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Do generator circuits cause ups failure?

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diogenes10

Technical User
Jan 22, 2003
1,406
US
We are going to install the 4th (3rd replacement) ups for the server. The question is being asked if a generator circuit will cause ups failure?


 
In my case I'd say yes, they prematurely affect the life of the UPS but in my situation, all the electricity is supplied 365 days a year by generators. Some of my sites have no local electricity so we use ENORMOUS generators to supply the whole factory. We noticed our UPSes fail quite often because the power is not always "clean" making the UPS work much harder (going on battery more often). We also put a regulator in front of the UPS. The high temperatures and sandy environment doesn't help either. We've had numerous exploded power supplies to the unstable power source.
 
Our situation is a little different.

We have a backup generator - I believe gas fired - that is supposed to come on if the utility power fails, powering the computer circuit, the phone system and a couple of critical plant machines. The intention is for the ups to keep the server up in the transition time between utility power and generator power.

We had a backup supplied by Dell that was supposed to support the server. It failed.
We put on an 800+ watt APC. It failed after about 8 months.
They replaced it with a refurbished one which failed after about 4 months.
(This failure came after a situation in which the backup generator was not engaged and the server ran the battery down in the night.)
APC replaced it with a new one. (End of warranty - no more.)

Server and backup are in the offices away from excessive plant dirt.

I think we have had an electrician test the utility power and he and our maintainance man decided that the fluctions were not unreasonable.

The boss is sort of 50/50 on whether to blame APC products or the generator.

 
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