is DCC with a bunch more devices involved in the overall operation, I am thinking about adding a UPS to my setup so that a power blip is less likely to fry something or disrupt the memory in the various devices. If I have total power loss, that will also give me time to shut everything down in a controlled manner.
Anyone else using a UPS in your setup? What size? Good or bad points to consider?
Paul D
N scale Washita and Santa Fe RailroadSouthern Oklahoma circa late 70's
Most UPS devices available are 'standby' in operation, meaning they will switch to powering the devices connected very quickly when there's a power interruption.
Unfortunately, they do NOT really protect anything related to glitches and spikes, and need the voltage to drop to a predetermined level before being triggered. So, anything happening to the power that doesn't trigger a switchover goes right past the UPS into the equipment.
Some UPS have minimal protection for powerline noise or spikes, but are mostly useless for that. Also, if the devices you're powering are sensitive enough, they might detect the power issues before the UPS can switch, and will reset anyway.
The best way to protect equipment from power issues is a continuous design UPS, where the system powers a battery, and the battery voltage is converted back to AC to power your devices. They are not connected directly to the AC input, so the UPS isolates them from power problems.
UNFORTUNATELY, the continuous (as opposed to standby) UPS is significantly more expensive that most available UPS devices.
YMMV, so look around at what's available at what cost.....to shield your equipment, you don't need a UPS with a large battery capacity, since you'll gracefully shut down the system when there's a power interruption.
LION thinks knot. Him runs network of him... four servers and 40 workstations. Many 'puters on our net do not have ups, power glitch and you loose!
For minor power glitches, the computer's own supply supplies enough capacitor capacity to bridge a passing glitch.
Some computers have moderate sized UPS that can bridge up to ten minutes of power outage. Such devices are good for CPUs and Monitors, but NOT for printers, scanners and other devices. That alone should tell you this does not include locomotives.
Our network switches have small ups switches, and with these loadings they could coast for 20 minutes.
Our Servers have huge 30 Amp UPS backup machines, the one in my office carries four servers, four workstations and five monitors. They can carry that load for perhaps 15 minutes.
Fortunately, none of our UPS devices needs to carry the load vor more than two minutes before our back-up gemerator cuts in to provide our power. Our campus uses about 20KW under normal operations, and 40KW on sundays when all of the lights are on in the church. Our generator can crank out 100KW and with a 500 gallon tank of diesel we can make light of any blizzard.
But if you did not know all of this then you probably do not want to use a UPS for your railroad. It is not like you will loose 2TB of company data.
Even in looking at the issue, the question is how important you data is vs the cost of the UPS system. I have spent over $5000 on UPS equipment (not counting the generator) because even though most most of our data is not that important, our people who think it is are.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
Actually, if you buy a decent UPS it will give you some protection from over/under voltage and surges on the battery outputs.
I recently bought one of these, and if you look through the specs you'll notice that it has AVR to correct minor power fluctuations, as well as 1030 joules of surge protection on both the battery/surge outlets and the surge-only outlets.
So if you're looking to clean up "dirty" utility power, a good UPS will help. Just don't depend on it to protect you from a direct, or even a close lightning strike.
Amazon sells a lot of then online with specs and free shipping. When the battery life expires, they also sell the replacemnt battery.
They can be connected to your PC for shutdowns.
Check the specs vary carefully at Amazon. You can Google the different ones for reviews.
I use to use one for DCC but now use a couple for PC and Charter Internet router.
The CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD proviced battery backup and surge protection.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
I have 3 BN600 UPS's around my house. They are rated at 360W and will power a 5 amp Digitrax system for about 35-40 minutes. They have a 375 joules surge rating. This is more than enough to protect my system from the normal power 'blips' I see in my area(Rochester, MN). The included software and USB cable show interesting brownout/surge info! One of these units protects my railroad computer and a DCS100 command station.
