Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)

[LDA]

Hi All,

I'm new to the forum, and found nothing in the FAQs about it.

I've been having power line disturbances like surge, outage, spikes and the like in my region and not to mention when thunderstorms are around. My great concern is a power outage while in a firing process, or even worse, burn out my ovens.

Is out there any recommendation as to the use of UPS, how to proceed to choose one with the right specs and so on?

Thanks a lot for your time and attention.

LDA popcorn

P.S.: Just found an article in this link where, among other things, it states:

"In order to protect equipment from these costly power problems, many equipment manufacturers specify the use of an uninterruptible power system (UPS). Most site preparation guides that specify UPS installation frequently do not specify the UPS type and quality level that is required to meet their equipment’s demanding needs. The Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE) defines UPS topologies in the following categories: “Off-line,” “Line-interactive” and dual-conversion "On-line" (commonly known as “double-conversion”). Due to the sensitive nature of lab instruments, a double-conversion On-line UPS is the best choice since it solves the widest spectrum of power problems. Line-interactive and Off-line UPS, while more economical, do not provide the high level of power protection and conditioning demanded.

The difference between these UPS topologies is often not clearly understood. About 90% of the UPSes on the market today are actually Off-line or Line-interactive designs. These battery backup units are low–cost and designed to address the basic backup needs of home PCs and office computers. They leave the equipment connected directly to the power utility source until power is lost and then switch over to the inverter, creating a 10 to 20 millisecond drop out during the switchover. This may be acceptable for PCs, but not for sensitive laboratory equipment."

If you read the entire article in the link above, the author certainly is not thinking on a (press) ceramic oven, is (s)he?...

Anyway, how sensitive is a press ceramic oven?... Where can we find references about this subject?

Again, thanks for your heads up.

 

[DMC]

You will need a mountian of batteries to power a porcelain furnace.

This UPS is designed for computers, and other lower power devices.

A UPS for a big load like a 20amp furnace is going to be BIG and EXPENSIVE
if you want it to work for longer than 30sec.

You could just re-start oven, and hit "next/next/next" to resume program.

Or, just strip and rebuild, because your first build was crap anyway. LOL

 

[TheLabGuy]

Why not do what Al did recently. Yo Al, post some pics again of your generator. I'm doing this as well very soon. What I'm doing is buying a LP/Propane (we don't have natural gas where I'm at) 1700 Kwh generator. You can buy them at most home improvement stores, but be a smart shopper and make sure the control box (that hooks to the breaker box) comes with the generator portion (some don't I found). In addition, check your electric bill as well, make sure 1700 Kwh is going to be big enough, they sell a 3200 Kwh as well. I've been cranking up the AC, all the ovens, trying to really drive the electric bill up and could only get it up to 1300 Kwh in a months time so I'm thinking of saving a couple thousand and going with the smaller (1700 Kwh) version for my lab. One other thing to consider is you should have a licensed electrician or mechanical contractor come in to wire it all in. Make sure it's a good one too, because if they reverse the polarity on just one wire it'll fry anything its plugged into (heard a story while shopping). Hope that helps

 

[Al.]

Yeah thats what I did and really the only thing you can do.

I got my system from lowes and they hooked me up with an electrictian that hooked it to a panel that is hooked into our house panel.

I had our propane company run a line to it. I already have 1300 gal in tanks because we use a fire place with 3 blowers and 2 small furnaces to heat up our place.

After 20 seconds the generator kicks on. Its 20 KW, one notch below the large comercial water cooled big boy.
It will power the whole lab. In our main house, our kitchen, the fans for our furnaces, three rooms and our water heater.

It kicks on every Wed at noon and runs for 12 minutes.

It cost me around 8 grand total.

We have probably used it 15 hours total. We are in a rual area with alot of trees so its not unusual for power to go out here after a storm for a couple of hours.

 

[LDA]

Hey ***, Al and TheLabGuy, thank you so much for your prompt replies. You rock! And what Al have is impressive, your backup power covers the whole lab! That's wonderful. But I was thinking on something more kind of modest, to just protect the ovens from transients from the AC power grid and until the storm is gone when that's the case. I agree with you, ***, that a lot of batteries would be required to power a porcelain furnace if I want them backing the whole day. That's not the case, though. and i'm not talking about UPSes designed for computers. I just want to protect (filter out),at a reasonable and affordable cost level, the furnaces from harmonics, high voltage transients, surges etc and, besides those, to keep the furnace on for, say, 40 or 60 min if an outage occurs because of a storm or whatever, so it completes the current job and we turn them off once the job is completed. And once the power grid is restored, we then can resume our normal routine. But from what *** says, this is not a feasible thing to accomplish? Again thank you for your comments.