Line conditioner?

Riddleofsteel

[H]ard|Gawd
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I live in a very old house with lousy wiring, and I have my pc connected to an older APC BX1500 that is connected to a wall outlet. I read somewhere that UPS units usually have sub-par line conditioning abilities. Would I be well served to seek out a dedicated line conditioner, or can you only have one or the other attached at a time? I'd gladly switch to dedicated line conditioner if it means nice clean power, but losing the battery backup if the power goes out will hurt. Any ideas? Thank you.
 
It's unlikely that you need any better line conditioning than the UPS provides. Unless you actually have real problems, just stick with what you've got.
 
I wouldn't worry about it, so long as its got a warranty. I guess you'll need to weigh the pros and cons and look at the price discount.
 
Most people overlook the necessity for a properly grounded house. Please have an electrician check to see your house has a true earth ground and is implemented properly. Also, he will need to look for obvious wiring problems and of course your electrical sockets. Most UPS systems you find in local stores use mode2 surge diversion which contaminates your neutral and ground lines. It wreaks havoc on computer systems, especially when they are interconnected. Expect fried ethernet, audio ports or worse (for whatever is connected) after a series of spikes or false starts. This is especially true when using cheap store bought surge "protectors" as they just redirect, not absorb or protect.

Any UPS or surge protector with a Joule rating always uses MOV's (metal oxide varistor) in conjunction with a shunt mode (in this case mode2) diverting surge energy into ground and neutral wires. MOV's do absorb some energy depending on their rating and implementation, but not nearly enough in a real case scenario of bad power (hence the need to shunt/divert the energy to ground/neutral lines where it shouldn't be to begin with). MOV's are designed to smooth out spikes and in no way protect against sustained over-voltages. On top of all this, they lose the ability to absorb over time and eventually become nothing more than a fire hazard (in general after 3 years or less depending on frequency and severity of bad power in your area).

For UPS's, ~$275 or higher cost units do well at filtering/delivering battery power on a pure sine wave. They have better surge design than cheaper models against spikes and switching transients, but again minimal design/production cost is assigned to surge protection. They are designed primarily to provide power when there is none. Don't expect more out a UPS than that. If you just need battery power to have your system auto-shutdown properly (signal sent via serial port, now usb) then the cheaper stuff is fine (using simulated stepped sine wave) but don't expect to "keep doing what you were doing" on this type of UPS.

If you've dropped a serious hunk of your cash on your computer and/or home theater setup, I hope you consider protecting your investment with more than a standard surge strip or UPS. I searched around in 2006 to find something that would both protect and filter power properly and soon found out there's only a few companies that provide the type of protection I was looking for. In this case, it was series mode protection.

Looking further, it turns out series-mode technology was developed and pioneered by Rudy Hartford, CEO and chief engineer of ZeroSurge, Andy Benton, chief engineer of SurgeX and Michael McCook, president of SurgeX. ZeroSurge is the only licensee of series-mode technology. Brickwall re-badges ZeroSurge products (minus TSC technology introduced in 2007). Torus Power buys series-mode modules from ZeroSurge and adds their own noise filtering. Only SurgeX incorporates the latest revision of this technology; as of 2005 3-wire zero let-through was patented by them. ZeroSurge and the companies it services use 90's 2-wire tech, but is still great and accomplishes far above what you'd expect from a heavy duty supressor. All credit for the information in this paragraph goes to fuelie of avsforum.

I personally use ZeroSurge's 8R15T-I, ~$300 shipped). The only "downside" to this previous revision of series-mode is that it slowly but safely trickles out surge power through the neutral line. Upside? The cost isn't as high as SurgeX's SA1810, ~$355 shipped. You decide.

To come around full circle, these surge protectors don't protect against ground surges. Make sure your house is -well- grounded. Want to take a step further after your grounding and wiring is in check? Get a whole house voltage regulator to counter high voltage and sags. I understand that by the time you are reading this part you are in full Hank Hill "Buuuhh!" mode but please understand this information is rarely all in one spot. Grounding/Power regulation is really one of those things people gloss over because of the law: if it isn't broken, don't fix it. I wrote this to help clear up the common misrepresentations of power management, surge suppression and UPS battery backup. :)
 
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Surge protection and line conditioning are not the same thing. Surge protection can be part of line of power conditioning but they are not the same thing. If you want serious surge protection you have it done at the panel, not after.
 
