[PLUG-TALK] [PLUG] Line conditioners

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Thu Nov 13 23:07:22 UTC 2014


On Thu, 13 Nov 2014 12:52:55 -0800
Keith Lofstrom <keithl at gate.kl-ic.com> dijo:

>Cheap generator/inverter systems produce square waves, not sine waves,
>and are poorly regulated for frequency and voltage.  I have a little
>1kW Honda with an inverter and a power-save option.  For low loads it
>dials back the gas motor while still producing regulated sine wave AC. 
>Good for electronics, not so good for starting a motor in a furnace
>or refrigerator, which requires a brief burst of high current to start.

I have heard you laud the Honda inverters several times. But Honda
makes no products that run on natural gas. There exist kits to convert
them, but they void the warranty.

>Most cheap UPS's are passthrough - they pass wall current through
>unmodified, then switch over to the inverter when the power goes
>out (with a switching delay).  These do not turn crap power into
>regulated sine waves, and the isolating UPS's may be just 
>vulnerable to crap power as the rest of your electronics.

My UPS is an APC XS 1500. According to its data sheet it outputs a
"stepped approximation to a sinewave," whatever that is. More
importantly, it does not say what kind of tolerances it has for input,
other than "220 volts, 50-60 Hz." 

A long time ago I had a real UPS, that is, the kind where the equipment
plugged into it always ran off the battery and the battery was
continually kept charged from the mains. Sadly, the batteries
eventually died, the manufacturer had gone out of business, and
replacement batteries could not be found. Perhaps I should replace my
XS 1500 with such a UPS, if I can find one.



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