Automatic Voltage Regulators, AVR, and Surge Protectors

[hk blues]

6 hours ago, Huggybearman said:

It would be very expensive to have a centralized UPS to run all your household appliances including aircon units. Remember these will be run from the UPS battery which would need to be HUGE to cater for the power demand. And you would also need a HUGE pure sine wave inverter which would be very expensive, if such a beast exists! 
 

Your UPS should just cater for your essential equipment which you would want to use during a brownout. Computer, internet modem, perhaps a fan and a light or two. You certainly wouldn’t want to run any power hungry items from it. All the UPS’ I have seen for sale here are very small units just really intended to run your computer for a short while while you save your work and shut the computer down. They are not designed or intended to run anything remotely power hungry. 
 

I built my own UPS using quality components (intelligent multi-stage charger, pure sine-wave inverter and a good quality deep cycle battery). That will run a computer, fan, internet modem and a couple of lights for several hours until the power comes back on. I made it because my wife teaches online and it will keep her going for a long time until either power is restored or I start up the little Honda genny that we have as a back-up.

When I was looking in Lazada at UPS, most seemed to be as you describe - long enough to keep a PC alive to save files but not much more.  '

I'm an online teacher as well - I use a battery back up for the modem (4K from Lazada) which keeps it going for 4+ hours and my PC can survive about 2 hours so that's enough to keep me online to do the lessons I've already booked.  

To be fair, power problems are rare here, although we did have one for 5 minutes only today. 

[BrettGC]

3 minutes ago, hk blues said:

When I was looking in Lazada at UPS, most seemed to be as you describe - long enough to keep a PC alive to save files but not much more.  '

I'm an online teacher as well - I use a battery back up for the modem (4K from Lazada) which keeps it going for 4+ hours and my PC can survive about 2 hours so that's enough to keep me online to do the lessons I've already booked.  

To be fair, power problems are rare here, although we did have one for 5 minutes only today. 

Mine is similar to yours I reckon, a few hours normal use, but gaming about 30 mins.  Mine is just to shut the PC down safely and keep the modem running until I've saved everything to the cloud and finished off what I'm doing..  Definitely not intended for long term use.  

[Jollygoodfellow]

Talking about power surges, wouldn't the circuit breaker trip in that case?

I guess I am spoilt, if the power goes off a few seconds later the generator kicks in. Flick the switch in the breaker box and fan, computer, lights come back on but in my case its only one side of the unit. In one unit I managed the whole or maybe most of the unit stayed on including the air conditioner but not for my studio type. 

[Snowy79]

12 minutes ago, Jollygoodfellow said:

Talking about power surges, wouldn't the circuit breaker trip in that case?

I guess I am spoilt, if the power goes off a few seconds later the generator kicks in. Flick the switch in the breaker box and fan, computer, lights come back on but in my case its only one side of the unit. In one unit I managed the whole or maybe most of the unit stayed on including the air conditioner but not for my studio type. 

Unfortunately not with some of the electrics here in the Philippines.  I'm shocked ( excuse the pun) in the standards here.  There appears to be very little enforcement of qualifications to wire any installation here.  It's very much a case of them looking at wiring like running water pipes with no understanding of the dangers. 

[Jollygoodfellow]

9 minutes ago, Snowy79 said:

Unfortunately not with some of the electrics here in the Philippines.  I'm shocked ( excuse the pun) in the standards here.  There appears to be very little enforcement of qualifications to wire any installation here.  It's very much a case of them looking at wiring like running water pipes with no understanding of the dangers. 

Maybe from small time contractors but big building companies in the city which build like Ayala malls and the condo I live in surly have a reasonable expertise in their field. 

[Dave Hounddriver]

13 hours ago, hk blues said:

When I was looking in Lazada at UPS

That's because you need to build your own.

( @AlwaysRt How is your setup working?  Still good? )

[Snowy79]

3 hours ago, Jollygoodfellow said:

Maybe from small time contractors but big building companies in the city which build like Ayala malls and the condo I live in surly have a reasonable expertise in their field. 

From experience if you are in a building where the socket have 3 holes for the plugs they tend to have been wired by qualified electricians who have grounded the electrics. 

I have a Panasonic tough book which is pretty much bombproof but has a lot of metal on the frame.  Every hotel I've been in where only two holes are on the sockets I get an uncomfortable tingling off the frame.  The same in houses.  

My rental in Puerto Galera was very bad.  My friend gave me his two ring electrical cooker to look at as he said he was receiving shocks from it.  It tested out OK with meters but again when I plugged it into my property the shock was very bad.

One guy used to post regularly electrical fluctuations on Facebook from his power supply and the readings were horrendous.  As low as 80v and over 300v at times.  He lost a few fridges and aircons before buying quality UPS and surge protectors.  Sometimes the worst problems are the supplier. 

[hk blues]

7 hours ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

That's because you need to build your own.

( @AlwaysRt How is your setup working?  Still good? )

Not necessary, my current set up works for us.  It powers the modem and pc which is all we need to cover us for the rare outages we have.  We have a good power system in my area so I'd not be willing to spend time/money on such a set up.

[sonjack2847]

On 2/25/2021 at 3:35 AM, Dave Hounddriver said:

That's because you need to build your own.

( @AlwaysRt How is your setup working?  Still good? )

That is what I have but with 1 battery it has worked for 6 hours watching tv on my pc and still had charge left. As for surge protecting the rest of the house on the important stuff I have individual devices.1 THING TO BE AWARE OF do not use an extension lead which has a surge protector in as this can damage the unit. I have the T shirt for that.

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by sonjack2847

[jimeve]

9 hours ago, sonjack2847 said:

That is what I have but with 1 battery it has worked for 6 hours watching tv on my pc and still had charge left

Got a deep cycle battery 120 Ah hooked up to an inverter, not sure how long it would last with a 50 inch TV. 

I just use it hooked up to a modem and mesh extender.