Need to achieve approx 24 hours backup for Notebook

I have a highend Sony Vaio Notebook with the following specs

2GHz Core2Duo
2GB RAM
2 X 160GB Hard Drives
17" screen (1920 x 1200 resolution)
nVidia GeForce 8600M GT
Blu-ray Disc Rewriter

I live in a small town in India and often we have power problems mainly due to heavy rains, lighting etc which is very frequent in this area. On some ocassions, the power goes for more than 24 hours.. And even if the power is there, sometimes the voltage is below normal which isn't sufficient for a Desktop to run, and because of that I'm using a notebook since it's running fine unlike my Desktop which won't even power when the voltage is below 170V)

Since I require that my notebook maintains really high uptimes, I'm looking for advice in purchasing a UPS. I'm not sure how much power this laptop consumes and neither do I know much about UPS or what kind rating I should be looking to purchase.

Will I get about 20 to 24 hours on a 1500VA UPS or should I be looking at higher ratings? The cost isn't an issue but I don't wanna end up buying one with a rating too high that I won't need, and I defenitely don't wanna buy one with too low backup.

Oh and did I mention frequent lightnings? I've had my router and modem fry up once because of this. So surge protection is also a must.. Is the ones available on the UPS reliable enough or should I be looking at buying a separate device for surge protection for power and phone line?

How many hours of backup might I lose if I wanna power a CRT monitor as well? At the moment I'm using a 15" CRT monitor to extend my laptop's desktop. Though I don't mind turning it off when there's no power, but it'd be better if I can use that as well when on backup, so that my productivity isn't affected because of power failures.

P.S. When assuming the power usage of my laptop to check what kind of UPS I need, let's not think of the usage in its idle state. I could be doing anything, like gaming for an hour, or video editing for an hour or two, or watching an HD movie etc, so that I'm not limited in what I can do when running on UPS.

 

What you should be looking for is a generator, not a super ultra battery backup. Get one that is standard to hold you long enough to start the generator, you may not even need that since its a laptop it will have its own battery to hold it over for awhile.

The CRT could use as much power as the laptop, they are pretty power hungry, a LCD would cut the amount of power used down alot.

 

Actually I would prefer doing it with a UPS. I live in a small town and the generators and inverters you get here all inferior quality ones and I don't think I can trust it. I'd rather buy a UPS made by a well known company like APC. Atleast then I can be confident about leaving my stuff on when I'm not at home. They gave me a quote of $400 for a 1500VA APC SmartUPS.. I'm not sure how long it will run if I power only the laptop with it.

If 24 hours is too much, then what kinda rating should I go for to get 12 hours? Though it does happen, It's very rare when the power is gone for longer than that.

 

VA to watts is about 60% so a good 1500VA UPS will give you about 900W of power. Your laptop will probably draw somewhere in around 70W-90W an hour so thats only about 10 hours. You need at least 2 to give you 24 hours of backup.

 

Okay, thanks for the info

 

I'm looking at this UPS

APC Smart-UPS SC 1500VA 230V

It says


Typical Backup Time at Half Load - 20.9 minutes (432.5 Watts)
Typical Backup Time at Full Load - 7.6 minutes (865 Watts)

and this one
APC Smart-UPS 1500VA USB & Serial 230V

Based on that, 90Watts will give only 100 minutes? Or am I calculating it wrong?

 

Opps. looks like I missed something in the formula. The 60% was the max amount of wattage you can hook up to the ups. Not it's actual capacity. Go to this page.

http://www.apc.com/tools/ups_selector/index.cfm

I know it's for desktop. but I went with a integrated, 16"-21" LCD, C2D, 2x SATA II drive and enter 8 hours on the bottom. Do calculate. The cheapest solution looks to be "APC Smart-UPS RT 1000VA 230V No Batteries + (1)UXBP48 Battery Unit"

It will show up as only providing 773 minutes until to hit "configure now" and you'll see that it's 773 minutes at 228W. If you change it to 100W, you'll see that it will give you slightly over 24 hours at 100W.

This maybe a cheaper option:

http://www.apc.com/products/configure/index.cfm?base_sku=SUA3000XLI&full_sku=SUA3000XLI

Change to 100W will show that the XL3000 with 1 XL 48 will give you over 16 hours at 100W.

 

This is a very interesting thread. I have always wondered what half those power numbers on power supplies meant. I could never find a good well written FAQ about these numbers.

 

A cheap and dirty solution maybe just to have half a dozen car batteries with a charger and then just run an AC inverter off them when the power goes out.

 

I am surprised you are able to get an APC UPS in a small town in India (foreign brand, very expensive - at least in India) over a decent generator (which would probably be used in greater frequency). Do you have to special order the APC UPS? If you are willing to special order, why not get a good quality generator from abroad?

 

Seriously if you can get a quality APC UPS you should be able to get a generator.

Plus if my power is going to be out for 24hours at random, I think my laptop is the last thing on my mind to keep running. You can bet first thing I am going to do is hook my refrigerator up to my generator, a fan, and a light source or two. Plus my computer wont do me much good without the internet so you need your router/modem up and working and hope that what ever keeps your internet up and going is not also down.


I live in Florida we have hurricane problems occasionally and can go without power for 1-7+ days, A 320$ generator kept my food fresh, my tv on, my lights on, fans going no problems, while my UPC on my computer for 120$ lasted me.... 35minutes.

 

just buy a good industrial generator

 

surfasb, the numbers can seem complicated at first, but it's actually quite simple. You'll see a lot of stuff like this on power supplies and many electronic devices.

Voltage is technically the difference in electrical potential between two points in a circuit. Basically it's the measurement of how much energy (stuff our lappy's eat up =D) that there is for every single charge. Voltage is measured in volts, one volt represents one joule (measurement of energy) for every single coulomb of charge. Charge is the matter, or stuff, that actually goes through the circuit. Current is the flow of electric charge. It's sort of how fast the stuff in the circuit travels. It's measured in amperes. One ampere is the equivalent to one coulomb of charge (how much stuff there is in the circuit) per second that goes by. Watts measure power. Power is the transfer, exchange, or consumption of energy. Basically how fast your component eats up energy. Power is measured in watts. One watt is one joule per second, so one piece of energy eaten up in one second. Energy can also be measured in Watt-hours, or Wh (often kWh for high powered devices).

AC and DC just represent the type of current that runs. AC stands for alternating current, while DC stands for direct current. These are a little more complicated. Alternating current will vary in a wave form, while direct current is unidirectional.

I know the stuff I just explained was kinda pointless, but I love explaining physics stuff to people here when in need, even tho I'm only a mere beginner when it comes to physics (I've only completed physics 11/AP physics 12 hehehe)

 

buy a cheap generator and use a low priced (not cheap) UPS as a line filter

 

If you really hate to run generator, buy UPS (first one) and try for how long you can run your laptop on it, than buy second one and make a serial connection, if second isn't enough, buy third and so on. At the end you have a battery of ups that fits your needs

 

Thats a good idea but certainly wouldn't be cost-efficient. Generator will certainly be cheaper. Like I have mentioned and others have also supported; special order a good quality generator.

 

I also highly doubt that daisy chaining UPS's gives the same efficiency as if you used them individually. There is probably a loss of efficiency as it travels from one to the next and trying to charge the battery.

 

Just add more batteries to the UPS. No need to get multiple UPSs, the battery depletes...NOT the inverter. Most of them use 12 Volt batteries (or multiples thereof). It may void the warranty but you can connect extra batteries yourself.