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To clarify, by ground plane surge I mean lightning strike whether direct or nearby. Lightning has the ability to jump so really there's no 100% safe design yet. But, you can get pretty close. While surge protection and line conditioning are two separate issues, they can both be integrated in one device. Keep in mind the surge units mentioned only protect the devices you plug into them and by no means does it go further or somehow inherit protection to the other socket from the pair or any other sockets installed in your house. Paul's reference to power line conditioning and surge protection being separate is true from a technical standpoint. However irregularities, interference, sags and surges can be dealt with a robust whole house voltage regulator/power conditioner.

Voltage regulation will, assuming your house wiring is good, for the most part guarantee clean power throughout your house. But, keep in mind lightning is so strong that it can leap across terminals, inductors (wires) etc. Breakers, even when switched off, are no match for a near/direct strike. Lightning both comes from the ground and the atmosphere to connect and create what we feel/see/hear. Because of this phenomenon, lightning can swell up and effectively bypass what you have installed at your power box and go straight to the wiring in your house from the ground up. I'm investigating further into this but at this point I'm not sure what is necessary to proactively design against ground surges. Please if you have an electrical engineering background, or just flat out knowledgeable in this area, I welcome your input.
 
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To clarify, by ground plane surge I mean lightning strike whether direct or nearby. Lightning has the ability to jump so really there's no 100% safe design yet. But, you can get pretty close. While surge protection and line conditioning are two separate issues, they can both be integrated in one device. Keep in mind the surge units mentioned only protect the devices you plug into them and by no means does it go further or somehow inherit protection to the other socket from the pair or any other sockets installed in your house. Paul's reference to power line conditioning at the panel is also known as whole house voltage regulation.

Voltage regulation will, assuming your house wiring is good, for the most part guarantee clean power throughout your house. But, keep in mind lightning is so strong that it can leap across terminals, inductors (wires) etc. Breakers, even when switched off, are no match for a near/direct strike. Lightning both comes from the ground and the atmosphere to connect and create what we feel/see/hear. Because of this phenomenon, lightning can swell up and effectively bypass what you have installed at your power box and go straight to the wiring in your house from the ground up. I'm investigating further into this but at this point I'm not sure what is necessary to proactively design against ground surges. Please if you have an electrical engineering background, or just flat out knowledgeable in this area, I welcome your input.

I've had a bit of experience with power coming through ground.... thank you college maintenance crew... Fried my monitor and the whole wing of the dorm I was in smelled like fried electronics for weeks.

In any case, after doinf a bit of research and looking around, there really isn't any product that really protects against ground surges.

The simplest way from what I could come up with would be to use some nice big diodes in between the earth ground and the outlet.. or just have a diode bank built into a nice surge supressor.

If there are any electrical engineers that know why this wouldn't work and/or any caveats, please post.
 
Paul's reference to power line conditioning at the panel is also known as whole house voltage regulation.

I did not say power line conditioning at the panel. Read what I write and do not put words into my mouth. You were talking about surge protection not line conditioning (which this thread is about) which I was addressing and trying to get this thread back on topic.

If you wish to discuss something else start a new thread, but do not confuse the subject again.
 
APC Line-R LE1200 4 Outlets 680 j 1200VA Automatic Voltage Regulator $50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812106005

Gets installed in every home theater I install. Started to use when brown outs from Air conditioner would cause HDCP handshake problems. If you see dimming lights from power usage add one of these to solid state power supplied devices. In a server room in a bad power area APC recommended putting the Line-R before the UPS's to fix problem of out of phase power.
 
If my UPS is 1500va and the line-r is 1200va, does that mean they can't work together? Thanks for the help, sorry to drag it back up.
 
If my UPS is 1500va and the line-r is 1200va, does that mean they can't work together? Thanks for the help, sorry to drag it back up.
They can work together as long as you don't overdraw the line conditioner. That will depend on the amount of power your PC requires. I think your best bet would be to connect the UPS to the wall, the line conditioner to the UPS, and the PC to the line conditioner.
 
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