Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain For your computer,
Speaker 1: electricity is essential, but it has to be the right
Speaker 1: kind of electricity. What your computer expects to get from
Speaker 1: the power grid in the United States anyway, is a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty volts AC power oscillating at sixty hurts.
Speaker 1: A computer can tolerate slight differences, but a significant difference
Speaker 1: will cause the computer's power supply to stop working or
Speaker 1: to fail. A UPS or uninterruptable power supply protects a
Speaker 1: computer against four different types of power problems. Voltage surges
Speaker 1: and spikes. These are times when the voltage on the
Speaker 1: line is greater than it should be. Voltage SAgs, times
Speaker 1: when the voltage on the line is less than it
Speaker 1: should be, a total power failure, times when the line
Speaker 1: goes down or a fuse blows somewhere on the grid
Speaker 1: or in the building and you have no power for
Speaker 1: your computer. And frequency differences, times when the power is
Speaker 1: oscillating is something other than sixty hurts. A standby UPS
Speaker 1: runs the computer off the normal utility power until it
Speaker 1: detects a problem. At that point, it very quickly in
Speaker 1: five milliseconds or less, turns on a power inverter and
Speaker 1: runs the computer off the ups IS battery. A power
Speaker 1: inverter simply turns the d C power delivered by the
Speaker 1: battery into clean volt sixty hurts a C power. Your
Speaker 1: computer can usually run off a UPS for twenty minutes
Speaker 1: or so. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for
Speaker 1: this podcast? If so, please send me an email at
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com