What do I need to know when buying... that thingy that is like a power bar but has batteries

I want to protect my computer stuff from this thing our electricity does when we have too many people staying in the house.  It's like a surge, only a low.  It lasts about a quarter of a second or less, but it's very hard on the electronics.  

I imagine a battery power bar thingy (not sure what this is called) would do the trick as the mains feed the battery and the battery feeds the computer.  Does this sound right?

What do I need to think about when getting one of these?

Power outages happen frequently, but I can't see wanting to use the computer more than 10 min after because if the power is out, the internet is out.  I need long enough to find out the power is off, save stuff, then shut everything down.

I would put my PC (tower) and monitor on it.  Everything else dislikes but can handle the power surges as my power bar for my computer has mega-fancy surge protection (but doesn't handle these lows very well).  I blow out my current power bar every 5 to 8 years but APC just sends me the latest one free of charge when that happens.  I think I'm on my fifth power bar by them.  I have a lot of brand loyalty there but would consider other brands.



The computer is in the same room where I sleep and I don't want the thingy to glow or make noise while I'm asleep.  This is vital to my sanity.  I usually shut down the power to the bars at night.  When I redo the room, I'll be installing outlets with switches so I can turn them fully off.  

So what do I need to know to find something that matches my needs?  

If you just need a battery back up/ surge protector for a few seconds, they should cost in the $50 range.

If you want something long power outages, I suggest you explore making your own out of a surge protector, trickle charger, electric wheel chair battery, and inverter.  Betting you already have a surge protector, it should cost in the $100 range and get you more bang for the buck than a commercial one.

If you had a laptop, your computer would have a built in backup source of power.

But to answer your question directly, what you are looking for is an Uninterrupted Power Supply
https://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP1500AVRLCD-Intelligent-Outlets-Mini-Tower/dp/B000FBK3QK/

I would recommend plugging your internent devices into one and also your desktop.

I haven't had a laptop for a few computers now.  I found they are harder to upgrade than a tower, have power issues and/or cooling issues.  I also couldn't get as good a system for my money and they only seem to last about 11 years before needing replacing.  But they might be better now, like I said it was a few computers ago.

A tower worked better for me as I could customize the components.  But the power supply has... trying to remember the name, it stores electricity but isn't a battery... It has enough of that to do a soft shutdown if the power goes all the way out but it won't save the files.  Just protect the CPU.  


I can't see a reason to plug in the internet gadget as it belongs to the provider and they need to upgrade ours soon anyway.  It's got basic surge protection.  More importantly, if a tree takes the power out, it will take out the internet cables too.  


I've really enjoyed having the free replacement from APC whenever the surge protector power bar dies.  They also have a replacement promise that they will replace something like upto $10,000 worth of equipment if the protection fails.  So I think I might go with something with that rather than my own build.

In my head I was envisioning the electrcity going out without the phones or cable or internet going out, because a sub-station is having some problems.  But yes a backup to your Fios/cable-internet going down could be to use the hotspot feature of your cellphone. But it souds like you more worried about files on your local hard-drive and less so about a webapp or website.

So if you are in the market for a new UPS, I would lookup the following specs:
- Storage say around 1,000WHr
- Output, around 1,500W, give or take
- Amount of outlets, 4 sounds like a good amount to have.

It's almost always trees.  Our island has the most tree per km of line in North America.  

Don't own a smartphone yet.  Can't think of a use for it.  Don't have good enough cell signal at the house for it to bea reliable source of Internet.

Just the computer and the things I need to shut dow the pc.

Where do i look to find out how much power the computer eats?  This might be a starting place.   It has a larger power supply than most for the editing and to accommodate future upgrades.   All the ones I had before were power smart.

It looks like the tower has a 700 w draw.

From what I can tell, most of the battery backups don't have enough W's to run my tower.  It looks like I should get one that has double the capacity that my tower needs to eat and at least 100W more than my tower gobbles per hour.  

And really, that does make sense in my head.  

It looks like this is about as small a unit as I can get.  I put a price watch on camelcamelcamel and I can see that right now it's about as expensive as it gets.  

Which means delaying my computer upgrade until next year, but my monitor is no longer on life support so I think I can swing it.  

I'm going to keep looking for a few more and put price watches on them.  


