laser printer into surge only outlet?

[Anonymous user]

Is it appropriate to plug a laser printer into the "surge only" outlet of the Back-UPS NS1250LCD?

I have heard conflicting advice on this topic, and the brief APC manual is unlcear on this topic.

Thanks!

BK

[Erasmus_apc]

We generally do not recommend the use of a laser printer in conjunction with a Back-UPS product in any configuration. The surge outlets will not register an overload of the UPS, unlike the battery back-up outlets. However, due to the fact that surge outlets are "dumb" and don't really interact with any of the normal UPS alarms, this has led to some customers being oblivious to the fact that they have slowly accumulated a very large amount of load on one back-ups over time, causing issues with outlets and circuits/circuit breakers (main or on the UPS) without even knowing it. Also, sometimes when a laser printer is plugged into a back-ups unit, it causes an effect not unlike a hair dryer being turned on in a bathroom, and causing the lights to dim...even the best circuitry can be prone to overload or affected by localized electrical "disturbance". This effect can cause the back-ups to behave oddly and in extreme cases be a risk to the supported load.

Short story: yes it can be done, technically, but it is not recommended or a supported configuration.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the info. I will remove the laser printer from the surge-only outlet of my Back-UPS unit.

Question: With the laser printer plugged into the surge-only outlet, it adds 5w to the total on-line UPS load when the printer is in standby mode. This is according to the Back-UPS LCD display. So loads attached to the surge-only outlets count toward the total load capacity?

Thanks!