UPS Suggestions?

[tizwaz]

Hi all, I've had a couple of momentary power outages over the last 12 hours due to the high winds. Everything seems to boot back up ok, although my router has a habit of giving out repeat ip adresses, causing conflicts!!

As the outages only last a few seconds, I'm thinking a UPS would stop the forced reboots.

As a complete UPS novice, can anyone suggest what spec I'd need if I want to maintain a windows home server, small automation pc and a couple of power supplies (router & switch) for a few minutes whilst the mains played about?

Thanks Chris.

[toscal]

Look at the power consumption of each item and add them together. Then as a good safety margin add at least another 25% to this figure, and select a UPS based on this and of course your budget.
This extra 25% also allows for minor upgrades or additions to the system with out upgrading the UPS. Then look at the run times for the UPS based on your max power consumption this will tell you how long the UPS will provide power to your devices another reason for the 25% increase is it will give you a slightly longer runtime. Run times range from a couple of minutes to tens of minutes to half an hour or more depending on UPS size and budget.
You can often find good deals on ebay for brand new UPS systems.
You may want to get one that can link to your PC so that it can automatically shut down safely in the event of a long power outage.
Also many UPS systems will have some filtered only sockets. Useful for non mission critical systems.

Something I did think about installing but never got round to it, was a time delay on relay as a quick non UPS fix. When power is restored the relay will turn the power back on after about 2 minutes or what ever you set it to. (Then set the pc bios to boot once power is restored) This helps when you get the power on then 30 seconds later power off then power on again cycling that sometimes occurs, as this can do more damage than just a normal power outage. Though many UPSs have something like this built in.
Be aware that many UPSs have an audible alarm, not ideal to be woken up at 3 am with the UPS bleeping demanding to be reset as it lost power for 5 minutes. So think about UPS location.
Hope this helps.