Is there a way to get surge notifications?

[Anonymous user]

I can see plenty of ways to get power is out messages and how much battery is remaining.

But what I have observed is that before a generator runs out of gas frequent surges can be observed and someone can be notified to refill gas before it becomes power out event.

[BillP]

I don't know of a particular UPS that specifically logs "surges" rather than just power events but most of my experience is with smaller, single phase UPSs and not 3 phase. Can you clarify what type of UPS you have? Basically, we'd just want to review the UPS you have and verify the events it is able to generate and usually any event can be emailed if it can be logged to begin with.

[Anonymous user]

The one I have - BE350G - definitely does not have it. since it's the cheapest model I could find.

I am looking to upgrade, but I'm not sure if what I'm looking for exists.

here is my use case:

I use it at an outdoor RC car racetrack which is generator powered, there is a lot of draw from the racers and I could hear a lot of clicking, clacking and occasional beeping from it as the generator was running low on gas. What I am trying to do is get a different APC backup with USB port and announce a "generator surge warning" over the speaker system so that someone can refill before it runs out.

Ideally I could write my own code to monitor the USB triggered events, but I have not been able to find information on surge notifications. So far I can only find "power is out" and "battery remaining" info.

[BillP]

What type of generator are you using?

I can't think of a way to do this but I can ask around once I know more about the generator - does it have any notification capability - dry contacts, etc?

I can't think of a way these small UPSs can identify when their input power source is about to turn off. How does the UPS behave during these "power surges?" Does it always switch to battery a particular amount of times or something like that? The UPS will just see these as generic input power events but I didn't know if you noticed a specific pattern that never fails that you can monitor against.

[Anonymous user]

I'm sorry I don't know anything about the generator itself at the moment, it's probably not capable of any notifications.

It sounds like a relay switching on and off fairly frequently. So my assumption of a surge may be wrong, it may be a drop and the UPS sees it go down and switches to battery for a very short time, then back to power again.

I see the BX1000G has USB, is there an SDK or something I can download to use in my program?

alternately I would have to detect when computer goes to battery:

Using a USB connected APC UPS with Windows Server 2008 and VMware Server 2.0 « The Wiert Corner – ir...

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hmm OK. I asked around to see if anyone had any creative ideas. It seems as though when the generator is running out of gas, perhaps it outputs "dirty" power which is causing the UPS to go to battery?

Either way, if there is no communication from the generator, there is no way the UPS could talk to it specifically. It can only monitor its input power and doesn't know if its coming from a generator, utility power, etc.

So, if you want to monitor the UPS, we recommend that you use apcupsd (www.apcupsd.org) or write a program that you can get messages from the Windows OS (and use the native USB support). Perhaps there is a way to note a pattern of behavior (like UPS goes to battery frequently back and forth) that you could script against to send a notification.