I was gone visiting my son for the last two weeks. Two laptops were in 'sleep' mode and I registered 3 'surges' and a 'brown out' over that two week span. No clocks in the house need to be reset, but small 'blips' are very common even in metro areas. A $40-50 UPS is a good investment.
I just installed one of the BN600 UPS's on the club's new computer(they lose power at least once/week in rural Grand Meadow, MN). The club has 3 large 8 amp boosters and we may pop for surge protectors for each of those.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
We use these Furman rack mounted units at the TV station I work at. We have one in each rack, meaning that we have several. They costs big bucks but they are the best. Anything made by Furman is top notch in case you are looking for something more afordable like maybe just a power conditioner/surger protector.
http://www.pssl.com/Furman/Furman-F1500UPS-Ups-With-Back-Up-Power-Supply
I don't use UPS on my railroad for one reason, I don't gain much in my neighborhood, we have solid, reliable power, maybe one or two short (less than 30 min) a year if that and I'm not likely to be running the railroad at that time anyway. And the DOWNSIDE is huge. Batteries are expensive and go bad, when they do, the often swell or leak. I don't need the maintenance headache for such an tiny benefit.
It ain't broke, I ain't fixing it. :)
joe-daddy And the DOWNSIDE is huge. Batteries are expensive and go bad, when they do, the often swell or leak. I don't need the maintenance headache for such an tiny benefit.
And the DOWNSIDE is huge. Batteries are expensive and go bad, when they do, the often swell or leak. I don't need the maintenance headache for such an tiny benefit.
What kind of UPS are you talking about? I have had multiple UPS in service for the last 20 years. All of them have had sealed lead acid batteries. None has ever leaked or swollen up. The kind of battery they use is quite safe and is subject to only minimal shipping regulations.
Expensive, well that depends on the application. The cost benefit ratio is unique to the individuals or organizations using the UPS, so what is expensive to you may be dirt cheap to someone else.
As far as surge protection goes, I install whole house surge arrestors everywhere I live.
CG
More so than a UPS, if your layout is in a basement or attic, or otherwise obstructs free movement through the room it's in, some batteyr operated emergency lighting would be more useful, top help you and your guests to get out of the room. The microcontrollers in the DCC equipment are nearly as sensitive to sudden power drops as a computer which has data in RAM and storage devices that take time to reliably save data to.
Surge protection - GOOD surge protection - is a good idea for ANY electronic devices. Even the best won't protect you if the strike is right on your house, but at least neighrhood surges will be kept out of your equipment. Keep in mind that the typical MOVs used in surge protectors DO wear out - there may be no massive surges, but small ones eat into the life of the device and eventually they will fail to protect anything. Some better quality surge protectors include indicators that show when protection has failed. And if you do have a major surge - even if everything comes back working OK, your surge protectors are probably toast. They did their job and sacrificed themselves to save your systems. Time for new ones.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I have APC UPSs for my home computer network, and for my model RR. I also have several surge protectors for devices like televisions, printers, outlets where phones and tablets charge, etc.
My suburban electric service seems bulletproof, but in the past I have lived in rural areas where the electric service was very unstable, so I am a little overly cautious.
I have never had a battery leak.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
When surge protectors eat a surge the POV in them is dead. These are single use devices. Most surge protectors will return you to line power and you will be unprotected. APC surge protectors remain in the OFF state after the POV is fried, so your equipment will not be damaged by subvsequent strikes. This feature also lets you know that the unit needs to be replaced.
Now, once upon a time, while the LION was away on vacation, there was a HUGE lightening strike here at the Abbey, and that zorched many things, perhaps some computers among them, although not my servers, or any machines protected by a UPS, but many if not all of our surge strips failed, the APCs went dark, and so were easy to find. The others had to be checked individually and all were replaced with new APC units. I think I bought about 20 such units when I got back from vacation.
