R
Rob Stow
Jay said:[snip]Jay T. Blocksom wrote: [snip][snip]Let me ask you this... Just what significant benefit to the consumer
would such an approach yield, which cannot or is not already provided by
"standard" PCs and "standard" plug-in UPS systems?
I had hoped that there would be significant energy efficiency
gains by combining the UPS and the PSU into a single unit.
Apparently that is not the case.
Right.
To even hope for a noticeable efficiency gain, you'd *have* to at least do the
dedicated-battery-per-rail thing, which would surely drive up the "cost of
admission" to the point that you could never sell more than a relative handful
of them.
And besides, even if "efficiency", per se, was significantly improved, that
still wouldn't translate into all that much energy savings, in the absolute
sense. Remember, notwithstanding the hobbyist aftermarket's obsession with
grossly excessive PSU output capacities, *most* PCs don't really use all that
much power (perhaps 50W or so; certainly under 100W), except very briefly at
start-up.
[snip]This business was just one franchise in a chain. The UPSes to be
used were spec'd out by the chain.
Ahhh. OK, that explains a lot.
[snip]They had originally had a server+terminals setup, with UPSes for
everything but the terminals. When they switched to a
server+windows clients setup they protected everything but the
clients. They operated that way for three years before their HQ
found out and told them to add the UPSes for the clients. I also
visited a different franchise in a nearby city to see if they had
those big UPSes at each client - and they did.
It's probably a case of the central IT department wanting *one* make/model of
UPS to deal with, which would greatly simplify their support/maintenance
headaches. Yeah, I know... in theory anyway, a UPS shouldn't require much (if
any) "support". But in a real-life corporate environment, you might be
surprised -- remember, at least most of the people in each of those branch
locations would probably start looking for a big brown truck as soon as you
even mention a "UPS".
I'd wager that all those workstations -- in both locations -- were precisely
the same make/model too, right? And for the same reason.
[snip]Two days later I was there as an ordinary
customer when, lo and behold, the next blackout happened. Turns
out they had a policy of shutting everything down, kicking the
customers out, and locking the doors. Much cheaper and smaller
UPSes with a two minute run-time would have done the job.
[snip]
I think you're exaggerating a bit, but I get your point.
Not exaggerating at all. This particular franchise was in a
shopping mall. I wondered if the chain has other stores that are
not in malls, and if so what is their policy about expelling
customers in the middle of a thunderstorm ? Would they just
send everyone into the little waiting/reception area ?
You misunderstand. By "exaggerating", I was referring specifically to your
"two minute run-time" comment. Sorry if I was unclear.
My earlier point being, even if you were to "downsize" the UPS so that it
would not be "wastefully" oversized, you'd still need to target at least a
10-15 minute runtime, just to maintain adequate margins of safety.
Also... The fact that this store/office was in a mall could *very* easily
have impacted (or even dictated) that "policy". Commercial leases for retail
space in malls tend to have all sorts of seemingly arbitrary clauses and
restrictions in them that would surprise anyone who hasn't dealt with them (I
have, tho' it was many years ago).
[snip]I didn't intend it to be. I intended it just as an example of
bad UPS usage.
It's really not so bad, in the grander scheme of things. The central IT
department's desire for uniformity and simplicity is well-founded, even if it
sometimes engenders what seems to be "wasteful" spending in the micro-view.
And besides, an over-capacity UPS is still relatively cheap, as compared to a
"properly" sized one, as long as you're not getting completely carried away
(like, say, using a 10KVA UPS to power a single MicroATX PC with an LCD
display).
They may well
This business had agents sitting at a desk and customers sitting
across the desk from the agents. I would have thought the safe
thing to do would be for everyone to just stay where they were
when the power went out.
It's near-certainly a liability/security thing, even if only by the perception
of whomever instituted the "policy" -- which very well may have been at least
instigated by the mall management. Remember, in that scenario, you are by
definition dealing with *several* layers of competing and overlapping (and
occasionally conflicting) bureaucracies. There's basically no limit to what
oddnesses *that* combination can produce. <~>