Posted by RamRod Sword of Baal on June 23, 2010, 2:10 am
> wrote:
>>...
> Have you played with a ferroresonant Constant Voltage Transformer amid
> this mish-mash? I'm curious if a UPS works with them but don't want to
> risk destroying anything.
> jsw
============================
I have 2 Sola 200s and 1 Sola 210 installed at my home.
From memory the Models 200 are 4 amps each at 240 volts
The Model 210 is 10 amps at 240 volts
--------------------
One Sola 200 protects the bedroom's TV and Hi Fi systems
One Sola 200 protects the kitchen TV and Lounge projection TV and Hi Fi
systems
On Sola 210 protects all the computers, printers and the Commander phone
system.
No problems with with any of the gear connected up to these power
conditioners.
On the computer one we had a brown out once with the 240 volts mains
dropping down to 90 volts and the computer continued to run, although I shut
everything down once I realized what had happened. It should hold the output
at 240 volts when the mains is down to 190 volts or up to 260.
A higher swing of mains voltage is allowable (144 to 336 volts) but the
output voltage will be less controlled
See
http://www.bonavolta.ch/hobby/files/sola.pdf
----------------
I have a volt meter installed on the power supply from the 210 and it is
reading 238 volts and is dead steady, while the mains voltage is currently
248.4 volts (it is 11.41 AM Wednesday here)
-----------------------
I have a HP laptop and not sure about this, but I think that the power
supply for this laptop does not like the power coming out of the 210.
I have cooked up one power supply from the laptop and so I am not connecting
it to the power from the 210 again. It may or may not have been the power
from the 210 that caused the problem, but I have no wish to cook up a second
HP power supply.
I installed these Ferroresonant Power Conditioners several years ago after
we had a series of problems with electronic equipment. I think that the
local supply authority upped the output voltage on the local substation to
250 volts, it may have gone higher in the middle of the night and I think
that was part of the problem.
All the Power Conditioners were purchased second hand.
They are quite noisy beasts and you would not want one in your computer
room, mine are installed in the laundry and they do throw out a fair amount
of hear and I installed a couple of small of exhaust fans to help with
this. From memory that are only about 90% efficient at their best so they do
add to the total power bill.
They are heavy the 200 is 36 Kg and the 210 is 65 Kg
The computer Sola 210 runs 24 hours a day as we leave the computers running
all the time, but the screens and printers are turned off overnight to
conserve power but those supplying the TVs etc as only turned on when
required.
There have been no major problems with anything connected to theses systems
since they were installed.
----------
I do not have installed a UPS as such, but a 24 volt battery set up with a
battery charger and an inverter, but the power for that does not go through
the Sola units.
It is not usually in service, but can be manually switched if required, as I
keep the batteries fully charged.
=============
======
Posted by Dan Lanciani on June 23, 2010, 6:04 am
kb1dal@gmail.com (Jim Wilkins) writes:
| wrote:
| >...
|
| Have you played with a ferroresonant Constant Voltage Transformer amid
| this mish-mash? I'm curious if a UPS works with them but don't want to
| risk destroying anything.
One problem with ferroresonant transformers is that they are rather
inefficient (they get very hot). They also aren't a panacea. The
Best online UPS I mentioned earlier in this thread uses a ferroresonant
transformer and the flicker at transfer is terrible. (The MicroPower II
is not a ferroresonant transformer; it uses many taps on a conventional
transformer and selects the most appropriate one on a cycle-by-cycle
basis.)
Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com
Posted by z on June 23, 2010, 2:40 am
>
>> > I picked one of these up at Lowes to temporarily power some
>> > incandescent lights. With a couple of hundred watts of load I
>> > notice that the lights flicker slightly but annoyingly. For a
>> > normal generator I'd let it slide, but I thought the point of these
>> > inverter designs was "clean" power. Is slight flickering typical
>> > of the iX2000 or did I get a bad one?
>> >
>> > Dan Lanciani
>> > ddl@danlan.*com
>
>> Dan,
>
>> Why does a generator need an inverter at all? Doesn't it put out
>> pure sinewave A/C to begin with?
>
> ====snip====
>
> You'd think so, wouldn't you? However, the reality is that a cheap
> standby generator puts out a rather distorted waveform on load (it
> looks ok without load) but this isn't the issue. The real problem with
> a conventional alternator is its suceptability to overvolting with
> even a modest capactive loading which becomes a problem with certain
> models of UPSes that switch a large amount of capacitance across the
> line when they return to pass through mode.
>
> About two years back, I bought a cheap 2.5KVA petrol(gasoline)
> generator from my local Aldi store to supplement the 2KVA APC
> SmartUPS2000 that I use to provide a protected supply to my computer
> kit. After much testing, it turned out that it was basically useless
> for this purpose since even a modest 4.7 microfarad capacitor was
> sufficient to make the generator output jump from its regulated 230v
> to some 275 volts.
>
> The UPS was switching twice that amount of capacitance across the
> line
> every time it saw the generator voltage return to normal and tried to
> revert back to "mains" power which caused it to immediately switch
> back to battery as the generator voltage shot back up to some 270
> volts, a process that would go on ad infinitum until I reconnected
> back to the PSU power.
holy crap.
