UPS vs Surge Protector

Comments on 'UPS vs Surge Protector'

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  Mike,
  In general, I thought it was best protection not to plug a surge protector/power strip into a UPS. A good UPS should have sufficient surge protection (the best ones have guarantees) and a UPS is designed for a specific workload and has number of plugs to fit that environment. Putting too much load on a UPS will overload it and eliminate the battery protection that is a primary feature. If a user is familiar with the VA rating of the UPS and the devices that they are plugging in, they could plug in power strip surge protectors, but it's at the user's risk.

  
  

  Posted By:Stuart Miniman| Thu Aug 25, 2011 12:16

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  Stuart, thank you for your comments. Yes, you are correct about plugging surge protectors into UPSs. We don't advocate it but it does happen in practice (at user risk as you note). Plugging more things into a UPS doesn't necessarily overload it--just depends on the total load (and not the number of devices). Every UPS that I've seen sounds an (audible) alarm if it becomes overloaded and you are correct--you'll lose battery protection if this happens. People do tend to plug more stuff into UPSs over time and it can drive IT managers crazy because the battery runtime is obviously diminished.

  
  

  Posted By:Mike DeCamp| Fri Aug 26, 2011 09:42

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