Death Inc

OK I have 4 identical UPS units supplying the same number of PC's that are giving me trouble

All units are brand new
All units turn off for no reason i.e. like pressing the power button.
They are all on the same circuit, but not all will go off all the time.
Due to annoyance I pluged the PC's into the surge outlet (I'm hoping this is a surge protected outlet) it keeps working once the unit drops out.
now the units supply the following
1 - network switch
2 - 2 * monitors
3 - PC - forgot to change this one
4 - nothing
Many other PC's in area
WTF can cause a UPS to just turn off no alarm just poof?
Voltage is 240-250, frequence is stable, but current wave looks more like a saw blade than a sine curve due to all the switch mode power supplies, but nothing else is failing or blowing up

What brand UPS are they?

We had some problems with a Chloride UPS because the power company uses a ripple current to denote peak/offpeak times for things like hot water systems to start up. Apparently the UPS couldn't handle this input and instead of going to battery it would shut off its output. We solved it by swapping the Chloride for an APC.

Also the surge outlet on the UPS is just that - surge protection. It doesn't power that outlet from the battery.

I remember havign some dodgey UPS (OLD APC) that went nuts when the microwave turned on. Microwave wasnt plugged into the UPS, but the UPS drew power from the same wall sockets and the building was a shit house old office with bad power.

What else you have ? Model of UPS ? Anythign else running from the wall where the UPS gets power from sucking the life and tripping up somewhere ?

Tripp lite
running on same power are
big motors
2 * 250kw electric ovens the cause on start up I think but not always.
Lots of PC's
losts of smaller motors
110v transformers
10 24v power supplies
fuckloads of hibay lights
is a factory
I don't care if they loose power during a power failure but they were supplied with the 80K camera system so I think I should use them.
Noise is a real posibility from the ovens though maybe a filter is required.

So does it go like this

Wall socket - surge protector/board filter - ups - devices ?

It's all hard wired as much as possible GPO's are a pain, and there was no room for one

Circuit breaker - BP's and tape in the server box then daisy chain to the next- Ups - PC, not pretty but only so much you can do with a shoe horn

The Ovens are Big Thyristor units, all was ok over shutdown but now that production started they drop out seeming at random.

Not like the voltage regulator that was dropping every time they started but I think that was the contactors causing that one with an inductive voltage spike when they switch on thay are very big

The thing I don't get is why the protective equipment fails while every thing else is unaffected seems a little backward. There would be 20 PC's of different configurations in the same area about 1/3rd of them on the same circuit no problems for 3 years.
All the dead PC's (office ones) happen on the office/aircon site transformer (500KVA) that is seperate from the production transformer (1000KVA)
I like Donuts example (though My scopes are either too low a voltage or too slow to show any interference) so I am going to stick one of these in line http://australia.rs-online.com/web/p/power-line-filter/0292818/ (http://australia.rs-online.com/web/p/power-line-filter/0292818/) and if that works put them every where, just in case!
The guy that sold me the controllers said I would not need a line inductor/choke though

right tool for the right job, you dont buy ur tools from coles do you..


http://www.deathinc.com.au/index.php?topic=14103.0

You can contact them directly if you need more information or send thru to me and I'll organise the best ups for your application..

I should also note that we are local to a sugar mill and around that time they were implementing a green power scheme (they'd burn the cane trash and use it to power generators, and feed it back to the grid)

There was a local substation that would go boom fairly regularly as well. One of the staff lived nearby and they'd get woken up at night with a bang and their room would light up like daylight as the substation arced into the sky. Basically we just had extremely shitty power.

We had a brownout for about 15 seconds once, and a week after that one of the servers just dropped dead. Was still under warranty but EVERYTHING was toast, ended up replacing everything except the chassis (disks, motherboard, processor RAM... everything was dead)

We ended up getting a heap of our building wiring redone and we also spent $15K on a centralised power filter system to provide a 'clean feed' to our computer room.

Forgot to ask, does the UPS generate a log / output of any data. I recall working at a site and the UPS would log some crazy events about voltage spikes and low outputs. A call to Ergon found the street was suffering from low voltage output as the street was filling up with new businesses who were heavey industrial / welding and those welders suck the life from anything.

Ergon had to work on a new upgrade to the street power (still in progress today so I been told)

Anyway - anythign in a log as well to help tell whats wrong with the UPS before it konks out ?

Tried logs no records after drop outs.
But battery fully charged, temp ok and voltage in the green

Am i blind or you have not posted the model of ups's you have

there are 3 major types offline, line interactive and online, they all behave differently.

I have 9 ups's that when plugged show 100% battery and everything OK, the minute their is a requiremetn for buck & boost they all shutdown.

The circuitry is not sufficent enough to maintain the general operation of the ups on its own let alone with load on them.

Have you tested the ups's else where in the buiding. and if they are brand new send em back as faulty, if you have choosen the right ones.

Ok Bohica I did not choose them, they were supplied as part of a system and will have to be returned to the US if that is the case, and I would like to know if there is a errant voltage condition before I just send them back. They were working fine for 2 weeks before production returned from holidays then started to go funny. failure is unpredictable can run for a week or 10 min. anyway link below is for the model in question
http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtSeriesID=744&txtModelID=2691 (http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtSeriesID=744&txtModelID=2691)

They are only 500 va  :PDT_Armataz_01_13:

500VA line interactive 1U rack/tower UPS
230V nominal output during brownouts to 187V and overvoltages to 252V
500VA/300 watt power handling capability is compatible with networking

On our systems I will over 3 years warranty on any pc that our clients buy if they purchase a ups, but not any ups.

this is the one we offer for a single pc, with either network switch or adsl modem or second lcd. http://www.mmt.com.au/product/31PW51101000A

I use in data cabinets with 1-2 switches and a router the 500va units - i wont put them on a pc not enought juice in them, they fail to quickly.

I will add with the the 3 magor victorian power genrators within 45km radius our power is the worst in the state.
http://www.mmt.com.au/product/31PW51100500A

I agree, that UPS you have is probably insufficient especially in an electrically noisy environment.

In our case we went from a 6kva online/double conversion unit to 2x 3kva interactive units.... yes the online is supposed to be better, but something about our power just didn't gel with it.


I reckon we wouldn't be far behind... mill and co-gen plant are within 4km and substation that used to go boom was about 500m away :)