UPS is way overkill. It's very rare that any type of power droop/drop will cause problems. After all our trains suffer from intermittent power drops at the tracks all the time. And when we hit emergency stop we hard kill the power any way. It won't hurt a thing if the power suddenly drops.
That said, if you want to protect your equipment from surges, a decent quality surge suppressor will more than protect you. Even a cheap CE/UL listed strip with MOV's will work. When MOV's fail, they usually catastrphically short causing the strip to shut down. But good power strips have a LED which indicate if the MOVs are working.
Don - Specializing in layout DC->DCC conversions
Modeling C&O transition era and steel industries There's Nothing Like Big Steam!
DigitalGriffin UPS is way overkill. It's very rare that any type of power droop/drop will cause problems. After all our trains suffer from intermittent power drops at the tracks all the time. And when we hit emergency stop we hard kill the power any way. It won't hurt a thing if the power suddenly drops. That said, if you want to protect your equipment from surges, a decent quality surge suppressor will more than protect you. Even a cheap CE/UL listed strip with MOV's will work. When MOV's fail, they usually catastrphically short causing the strip to shut down. But good power strips have a LED which indicate if the MOVs are working.
The UPS is not protecting the locomotives, it is protecting the command station and the PC that is connected to it.
Don,
One first needs to protect the DCC system and computer. And even in a stable metro area environment, you will be surprised by the brown out/spikes that happen.
Reloading a PC that gets scrambled(usually an evenings worth of work) is a waste of modeling time. Search on the Internet - $40-50 for a nice UPS is cheap insurance.
I'll respectfully have to disagree.
We should mainly be concerned with power surges. Power drops aren't that big a deal. And any low to moderate power spike can be handled by a quality surge strip.Computers can recover from catastrophic power loss. It would be an extremely rare event a crash would cripple your system. The exception being if you lose power mid update. Even then windows and mac OS have safeguards built in to rollback crashes during upgrades. You may however lose any files you were working on.
Power supplies on computers use very large caps on the primary side. They would take the brunt of a surge and even it out. And if it gets to be too much they safely shunt and shutdown during an overvoltage situation. However if this condition exist, it is possible to damage your electronics. But the surge strip should more than protect the PC from moderate to low spikes just the same as a UPS. In fact most consumer grade UPS aren't any better at controlling surge because they use the same MOVs inside.I have a degree in engineering and computer science. I have a $2000 monster computer, 4 laptops, 1 Raspberry Pi, and a 24 port network setup with managed switches, a firewall, IP camera, magic jack, and enough IOT devices for a small army. Of that 22 ports are currently in use. The only thing I have on the UPS is the projector (to save the projector electronics from overheating when the fan goes off). I also power backup the router and cable modem so I can hook up to the internet with the laptops when the power goes out to check for emergency information. Everything else is on a decent quality surge supressor. Even my $75,000+ stereo system attached to my home theater is attached to nothing else but a quality non-MOV heavy duty surge suppressor (SurgeX). UPS use nothing but MOV's themselves, and switch over when there is a sag or over-voltage. And to be honest 99% of home UPSs are JUNK. The use cheap connectors, cheap Chinese caps, under-rated wiring, and cheap MOVs. They also have very noisy output. The cable and network surge portions are disasters in terms of protection and signal integrity. That includes cyber power and APC. You need to go to industrial rack server backup supplies for the good stuff. If you don't believe me read this article:http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/732-apc-bn650m1-ca-ups-tear-down.html (And this is one of the better ones, which is still on the low quality side of things.)BTW: Rural and subburbs suffer more power fluctuations than urban areas.
Most UPS (as OP already stated) won't help much with "dirty" power or power regulation, especially if the incoming power service is not properly balanced, in which case a UPS may be totally ineffective.
If power regulation is what you're looking for an isolated power line conditioner/transformer like the Topaz Line2 is what you need. This will truely isolate the power source and maintain steady voltage without switching transformer taps as most so-called "voltage regulation" devices like the ones you see for A/V equipment (ie: Monster Cable).