BR1500LCD in a 110v 50hz environment

[Anonymous user]

I brought my UPS from the states to Thailand, which has 220 50hz AC. I have a transformer to step it down, but its still 50hz 110v. Is there any clever way to get this to work here, without spending tons of money on inverters? I don't care if the UPS passes through the 50hz AC, but it doesn't seem to want to, even with the sensitivity set to low. I've perused a few pages of google results with appropriate terms with no luck. Any suggestions?

[Anonymous user]

I advise you reading this before doing anything that regards a step-down transfomer and protection devices that have varistors between Neutral-Ground, like most if not all UPSes made by APC and also their surge protectors.

http://www.gson.org/stepdown/

I myself had the same experience the guy from the url above had. One varistor on an APC surge protector burned because of wrong polarization of a step-down transformer. I bought new MOV of the same specification and changed it, I also had to change one small transistor that controls the building wiring fault LED.

Because of the lack of good 220V surge protectors in my country, I decide to use 120V products and a step=down transformer.I later found out that this isn't a good combination if you don't know what you're doing and you might also change the sine-wave characteristics if you connect one power transfomer to another, you can't be sure how their going to interact with each other - read the APC Whitepater # 17 about power factor and crest factor. I myself still use a step-down transformer with a surge protector and an UPS, but I know this is not the best way to feed my gear. I'm seriously thinking of chaging everything here and If APC bring to my country the 230V LCD version they've just released, I'm gonna buy it!

I think this is the best thing you do, sell the 120V UPS and buy the 230V BR1500LCDi.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the warning. I'm going to check out the transformer.

I'd like to not swap it out due since I plan on returning to the US again in the expected lifetime of the product. Looks like I might be stuck with a transformer/rectifier/inverter combo device solution, but I haven't given up yet. Now that I know the risk of ill configuration, I'm not afraid to use the ol' voltmeter to check things out.