Why can't some UPS be used to run home appliances ?

[rational]

Hi,

I am new to the forum. I have a question I would like to ask. I hope somebody could help me with it.
I am thinking of buying a UPS for my PC. I want it to have an external battery. However I also want to run common home appliances such as bulbs, tube lights and fans with it. I know that some UPS can be used to run these appliances while some cannot. Why ? What is the difference between the two kinds of UPS ?

rational

[Vivek Sivaram]

Hi Rational

Welcome to the forum. thank you for registering and posting your concern. Typically based on the size there are two types of UPS. The ones for the computer are small and house an internal battery. They have a very small standby time of about 15 to 20 minutes. This is enough to save your applications and shut the PC down. The UPS meant for home actually consist of the inverter and the battery pack. Here the batteries are lead-acid types which are similar to the ones used in cars and trucks. They can power many devices at home simultaneously and most people connect the UPS output to some lights and fans only.

Based on the technology there are again two types of UPS. The older types produce non-sine waves which can be harmful for equipment at home. All UPS convert DC to AC and in doing so try to produce a perfect sine wave which is required for equipments like tube lights, fans and televisions to operate. The newer UPS technolgy however gives a very close to perfect sine wave and at 50 Hz.

hope you found this information useful.

[chisha]

In jhansi we had an local make inverter which would provide for two fans and twolioghts and one or two other points too. WE just did not use it much for the computer but then we had a local make ups for our compu in office on which we could start up and run the compu for more than an hour . In jahnsi current comes in b/n cuts

[Vivek Sivaram]

Yes. Load shedding is a major problem even in cities like Chennai. We have power cuts everyday for 1 hour between 1300 and 1400 hours. No UPS yet though.