What is a UPS?

It is a question I often get asked when I say ‘most of my kit is protected by a UPS’ (actually several), since I live in the back of beyond and we have the usual rural electricity instability one comes to know and hate.
Well some of you know it is an Uninterruped Power Supply and apart from smoothing out electrical flow (avoiding nasty spikes) it provides battery backup so that in the event of a power failure you at least have the time to operate your equipment to shut things down in a clean and orderly fashion.

My UPSs, now known as Useless Pieces of Shit failed me miserably last night when our local transformer (in the back garden) gave a spectacular fireworks display in the middle of a storm.

One kept going but wasn’t correctly configured to support some of the equipment so I couldn’t shut some things down, one died completely and the other had insufficient battery power but had never warned previously (the audible alarm must have packed in some time ago too).

So of the three, one won’t power at all, one won’t charge and the other is not much use in its current state as the bloke who looks after the office hadn’t wired it correctly.

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