I recently came home to notice the lights were all rather yellow
looking. We were in a brownout.
I have three UPSs at home.
1. A fairly old little APC with a mechanical switch and all on my
basement server.
2. A newer APC with a push button switch on my kitchen computer.
3. A fairly old Belkin on the Tivo.
The basement server was running, UPS backed up. It had been off
earlier (I suppose when the battery had run out), but was running
happily now in the brownout, with a charged battery. Very good.
The kitchen computer was off and the UPS wouldn't come on. It had no
ability to run in a brownout, dead, dead, dead until full power had
been back for awhile. Very bad.
The Tivo was running on low volts. The Belkin was passing the low
line voltage through with no battery backup, after it charged I could
hold the power button to get it back on in backup mode. Rather bad.
My advice part 1: Don't be all impressed with VA ratings, look at
backup *time* at your likely load.
My advice part 2: Make sure you have brownout protection, much better
to be charging your batteries in a brownout than to be running your
batteries down at full speed just because the voltage is low.
-kb
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