Char said:
When the battery in my APC UPS died in the late 1990's I never bothered to
replace either the battery or the entire UPS. I think the question of
whether a person 'needs' a UPS is a YMMV thing. I very rarely see power
outages, like maybe one a year, but I've heard from friends in Florida who
say their power flickers every time there's lightning in the area, which is
about every week for 3/4 of the year.
Since the change they made to the substation this year, things have
got worse here, with the power going off for 1 second, for
virtually every lightning strike that hits the ground. The
UPS is getting a workout now. But 1 second at a time. Not
that hard on the battery.
It wasn't nearly this bad last summer. Some lightning storms,
you could go through them without the lights going off. The
new addition to the substation, seems to have amplified the effects
of the lightning. (Three external metal boxes were added to the
substation, and that's how I know there was a change to it.
And they're not conventional transformers either, as the
boxes open easily for maintenance. Our regular transformers
here, aren't designed like these new boxes.)
So it doesn't take much for your power to become "third world"...
All it takes is a little bad engineering.
Our hydro in town is "locally owned", which means it does not
benefit from scale of operation. It would not have a very
large engineering department.
Paul
