I am British and had a UPS in the UK for the very rare occasions (maybe 2 times a year) when there would be a poewr cut for a couple of seconds. Having had a spike when this happened that blew my LCD screen, I bought the UPS. I bought an American APC device that served me well in the UK.
I have now moved to India and been here 2 years. The APC blew up long ago (not sturdy enough). Here I face power cuts for hours at a time several times a day. Plus there are massive voltage fluctuations on the mains supply (mains drops to e.g. 80V from 220V). I have a generator so the UPS equipment is just to cover the period from mains spike or power cut until generator kicks in - which is a couple of minutes.
I have installed stablisers everywhere on the sensitive equipment to cut power when the voltage spikes. And I have mulitple UPS devices. The problem is that I don't know how to size the UPSs that I have. I have a lot of kit - e.g. right now, I am running 1 desktop, 4 laptops, 2 LCD screens, 1 wireless router, 1 wireless modem routers, 2 printers, 2 computer speaker systems and a free standing WD external hard drive and these are run off 4 UPS devices (2x 1KVA and 2x 500VA).
Whenever I talk to anyone here about sizing UPS I get answers I just don't believe - e.g. I've been told that for a single desktop machine with screen a 1KVA device should run the PC for an hour. My stabilisers cut the power and keep it cut for about 2 minutes after power stabilises. With my setup the UPS barely last long enough to cover the 2 minutes after the stabiliser allows mains power through again.
How do I work out what size UPS I need to run my computer equipment?
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