[geeks] New lamps for ... er, large UPS for smaller

[Gregory Leblanc]

On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 20:19 -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> Tue, 21 Jun 2005 @ 13:28 -0400, Nick B. said:
> 
> > On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 10:08:05AM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> 
> > > Hmmm.......   You have a point.
> > > 
> > > Anyone happen to know what the maximum charging current draw of an
> > > SU3000 is?
> >
> > Charging is much less than 30A.  Computer type hardware is also
> > limited to 80% of a circut, so it can be no more than 24A.  Based on
> > my 2200s and 1400s I'd guess it would charge at no more than 10A, if
> > that.
> 
> What do you mean by 80% of a circuit?

Lovely details that one gets into when dealing with AC and non-linear
components (anything except resistors, essentially).  I'm not quite sure
where the 80% comes from, but it's what's called "power factor".  Large
industrial equipment is almost always an "inductive" load.  At
factories, they install some monster capacitors (in terms of physical
size) in order to correct the power factor, and reduce the actual amount
of power used.  Most computers don't take this into account,
unfortunately.  It'd probably reduce the amount of power that one needs
to run into the server room substantially.
	Greg