Just when you thought load shedding was a thing of the past you were caught off guard by the latest rolling blackouts. While ESKOM scrambles to maintain their power supply, millions of people are left without electricity. Honestly, it has happened before; it is happening now; it isn’t going to get better any time soon.
Load shedding interrupts our home lives and disrupts our businesses. The power outages cause data corruption on computer systems and damage various sensitive and expensive electronics like TVs, DSTV, and CCTV equipment.
There is however a way to safeguard this valuable equipment: invest in an emergency backup power UPS system. We recommend an on line double conversion UPS with Sinewave inverter and battery backup.
A UPS is made of three key components:
- A rectifier
- A battery
- An inverter
The rectifier takes the mains power, also called AC power, when it is available from ESKOM, and converts it into battery power called DC. The battery power charges the battery where this emergency backup energy is stored. During a power failure, the battery provides DC power to the inverter. The inverter takes this DC power and converts it to AC power.
If your sensitive electronic loads are plugged into the inverter when mains power fails they will keep running, uninterrupted.
You can expect battery backup for several hours, depending on the size of the load, but when the battery is eventually flat it will need more than a day to get back to full charge.
It is inevitable that any DC backup battery, no matter how big, will eventually go flat.
It is imperative to buy your UPS from a trustworthy supplier like Standby Systems. We have the expertise to ensure a system that is adequately sized for the load you need to connect and that the charger is strong enough to charge the battery in time for the next power failure.
When is the best time to buy a UPS?
NOW! Why put it off any longer in the hopes that load shedding will go away? Call Standby Systems today and one of our standby power specialists will help you select the right system for your home or workplace – be it for one computer, an entire data center, or a medical facility. We have a UPS for every system.
Which UPS?
There are hundreds of UPS systems available all over the world, so the UPS user is spoilt for choice. People are hesitant about spending money on a UPS when they don’t know which one will best suit their individual needs and their budget. For this reason, it is very important to have a good understanding of the different UPS backup technologies that are available from our UPS product range.
Well-known and trusted for many years, the best UPS products in Africa are:
- RIELLO / AROS for its highly dependable Sentry HPS and Sentry Multistandard UPS ranges
- RIELLO / AROS for its high-efficiency Master HE and Master UPS series UPS ranges
- Eaton (Meissner power systems) for the old MP100, MP2000 and MP3000 UPS ranges changed their name to Eaton in Africa
- Schneider, known years back as, APC for its Galaxy range of UPS systems
- Emmerson UPS which became Liebert and then Vertiv for its 7200, 7400 and High Pulse range of UPS systems
- Many of the series names of these UPS units have remained the same for decades with the technology always changing and improving to compete with efficient and reliable UPS solutions all over the world.
When choosing a good quality, reliable, uptime UPS unit, the African UPS user has many to choose from; this makes the process challenging at times. Don’t try and do this on your own. We will gladly help you, and our years of service prove that we have your best interests at heart.
When choosing your UPS system we would encourage you to take time and investigate the best battery options too.
Is your UPS system battery really a green solution for Africa?
In Africa, there are very few battery recycling facilities. The only recycling facilities that exist in Africa are intended for 100% lead-acid battery technology product recycling.
The most common battery technologies include:
- Lithium-Ion,
- Lithium Iron Phosphate also called Lithium Ferro or LiPHO4,
- Leadcrystal,
- Andthe highly poisonous Nickel Cadmium battery
All these standby battery technologies claim to be recyclable, but few state what percentageis recyclable. Many battery manufacturers worldwide claim 100% recyclability, but they never state where the battery has to be sent for recycling. This results in high costs to the user, at the end of a battery’s life. There are no green alternatives for batteries in Africa other than the lead-acid battery.
“As a citizen of the African continent, any UPS or standby power user should only use lead-acid technology batteries to prevent the further pollution and dumping of battery products that have to be shipped back overseas, at a considerable cost, at the end of useable life, for recycling.”
The need for a UPS is real
It’s imperative to understand how a UPS can save your bacon.
In this cut-throat day and age, production and business operations cannot afford to be interrupted. Time is money and every minute that your business stands due to load shedding is money lost.
- Remember when you missed a deadline because load shedding meant you couldn’t finish something in time?
- Recall the time you lost business because a client couldn’t wait for the electricity to come back on – maybe they went to your competitor because they had backup power?
- And that time you had been working on your computer for hours, capturing data that was vital for a project or a month end, and the power failed before you could save and safely back-up? All those hours of your precious time wasted.
If your system had been connected to a capable UPS you would at least have had the opportunity to save and backup your work safely; at most you would be able to continue working.
There are many UPS systems to choose from. Consult a standby power system specialist and you will be able to invest in the one that best suits your back-up power needs.