Kevin Standlee (kevin_standlee) wrote,
Kevin Standlee
kevin_standlee

The Last Straw

Our tiny power failure yesterday convinced us that the time was past to get a UPS for the home office. Using a Kill-A-Watt gadget that I bought a few months ago after seeing it used on MythBusters, we measured the power demands in this room by the expedient of turning off and unplugging the three power strips, then plugging them in to the Kill-A-Watt, turning the strips back on, and turning on every device on the strip. This gave us the maximum power demand on the circuit -- about 300 Volt-Amps. During our shopping today, we went by Fry's and bought a UPS rated at 330 550VA. We figure this should cover us, given that we rarely have all of the computers and associated stuff turned on at once. I haven't set it up yet, but will do so this evening.

We can't plug the lamp into the UPS, though, because it's plugged into a wall switch and is the main light in the room. Cheryl points out, however, that in case of power failure, we'll be able to see by the glow of the computer screens.

Update, 21:50: Error in VA rating corrected.
Tags: computers
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