The thing I want to see about is the battery replacement.  Some have a simple cartridge you buy a new one but others seem to require we replace the whole unit.  How expensive and how often?  That's the question.  

A UPS in the 1000 VA range will more than suffice. (I don't like the smaller ones because they're not as well made, but they are a lot cheaper. None of them last more than about two years anymore, because they overcharge the battery.)

Most of the time even a loaded tower PC doesn't draw anywhere near that much; 700W is startup draw only, not continuous draw (Actually, it's probably the max capacity of the power supply, but the PC is not using more than a fraction of it.). I have 2 to 5 PCs attached to each of mine, and the only thing is -- don't turn them on all at the same time, and don't run 'em full bore all at the same time either (I could, but I don't).

Just checked my UPS with the two highest-draw systems on it, and they are using a combined 162W, and it has 27 minutes of charge if both are running. (One is a midrange i7 with 64GB RAM and five hard drives.)

The main reason for more capacity is more time to do a graceful shutdown, or to get past small outages if you have a lot of short ones. They're also useful for night lights and keeping stuff like the router/modem from getting whacked by power jumps.

Yeah, you can build your own from a wheelchair battery (my first UPS ran on one of those) but by the time you have all the needful power protection you've spent quite a lot more than a prefab even with today's short battery lifespans (the batteries are replaceable, but you don't save much).

The biggest benefit is that your PC's electronics don't get stressed near as much by power fluctuations, and will last a lot longer. I would never plug a PC into the bare wall if I could avoid it.

Note: the surge protection part works even if the battery is dead.

Note 2: NEVER EVER NOT EVER plug a surge protector into a UPS, unless you WANT to start a fire. (Surge gets bounced back and forth between 'em until it melts the cord....)

Note 3: Don't run a laser printer off a UPS; the startup draw for the fuser is too high.

r ranson wrote:It looks like this is about as small a unit as I can get.  I put a price watch on camelcamelcamel and I can see that right now it's about as expensive as it gets.  

Ouch. I pay about $100 at Costco for a 1200VA CyberPower unit. I have three in service at the moment. (Supporting a total of 8 desktop PCs, 3 monitors, 5 sets of speakers, one modem, 2 network switches, 2 KVMs, 3 USB hubs, two external HDs, a phone, and the occasional laptop. About half of this stuff runs all the time.)

I've had APC (in fact I was an APC rep in days of yore), Tripp-Lite, and CyberPower. Have not observed any great difference between 'em.

My UPS arrived and I love it!  (although I hate that the price dropped by $60 the day it arrived but meh, that's what I get for rushing the purchase.)

It looks like it will run my PC, monitor and lamp for about 50 min on battery backup.   I haven't set up the software yet so I might be able to get that longer if needed, but really I can't see many times I would want to run it that long.

It has two sets of plugs, the battery backup plug which turns on and off with the switch and the general surge protection which stays on all the time.  

It also has a screen I can flip through to give me different information like the voltage in and out, W's in and out, hertz... all that good stuff.


At night I shut all my equipment off as per normal, then turn off the battery backup so the lights don't shine.  

The only issue is that it does click or clunk if there is a strong power fluctuation.  From the website: https://www.apc.com/us/en/faqs/FA158813/

Boost and Trim are Automatic Voltage Regulation features where the UPS will either boost or trim the power to protect brownout or overvoltage conditions respectively. Boost or Trim can last as long or short as the brownout or overvoltage condition will last. If the clicking becomes frequent, there may be issues with incoming power.

Reducing your Back-UPS' input power sensitivity may allow it to operate with less or no audible clicking. If your unit continues to click following this sensetivity adjustment, you may have an electrical input issue from the provider or power sags from high current loads connected into or nearby the UPS. It is recommended that you contact an electrician for further assistance in identifying the source of the issue.

Thankfully this doesn't happen every night and when it does happen it's just once or twice.  I could change the sensitivity so it doesn't happen, but I kind of like it because it shows me that this gadget is doing a lot more work than I expected.  

r ranson wrote:I could change the sensitivity so it doesn't happen, but I kind of like it because it shows me that this gadget is doing a lot more work than I expected.  

Yeah, if it's doing that much work to level out line voltage -- your electronics definitely needed the protection!