When I moved back up the creek full off grid back in 2k or so My bro gave
me a UPS to help with the computers .. thinking I could stay alive while
switching from solar/batteries to generator (this is before my hydro) --
the damn UPS wouldn't do just that using my old generator. Switch to
charge, kill the generator, switch back to UPS .. the generator would
pick back up, then it'd go back to charge and kill it again in a very
distrubing loop with everything sounding like it was going to blow up.
Now I have an explanation!!!
I just had my bro return it and exchanged it for a nice video card at the
time.
I'm wondering if now that i'm on the inverter type gens I could actually
have a UPS again. Might have to see if I can pick one up.
At the time I thought the UPS charging was drawing more amps than my gen
was able to produce with the other loads (though at the time it didn't
seem like too much), so it would overload the generator. But clearly
there may have been another reason for the evil power UPS+ Gen loop.
dang.
thanks for that post man. Solved a mystery for me
-zachary in Oregon
Posted by Johnny B Good on June 23, 2010, 7:25 pm
====snip====
> > The UPS was switching twice that amount of capacitance across the
> > line
> > every time it saw the generator voltage return to normal and tried to
> > revert back to "mains" power which caused it to immediately switch
> > back to battery as the generator voltage shot back up to some 270
> > volts, a process that would go on ad infinitum until I reconnected
> > back to the PSU power.
> >
> holy crap.
> When I moved back up the creek full off grid back in 2k or so My bro gave
> me a UPS to help with the computers .. thinking I could stay alive while
> switching from solar/batteries to generator (this is before my hydro) --
> the damn UPS wouldn't do just that using my old generator. Switch to
> charge, kill the generator, switch back to UPS .. the generator would
> pick back up, then it'd go back to charge and kill it again in a very
> distrubing loop with everything sounding like it was going to blow up.
> Now I have an explanation!!!
Well, only if I interpret the "switch to charge" as meaning the UPS has
switched from battery power back to line power to power the load from
the generator and, incidently, recharge its battery pack. If I've
interpreted this wrongly, then no, you don't have an explanation.
> I just had my bro return it and exchanged it for a nice video card at the
> time.
> I'm wondering if now that i'm on the inverter type gens I could actually
> have a UPS again. Might have to see if I can pick one up.
> At the time I thought the UPS charging was drawing more amps than my gen
> was able to produce with the other loads (though at the time it didn't
> seem like too much), so it would overload the generator. But clearly
> there may have been another reason for the evil power UPS+ Gen loop.
The only type of UPS that would do that would be worth at least 10 to
20 of the most expensive, latest, all singing, all dancing top of the
range graphics adapters, say £5k($ or 8K?) and up.
The usual line interactive types don't present a heavy battery charging
load when line power is restored after an outage. My SmartUPS2000 only
draws a maximum of 190 watts to charge the battery after an extended
outage (a test run, usually) and this normally drops to less than 140W
after the first hour or so if the battery has been tested to exhaustion.
If that UPS were of the expensive kind, it could represent a heavy
battery charging load after a relatively short outage since it would be
float charging its battery pack _and_ powering the constant run inverter
feeding the protected load which would only ever see inverter power
regardless of the state of the utility power.
If such a UPS has a load rating of 2KVA it's very likely that its
charger will be capable of drawing 2.5 to 3 KW so as to be able to
provide a net charge to the battery when power returns when under
maximum load. When the protected load is only half the maximum, the
charging demand after a few minutes outage could very well still peak to
the same maximum for a minute or two before settling back to provide a
more sedate topping up charge rate plus load demand.
To reiterate, my situation was this:
I'd fire up the generator, disconnect the UPS from the PSU power which
made it transfer to battery power. I would then connect it to the
generator and the UPS would monitor the line power, see a supply within
frequency and voltage tolerance, wait for its own battery generated AC
power to get in sync and then switch its load (and those damned
capacitors!) back to line power which immediately caused the genny
voltage to jump to 270 volts which, in turn, caused the UPS to swiftly
transfer back to battery power to protect the load from the overvolt
event. The genny voltage would then return to normal and the cycle would
repeat.
If this describes the situation you had with that UPS and your
generator, then a suitably rated sinewave inverter model should solve
the problem.
HTH
Posted by Jim Rusling on June 24, 2010, 12:09 am
<snip>
> I'd fire up the generator, disconnect the UPS from the PSU power which
>made it transfer to battery power. I would then connect it to the
>generator and the UPS would monitor the line power, see a supply within
>frequency and voltage tolerance, wait for its own battery generated AC
>power to get in sync and then switch its load (and those damned
>capacitors!) back to line power which immediately caused the genny
>voltage to jump to 270 volts which, in turn, caused the UPS to swiftly
>transfer back to battery power to protect the load from the overvolt
>event. The genny voltage would then return to normal and the cycle would
>repeat.
> If this describes the situation you had with that UPS and your
>generator, then a suitably rated sinewave inverter model should solve
>the problem.
>HTH
Mine will do that as well. I did find that if I had a small load,
like a 60 watt bulb, it would work normally.
--
Jim Rusling
More or Less Retired
Mustang, OK
http://www.rusling.org
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>>...
> Have you played with a ferroresonant Constant Voltage Transformer amid
> this mish-mash? I'm curious if a UPS works with them but don't want to
> risk destroying anything.
> jsw