Re: On UPS monitoring

On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, in the Usenet newsgroup comp.os.linux.setup, in article
<suaSf.14620$o41.13933@trnddc06>, Jean-David Beyer wrote:

Moe Trin wrote:
Beef wrote:

My UPS is an APC Back-UPS ES 350; when fully charged, this should power my
system for 43 minutes, if I can believe the log file:

You can't. That seems to be marketing minutes, not real time.

I am not sure about that. When new, I get about the time APC claim for their
Smart-UPS units. As the batteries age, it is another, shorter story.

Yeah, when they come out of warranty, we replace the battery with an external
motorhome battery to get the longer life at the price of a longer recharge
time. We're reasonably lucky here, with power outages roughly annually when a
drunk takes down a pole or drives through a transformer.

Mar 14 10:52:33 bulge apcupsd[4395]: LOADPCT : 10.0 Percent Load Capacity

This claims to be running at 10 percent load - or about 35 VA / 20 Watts.
I rather doubt that.

I do not know what the numbers mean. It may be set to power down when the
battery has only 10% of its original capacity.

No - see his response to my post. I don't know if it's a fault in the
measuring circuit or design, but that's what the UPS thinks the current
load is - hence the unbelievably long run time.

How much load do you really have on the unit? It _sounds_ as if you've got
a bit more than 20 Watts.

Yes: difficult to believe a computer would use so little. Each hard drive
takes about 12 watts. My processors take 90 watts each. I have 13 fans, but
never counted up the power they use.

And don't forget the amount consumed by the RAM. That was a little eye-opener.
As far as the fans go, it depends on the size and ponies. A 5 inch DC Muffin
pushing 100 CFM can be as much as 8 Watts, while a 2.4 inch "Flight" pushing
a measly 12 CFM can be as low as a Watt. An AC version of the Muffin might
want 15 Watts for the same airflow. (Those are Comair/Rotron figures - others
are similar.)

I try to have a lot of excess capacity, and run mine at about 25% load.

I'd love to, but mine are all loaded heavier.

The load on the processor rather dramatically influences the load on the
power supply.

Checking 'hlt' instruction... Ok.

That can mean a huge difference in power consumption and heat generated.

Around here in New Jersey, I get several flicks (dropouts, surges, and ugly
waveforms) a week of a second or less (enough to switch to battery). This is
the most usual problem.

The fun is in the Central Valley of California, where the farmers have the
honking HUGE irrigation pumps. In spite of the advertising, much of California
South of San Francisco, and a lot of the central valley is desert, and the
vast crops grow only because of a lot of water pumps. A 25 - 50 horse motor
starting or stopping puts line transients you wouldn't believe. If you've
ever seen pictures or the Grand Canyon, you should know that virtually none
of that water is going to reach Mexico (look at the map).

Once every few months (more often in summer, but also in icy weather when
people skid their Hummers into power poles, the power goes out for longer.
Not always an hour, but sometimes several hours at a time.

Where I live, the power lines are underground, and the only targets the
drunks have are the stepdown transformers discretely hidden by bushes next
to the road instead of being on the poles. Same results though.

And once, when the air conditioner load got too high, it took out two of
the 4 transformers at the local power company substation, and it took
several days to replace these.

Yeah, we had that last summer. Problem was that these were BIG ONES, and it
took several months to get replacements from half way across the country.
The power company was threatening us with rolling blackouts, though it never
came to that.

For that, even a diesel generator might have given up by running out of
fuel. Home Despot even sell propane-powered backup generators which may be
more practical for fanatical home users than the diesel ones. They will
even run your burglar alarm, lights, refrigerator, and projection TV at the
same time.

A neighbor has two to run life support stuff in his house - and has two
fiftyfive gallon drums of fuel each. I think it will last him close to a
week.

Old guy
.

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