We’ve been wondering why sometimes people will pay more than they need to for a UPS, when other more cost effective alternatives are available and we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s nothing more than brand awareness or brand loyalty.
Sure, there are occasions where you have your system set up to use a particular proprietary software package, or you stick with the same manufacturer as you have other UPS by the same manufacturer on site, but overall first time choice tends to be what people have told them, or they read about somewhere.
So, what makes a good UPS? Who makes good UPS? These questions are kind of analogous to car manufacturers. What makes a good car and who makes good cars? Well, the answer to what makes a good car will depend upon your own personal preferences and needs. The same can be said of UPS, however there are certain fundamentals that you would expect, namely it must be reliable and do its job. You expect a car, regardless of brand not to break down and to be able to get you from A to B. The same is to be said of UPS, you expect them to kick in when there is a power cut and not alarm or shut down when you need them most. However, if your needs are to get from Lands End to John O’Groats on one tank of fuel, then most cars will not meet this requirement, and the same can be said for certain requirements of UPS. I’m not going to go into details of UPS design and technology here, as that has been covered in other blog entries. However, for example, you cannot expect 4 hours of runtime from a little box that sits on your desk.
Another factor is price. The more you pay, the better reliability you get – right? Well, I would agree that the converse is true. The less you pay – the more you will find that costs have been taken out of the design to leave a bare bones and designed-to-the-limit system. With UPS systems, take the inverter circuit. Your cheap systems use square wave inverters, suitable only for low grade power protection, so you can’t expect a whole lot of quality from such systems. However you will find that even the best of manufacturers make these low grade systems as well.
Take APC, probably the Ford of the UPS industry, they have a range of top-end design including online double conversion systems, and some bog standard square wave offline systems that (IMHO) are not to be used for anything than providing protection against annoyance power cuts for your Grandmother’s PC.
Powerware, have an excellent reputation and sell great UPS systems (we like them so we sell them), but even their product line is mixed. They do cheap and cheerful offlline, but now their line interactive range is muddied by several different confusing (in our opinion) options. Take a 1KVA line interactive UPS, you could get the 5110 at £131, or the 5115 at £227 or the 5125 at £239. Well, Powerware have assured me they are all sinewave inverters -even though the specs on the 5110 don’t say – so please explain the £100 difference between the 5110 and 5125 I hear you say. The fact is, the 5125 is a much more superior UPS system that I would be far happier using for an important application than the 5110. From personal experience I worked for one of the high end UPS manufacturers – UPS systems that were built on high reliability. One of my customers had an analytical system that had, as part of its design a unsmoothed half wave rectified power system. This caused havoc with the inverter circuit. So much so, that after a few discharges, the inverter capacitors got so hot they exploded. Nothing dangerous, but of course the UPS was now completely defunct. We investigated a multitude of systems to work with this load and the only one we found was the 5125 UPS.
The point I’m making here, is that even with an established highly regarded brand such as Powerware there are differences in quality of product across the range, so you can’t always rely on the manufacturer being a good guide as to the quality of the system you are getting.
Those of you, not in the UPS industry are probably going to be startled at the next point. Particularly, in the single phase market, many UPS systems from many different manufacturers are actually the same UPS system with different badges on. They are all made by the big Asian UPS manufacturers and are rebadged for the manufacturers here. So sometimes when you think that you should pay more for a recognised brand, that’s all you are paying for – the brand, because the innards are identical!
We sell, in the main 5 different manufacturers. We have our niche products from Powervar and Oneac, designed for specialist applications and requiring specific needs that the major brands don’t do. Then we have Powerware, who provide an extensive portfolio with an excellent reputation. Then we have Opti and Kehua. Who are Opti and Kehua? Well, Opti are part of the company that manufacturers UPS for a whole host of other manufacturers. Their quality is as good as, if not better than a lot of systems out there. If you’re looking for a high end UPS system, then you can’t go wrong with an Opti product, and they’re available here at competitive prices.
So Kehua, where do they fit in? I would say Kehua are the no-frills end of the UPS spectrum. They don’t pack their systems full of features that many of us would never even use, they just manufacture UPS systems that do the job they’re intended to do. They also OEM for European names, so their product quality is unquestioned. If I had to sum up Kehua in terms of a brand – they are the Ronseal of the UPS industry – does exactly what it says on the tin.
Tony Bell
