UPS

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oldsparky52

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Wilmington, NC USA
My son works at Corning and he's moving into a new job. He was telling me about it and he mentioned that one of the machines shuts down when there is a power glitch. I told him it sounds like they needed a constant power UPS. He said they had one.

I questioned whether it was constant or just switched over on power problems. (It sounded to me like it just switched over).

I explained the difference between the 2 types, explaining that one type will have a battery feeding an inverter and the AC only keeps the battery charged, the UPS will feed the machine. The other switches over to battery when needed (and there will be a slight "glitch" in the power feeding the machine).

He got irritated with me (happens a lot) and claimed there are lots of smart people there and if it was that simple, they would have figured it out.

So, my question to the forum is, if you are using the UPS that is constantly running off the battery, will a power surge/sag/drop out pass a "glitch" through to the machine? I would think it would not, but I've never really dealt with them.
 
oldsparky52 said:
He got irritated with me (happens a lot) and claimed there are lots of smart people there and if it was that simple, they would have figured it out.
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I don't know the answer to your problem but there is something that I have leaned that almost never fails. Smart people almost never look for simple answers to problems they perceive to be complicated. They just assume the answers to problems must be complicated.
 
The major types of UPSs you might be thinking of are offline, line interactive and double conversion.

The load dictates how tolerant it is to the voltage power quality.
 
ron said:
The major types of UPSs you might be thinking of are offline, line interactive and double conversion.

The load dictates how tolerant it is to the voltage power quality.
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Those categories are in ascending order of cost. If the bean-counters had any major input to the selection process, count on them having moved heaven and earth for the cheapest solution. If the engineers involved in the selection process have moved on, no one may be around who actually knows which type was procured.
 
oldsparky52 said:
So, my question to the forum is, if you are using the UPS that is constantly running off the battery, will a power surge/sag/drop out pass a "glitch" through to the machine? I would think it would not, but I've never really dealt with them.
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I agree. That's their purpose in life. Think about what the U stands for.
 
growler said:
I don't know the answer to your problem but there is something that I have leaned that almost never fails. Smart people almost never look for simple answers to problems they perceive to be complicated. They just assume the answers to problems must be complicated.
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Growler
Drawing from my own experience (and mistakes) in T shooting and OVER-THINKING what the cause of the problem could be, I absolutely agree with your statement.
 
It might be that the battery is too tired or too small to supply the power when the POCO goes down.
 
+1
I'm now out of the game, but my last year I played them hard and had them doing Chinese Fire Drills with their own rules, refs., and info..
 
Barbqranch said:
It might be that the battery is too tired or too small to supply the power when the POCO goes down.
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An offline UPS should have integral filtering to prevent distortions or sags from continuing downstream. An online UPS output should be a clean sine wave with no distortion or voltage drop transferred from the input across the output. This is a result of the inverter converting from AC to DC and back to AC.

The nameplate model number (and a call to the manufacturer) will tell you what type of UPS is installed. There should be a power meter integral to the UPS which stores data and logs adverse conditions. Back track to when the adverse events occurred and the meter will tell you what happened. Otherwise, the best starting point is to simulate a power failure by opening the UPS feeder breaker/bypass and see what happens.

If the power blips or doesn't come on at all after normal power failure, then there are major issues with the UPS inverter, static switch, electrical distribution system, etc. How is the UPS coupled to the generator? is it connected upstream from the transfer switch or on load side?
 
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