Guides
Answers to the questions we get asked on the phone several times a month.
7 min read
How to size a UPS for an industrial load
Most undersized UPS installations we are called out to went wrong at the quotation stage, not on site. Almost always for the same three reasons.
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Servo stabilizer or UPS?
These two get compared constantly and they are not alternatives. One fixes voltage, the other fixes continuity. Knowing which problem you have takes a week and a logger.
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Why UPS batteries fail early in Pune
A VRLA battery rated for five years will often manage two and a half here. The cause is almost never the battery — it is the room it sits in.
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What to check before signing a UPS AMC
Two contracts on the same machine can differ by three times in price and by rather more than that in what you actually receive. The difference is almost never on the front page.
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Reading a UPS spec sheet without being fooled
Almost nothing on a UPS datasheet is untrue. Quite a lot of it is true under conditions the sheet does not print.
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Lithium vs VRLA for UPS banks in India
The interesting variable in India is not price. It is the temperature of the room the bank is going to live in.
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Online UPS vs offline UPS
One rebuilds the waveform continuously; the other passes the mains through and switches to battery when it fails. That single difference decides which one your equipment needs — and for a lot of loads, the cheaper answer is the correct one.
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How to compare UPS manufacturers
Most of the firms listed as UPS manufacturers in Pune assemble imported cabinets or resell somebody else’s. That is a legitimate business, but it is a different one, and it changes who answers the phone in year seven.
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What rooftop solar does to your UPS
Plants that put solar on the roof often find the UPS behaving differently within weeks. Nothing has failed — the supply it is watching has changed character, and the UPS is doing exactly what it was told to.
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Why a DG set and a UPS argue
The generator starts, the changeover closes, and the UPS stays on battery as though nothing happened. This is the most common complaint on sites running both, and it is almost never a fault in either machine.
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What a UPS costs to run
A double-conversion UPS is one of the few things in a plant that runs at full duty every hour it is switched on. Four points of efficiency, on a 100 kVA load, is roughly a lakh a year — which is frequently more than the price difference that bought it.
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What EV chargers do to an industrial supply
A fleet charger is not another motor. It is a large, non-linear load that can go from nothing to full draw in seconds, several times a shift, on a connection sized before anyone owned an electric vehicle.
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Your server room got denser
One machine can undo the sizing of a whole room. A rack that drew four kilowatts for a decade is being replaced by one drawing thirty, and the UPS in the corner was specified against the old number.
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How to read a power quality report
A logger produces a hundred pages and a recommendation on the last one. Four measurements decide what you actually need, and knowing which they are turns the report from a sales document into a specification.
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How to load test a generator
Almost every standby generator in the country is exercised monthly with nothing connected to it. That run proves the set starts, the battery is charged and the fuel has not gone off. It proves nothing at all about whether the set can carry your building, and on a diesel it quietly makes matters worse.
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Is a lift ARD mandatory in India?
The short answer is yes, for anything new. The longer answer is that the code it comes from replaced the one most people still quote, and the change is wider than the ARD.
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ARD or lift inverter: which backup does your lift need?
Both sit in the machine room and both run off batteries. They are answering different questions, and the sizing arithmetic is not the same one.
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What actually happens at UPS commissioning
A UPS that powers up has not been commissioned. It has been switched on. The difference shows up two years later, on the day the mains goes.
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Repair or replace an ageing UPS?
The honest answer is that most sites keep a machine two years too long and then replace it in a hurry, which is the most expensive order of events available.
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Selling an old UPS — and the battery rules that come with it
The machine is a commercial decision. The batteries are a compliance one, and that is the half most sites get wrong by handing them to whoever offers the most cash.
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When renting a UPS makes sense
Hiring is not the cheap version of buying. It is the right answer to a different question — a need with an end date.
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Choosing a plating rectifier
Most rectifier specifications we are sent are sized from the tank. The tank is not what draws the current — the work in it is.
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What is a static frequency converter?
If you need 400 Hz from a 50 Hz supply, a transformer will not do it. Frequency is not something you can change with turns.
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