Emergency lights on UPS?

[sfav8r]

We have a project that specifies about a dozen exterior lights, each with an emergency ballast. Due to space limitations, we would like to avoid the remote emergency ballasts. I was wonderig if we couldn't just install regular fluorescent fixtures and put a UPS at the panel to feed that circuit. We would size the UPS to run the dozen or so lights the required amount of time. Is there any reason this wouldn't work? any code problems here? I've never seen it done this way but it would be perfect for our application.

 

[iwire]

You cannot supply emergency lighting with a standard UPS, they are not listed for emergency use.

You can get ones that are listed for that use but the cost is high. They are called emergency inverters.

http://www.controlledpwr.com/Emergency_Lighting_Inverters.html



Also if you did this the wiring between the ups and the fixtures would have to be kept entirely seperate from all other wiring.

 

[ron]

As mentioned by IWIRE, you can provide a lighting inverter. There is a special UL listing for such Ul 924.

It is a better solution for long term rather than multiple distributed batteries that will get ignored when they fail. It is also harder to test the emergency lighting monthly and yearly as required when the batteries are distributed.

http://www.dspmanufacturing.com/Dow...ifferences between a UL 924 and a UL 1778.pdf

 

[sfav8r]

You cannot supply emergency lighting with a standard UPS, they are not listed for emergency use.


Also if you did this the wiring between the ups and the fixtures would have to be kept entirely seperate from all other wiring.

Meaning that none of the conductors can share a conduit with other circuits, or just electrically separate?

 

[iwire]

Separate conduits and j boxes as they would be Article 700 emergency conductors

 

[sfav8r]

Thanks for the replies. This will be a big help.