How Uninterruptible Power Supplies Work

An uninterruptible power supply protects computers against surges, spikes, sags, and total power failure. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about uninterruptible power supplies.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff works dot com
where smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain For your computer,
electricity is essential, but it has to be the right
kind of electricity. What your computer expects to get from
the power grid in the United States anyway, is a
hundred and twenty volts AC power oscillating at sixty hurts.

(00:23):
A computer can tolerate slight differences, but a significant difference
will cause the computer's power supply to stop working or
to fail. A UPS or uninterruptable power supply protects a
computer against four different types of power problems. Voltage surges
and spikes. These are times when the voltage on the

(00:44):
line is greater than it should be. Voltage SAgs, times
when the voltage on the line is less than it
should be, a total power failure, times when the line
goes down or a fuse blows somewhere on the grid
or in the building and you have no power for
your computer. And frequency differences, times when the power is

(01:05):
oscillating is something other than sixty hurts. A standby UPS
runs the computer off the normal utility power until it
detects a problem. At that point, it very quickly in
five milliseconds or less, turns on a power inverter and
runs the computer off the ups IS battery. A power

(01:25):
inverter simply turns the d C power delivered by the
battery into clean volt sixty hurts a C power. Your
computer can usually run off a UPS for twenty minutes
or so. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for
this podcast? If so, please send me an email at
podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on

(01:47):
this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff
works dot com