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Why Haven't UPSes Been Integrated w/ PC Power Supplies?

Posted by Cliff on from the the-ideas-they-fall-like-dominoes dept.

antiher0 asks: "A while back, while connecting the batteries to 20 UPS's at work, I had a revelation. Well... maybe it wasn't that subtantial, but I thought of something that noone I talked to could answer. UPS's work by storing energy in a standard battery (undergoing a transformation from AC to DC in the process). When the power goes out or a brownout occurs the energy stored in the battery gets converted into AC and is sent down the power cable to the end device where may be converted back to DC again (as in the case of a standard PC). These conversions between AC and DC are not very efficient. Why not just have a system that places the battery and logic board within the power supply of the PC? (or at least hooks up to the power supply, the battery need not physically reside in the power supply) By doing this, you streamline the whole process and make the whole thing a bit more convenient. There are, of course, more issues to deal with, but I think it'd be feasable." This is a good point. If PC power supplies were external, they could be integrated with the battery/UPS and maybe we could save a bit of energy by performing one less AC-to-DC conversion which could potentially save some wear on the battery. Is there any reason why something like this couldn't work?

1 of 36 comments (clear)

  1. Laptops have this :-) by kilrogg · · Score: 5
    Laptops already do this, and do it quite well. The efficiency of eliminating the DC-AC-DC conversion allows my laptop's "UPS" to last between 2-3 hours when a blackout occurs (well the power saving features of the laptop helps too).

    I guess one of the problems with desktops is that the monitors still require AC power, so it'd be useless to have a battery integrated in to the box if it didn't have a DC-AC converter to supply power for the monitor. Then the power wasted to power the Monitor would probably make the savings from skipping the DC-AC-DC conversion for the computer not very worth while.

    If you had a DC powered LCD screen, on the other hand, then it would probably make sense.