We tried some double conversion UPS's, but even they couldn't cope with the cheap gas powered generators. The UPS spent more time on battery power than on generator power and the battery kept discharging.
You seem to misunderstand double conversion. When doing double power conversion, your UPS is ALWAYS on batteries. Your AC input source, generator, grid, etc. ALWAYS recharge the batteries. So in double power conversion, your UPS won't trip between ON BATTERIES and ONLINE state since it is always on batteries.
Since your batteries are getting charged as fast as they get discharged, the power just goes through and amazingly, battery life is just as good or better.
Also, a higher end UPS with a true sin wave generator will make anything work flawlessly.
The UPS's worked ok with the Honda Inverter model.... until we tried to power a laser printer, the 2000kva UPS kept tripping off when the printer powered up to print -- The combined load from the computers plus the printer's fuser drew too much power. I suspect that a 3000kva UPS would have worked, but would have been outside of the range of the generator. (I know that you're not supposed to run a laser printer off of a UPS, but without a laser printer, the computers would have done little good so we had no choice)
Fortunately, it was the facility owner's responsibility to provide power, so they're the ones that ended up paying the rental cost for the 20KVA diesel generator. Rolling our own double-conversion system would have been outside the scope of our lease (assuming it had to be hardwired into the electrical system), and there was no reason for us to go to any great expense to accomodate crappy power.
Very interesting argument, I tend to vouch for everything you wrote. So, the only valid point left in my parent post would be that changes in cycle rate shouldn't affect his bill. I should have kept it to the basics and simply answer the question.
You could say so, I see where you are coming from;-)
I am not aware of any convention for the term "inversion". Are you ?
Of course, I considered one "inversion" as going from full voltage positive to full voltage positive again, hence the term Hz but indeed, in one cycle. you go from positive to negative then from negative to positive again. Good point;-)
You need to do double power conversion. That's what I do for my small data center in order to be able to use a cheap generator. It is much more cost effective while on generator. I only do double power conversion while on generator since my grid power stability is much above average.
I have the generator recharging the batteries so it doesn't directly feed the hardware. A 12 V DC to 110 V AC inverter feeds the hardware.
> Um, I think you need to narrow that down to "cheap electromechanical alarm clocks"
Nope, as I stated in another post, I have several clocks in my home that rely on 60Hz to count 1 second. I have no electromechanical clock in my house, none.
The power meeter in your home should calculate electrons going back and forth in the wires, a.k. current.
If the period (cycle 60HZ) changes a bit it shouldn't affect your bill. On the other end, voltage variations might have more impact since electrons moving with less voltage carry less energy (Watts) and you are usually billed by KWh.
Of course in the end, it depends on the internal workings of your meter, there are different types.
Voltage already varies quite a bit so your meter is probably already quite inaccurate;-)
I still have quite a few clocks that work like this in my home. I mean which manufacturer is going to install a crystal in his device when he can get away with using the power source to count 1 second at every AC power inversion ?
You can test the clocks you own by plugging them into a cheap power inverter 12 volt DC to 110 AC that you can plug into the lighter plug in your car.
Get back to me when you are done. You should be surprised unless you specifically bought all the devices that have a clock in your home with that in mind.
I would say you fears are unjustified, most laptop can run fine on 85 to 140 volts and from 50 Hz to 70 Hz while on grid power.
On the other hand, cheap alarm clocks rely on 60 HZ to keep time accurately, voltage may vary quite a bit without impact. They count 1 second at every 60 power inversion.
I have noticed that a very long time ago while working up north. We were on generator power and the generator often ran at 61 to 65 HZ and our cheap clocks would run out of sync.
Clocks with a crystal like computer or laptop clocks aren't affected.
I would never put any apps that I designed on the app store. You become just to dependent on how Apple feels and the payout aren't that good compared to what Apple gets.
One exception could be in the sole purpose of getting free publicity, but never as a source of revenue. Now, the guy has got all the publicity he deserved anyway.
Yep, for every 100 gallons of ethanol based fuel I use to farm my corn field, they produce 90 gallons of ethanol fuel with the amount of corn I provide for that spent 100 gallons. Although with subsidies, I am living fine. The idea is to make us less fossil fuel dependent.
> I suspect a lot of industries have a similar "hierarchy"
Maybe not, but IT is the perfect niche for that. Bullshitting will work better in IT and less well in buildings or car manufacturing where mere mortals can spot when the end product is falling apart. In IT, you can sell the equivalent of a building falling apart as a fine technology product if you use enough bullshit and buzzwords.
Believe it or not, it happened to me a couple times that my post ended up in the wrong story although I indeed posted to the right story. This could be slashcode. I even posted a screen shot of this here at some point.
Of course I would. I am sure that it becomes easy once you get the hang of it. The hard part is not getting killed while taking your first flying lesson using his setup.
Slashdot Mirror
Right, 1.2 MB used to be less reliable for me and the guy said that his data was important to him.
Then you would introduce another popup:
Your browser has notice a script taking too much cpu time, do you wan't to terminate the script ? Yes/No
Ever seen those ?
We tried some double conversion UPS's, but even they couldn't cope with the cheap gas powered generators. The UPS spent more time on battery power than on generator power and the battery kept discharging.
You seem to misunderstand double conversion. When doing double power conversion, your UPS is ALWAYS on batteries. Your AC input source, generator, grid, etc. ALWAYS recharge the batteries. So in double power conversion, your UPS won't trip between ON BATTERIES and ONLINE state since it is always on batteries.
