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This is called an online UPS and it's still a thing. It's not a good option for home use because it's always sending power through an inefficient path. The dev
by Aurornis 6mo ago
This is called an online UPS and it's still a thing.
It's not a good option for home use because it's always sending power through an inefficient path. The devices we use have power supplies that can handle transients and fluctuations.
- scottlamb 6mo agoWhere is it a good option? I'd expect datacenters to be more focused on efficiency, not less.
- felixgallo 6mo agoMusic, medical, engineering. Wherever the waveform consistency and noise floor are the optimization point.
- rdbl27 6mo agoDatacenters are focused on "never letting the equipment go down for any reason." If they can do that efficiently, that's great. If they have to choose between efficiency and outage risk, they always drop efficiency. That's why they use exclusively online UPS.
- scottlamb 6mo ago> Datacenters are focused on "never letting the equipment go down for any reason." Disagree. I'm most familiar with Google. For a long time at least their UPSs were built in to each machine and not super reliable. They built entire datacenters without cooling with the understanding that for a few days a year it may be too hot for human access. The reliability is from failing over to other equipment—machine, cluster, even region. Small/on-prem/co-location datacenters may make totally different choices, but I think the major cloud/AI providers would be similar to Google in this respect. The sibling comment about other industries was enlightening to me though.