My experiences with the UPS

[caption id="attachment_626" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Locally made inverter or UPS"][/caption]

Last summer the load-shedding was terrible, so I decided to get a backup power system at my home. It was the time when the inverters and batteries were in great demand and a huge black market had sprouted across Pakistan. We do it like nobody else.  After great search I could get a local-made UPS (inverter) and hooked it to four car size batteries, as the big one were not available. It was a 1200 watts equipment and could run four fans and four lights for one hour. The cost was 13,500 rupees for the inverter and 12,000 rupees for batteries. Another 1,500 rupees for the electrician.

The system provided us good backup in peak summer in 2008, but there were certain issues whose solution I found just recently. As it was a totally new thing, I had zero knowledge about the equipment. The indicator lights were not working, only the UPS red light worked when electricity went out. I asked the guy who provided the UPS about lights and he said it was ok, as long as the UPS was working lights were just formality. Just learned a week ago from a relative, how important these LED lights were.My biggest worry was that the UPS was overcharging the batteries, often boiling them and spreading a pungent smell. I used to put a lot of filtered water into batteries twice a week. Two batteries were overcharging, while two others were ok.

Now I realised that the electrician had just wired the UPS with houselines and if it had to be removed, the entire house would be without electricity. I got it rectified last week. Called another electrician and asked him to install sockets and plugs, so that when UPS is removed, the house lines are connected with a plug. It was also an adventure, because when the electrician finished his job, UPS refused to work and the guy said that there was a fault in the UPS, but when I asked him to change the polarity of the wires, it started working after he made several attempts.

Now when the UPS was plug and play, I took it and batteries to a repair shop at Pakeeza Market, I-8/4. The guy spent more than five hours on it and declared it ok after replacing some burnt resistors which were causing overcharging and he also rectified the LEDs.

The story does not end here as there is more into things in which you get in. I noticed that the UPS was now showing full batteries and when I cut the normal powerline to test the UPS it ran the fans and lights well for 15 minutes. But when I reconnected the normal powerline, the charging light came up for a few seconds and the UPS started showing full batteries. Even after running on batteries for about 50 minutes, the charging was cut out in seconds.

So today morning I opened up the cover and saw spark coming from a lose connection where new resistors were installed. I tightened it and the spark was gone. Then I worked around with the variable resistance and rotated it counter-clock wise and the charging light was on for about 50 minutes. At this point, I rotated the variable resistance a little bit clockwise to cut the charging. Now the charging is set at 50 minutes. I will have to now monitor and observe whether it behaves next time.

This is the problem with all local-made stuff, either they overcharge or undercharge the batteries. I would suggest that you always buy imported UPS like Homage or APC.

Homage is now abundantly available and prices are also reasonable. The advantage of imported UPS is that they control the charging and keep it at optimal level because of better circuitry and technology used. But remember that still most of the imported UPS are made in China, so your luck will also matter.

I hope that this post will help UPS users and those who are thinking about getting one. The key is the charging and you have to keep an eye on it, so that your batteries last longer.