Wow a topic that I actually have a lot of experience with. I work for a
company in the Southern Califronia area that specializes in Inverter
technology for Egress lighting and data centers(2 of these out they're).
Teh line interactive units and the online we call them double conversion
units tend to be the best. Something that I have learned from this is that
lighitng loads are THE most difficult loads to supply power too and High
Intendisty Discharge lights (HID's) tend to be the most difficult. 4-6ms is
about right for line interactive, they should be on the inverter within a
half cycle of AC, if not then they are what we call Interruptable Power
Sources. The difficult part of the Line interactive and the double
conversion units is that they are VERY power hungry, however, in most cases
there isn't much choice. Some of the newer technology I get to mess around
with right now is dead efficient although all of it is designed for
installed systems. I can tell you that I have experience with Best power
products and they tend to be good stuff especially for computer systems. A
good rule of thumb is that if it will hold a PC it should hold anything.

Cheers

BTW Don't forget to test the batteries on that UPS on a revolving basis, or
you could find out that they are no good at the wrong time!!!

"hollywood_steve" wrote in message
om...
Like a lot of cheap fools, I waited until after I had an "accident" on
a job before I purchased a UPS for my location rig. (someone pulled
the plug on my power strip a few minutes before the start of the
show!). OK, lesson learned.

While reading up on the different types of UPS systems, I learned that
the "online" (always on battery supply) version might be better than
the "line interactive (monitors situation and switches to battery when
necessary). But I couldn't find an online version that wasn't grossly
oversized (and expensive) for the single hard disk recorder that I
plan on running off of it. I ended up with a rackmount Tripp-Lite
line interactive product, the SmartPro 450.

One spec that shows up on line interactive models that is not
applicable to online versions is the switchover or transfer time.
(the time it takes to switch over to battery power after it has
detected some sort of power problem. My unit is listed at 2 to 4
milliseconds, but I don't have any idea of that is adequate or if its
long enough to make the UPS an expensive boat anchor? Anyone out
there have a clue about this stuff?


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