Since your batteries are getting charged as fast as they get discharged, the power just goes through and amazingly, battery life is just as good or better.
Also, a higher end UPS with a true sin wave generator will make anything work flawlessly.
The UPS's worked ok with the Honda Inverter model.... until we tried to power a laser printer, the 2000kva UPS kept tripping off when the printer powered up to print -- The combined load from the computers plus the printer's fuser drew too much power. I suspect that a 3000kva UPS would have worked, but would have been outside of the range of the generator. (I know that you're not supposed to run a laser printer off of a UPS, but without a laser printer, the computers would have done little good so we had no choice)
Fortunately, it was the facility owner's responsibility to provide power, so they're the ones that ended up paying the rental cost for the 20KVA diesel generator. Rolling our own double-conversion system would have been outside the scope of our lease (assuming it had to be hardwired into the electrical system), and there was no reason for us to go to any great expense to accomodate crappy power.
Very interesting argument, I tend to vouch for everything you wrote. So, the only valid point left in my parent post would be that changes in cycle rate shouldn't affect his bill. I should have kept it to the basics and simply answer the question.
You could say so, I see where you are coming from ;-)
I am not aware of any convention for the term "inversion". Are you ?
Of course, I considered one "inversion" as going from full voltage positive to full voltage positive again, hence the term Hz but indeed, in one cycle. you go from positive to negative then from negative to positive again. Good point ;-)
> All that I really expect is that there will be an increase in people buying UPS
Cheap clocks that rely on AC power frequency to maintain time drift just as much while on most customer grade UPS.
Nope, a power surge is a voltage surge, not a frequency change.
You need to do double power conversion. That's what I do for my small data center in order to be able to use a cheap generator. It is much more cost effective while on generator. I only do double power conversion while on generator since my grid power stability is much above average.
I have the generator recharging the batteries so it doesn't directly feed the hardware. A 12 V DC to 110 V AC inverter feeds the hardware.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply#Double-conversion_.2F_online
> Um, I think you need to narrow that down to "cheap electromechanical alarm clocks"
Nope, as I stated in another post, I have several clocks in my home that rely on 60Hz to count 1 second. I have no electromechanical clock in my house, none.
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2267902&cid=36562462
The power meeter in your home should calculate electrons going back and forth in the wires, a.k. current.
If the period (cycle 60HZ) changes a bit it shouldn't affect your bill. On the other end, voltage variations might have more impact since electrons moving with less voltage carry less energy (Watts) and you are usually billed by KWh.
Of course in the end, it depends on the internal workings of your meter, there are different types.
Voltage already varies quite a bit so your meter is probably already quite inaccurate ;-)
I still have quite a few clocks that work like this in my home. I mean which manufacturer is going to install a crystal in his device when he can get away with using the power source to count 1 second at every AC power inversion ?
You can test the clocks you own by plugging them into a cheap power inverter 12 volt DC to 110 AC that you can plug into the lighter plug in your car.
Get back to me when you are done. You should be surprised unless you specifically bought all the devices that have a clock in your home with that in mind.
I would say you fears are unjustified, most laptop can run fine on 85 to 140 volts and from 50 Hz to 70 Hz while on grid power.
On the other hand, cheap alarm clocks rely on 60 HZ to keep time accurately, voltage may vary quite a bit without impact. They count 1 second at every 60 power inversion.
I have noticed that a very long time ago while working up north. We were on generator power and the generator often ran at 61 to 65 HZ and our cheap clocks would run out of sync.
Clocks with a crystal like computer or laptop clocks aren't affected.
But, but, but...
Don't we all know the Earth is warming up due to human activity ?
P.S. This intended to be sarcastic.
I agree, that's why I do not develop anything apple centric although I have looked at the possibility.
I would never put any apps that I designed on the app store. You become just to dependent on how Apple feels and the payout aren't that good compared to what Apple gets.
One exception could be in the sole purpose of getting free publicity, but never as a source of revenue. Now, the guy has got all the publicity he deserved anyway.
Yep, for every 100 gallons of ethanol based fuel I use to farm my corn field, they produce 90 gallons of ethanol fuel with the amount of corn I provide for that spent 100 gallons. Although with subsidies, I am living fine. The idea is to make us less fossil fuel dependent.
http://zfacts.com/p/63.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_the_United_States
> I suspect a lot of industries have a similar "hierarchy"
Maybe not, but IT is the perfect niche for that. Bullshitting will work better in IT and less well in buildings or car manufacturing where mere mortals can spot when the end product is falling apart. In IT, you can sell the equivalent of a building falling apart as a fine technology product if you use enough bullshit and buzzwords.
A Beowulf cluster of them does using raid 777.
> presumably he thinks he's invented the next mousetrap.
Watch out, he sounds to me like he might have invented the next Facebook ;-)
Believe it or not, it happened to me a couple times that my post ended up in the wrong story although I indeed posted to the right story. This could be slashcode. I even posted a screen shot of this here at some point.
Of course I would. I am sure that it becomes easy once you get the hang of it. The hard part is not getting killed while taking your first flying lesson using his setup.
I meant to make it still alive. Try it for fun.
This doesn't count against somebody being able to implement directional control with his body
This does count against somebody being to implement directional control with his body.
By the way I have already watched the reference you provided in the early days. Not the the same at all, in my scale at least.
In that sense, you are right, read my post about watching an "old" documentary below ;-)