Power outage in Cotabato : Time to buy a UPS

Last week until today, Cotabato City has experienced intermittent supply of electricity. As reported, the cause of brown out was bombed power lines in Kabacan, North Cotabato.

I am saddened by the news with the incident and afraid that another transmission line will be bombed again. As of today, we have experienced at least three brown outs. Fixing of the transmission lines is on-going so we would still experience some brown outs here in the city.

By tomorrow I am hoping that we won’t experience regular brown outs because my computer at home might be damaged since I am not using an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). Right now, I’m surfing the net to look for UPS that’s reliable enough for my PC and unfortunately I didn’t found anything at eBay.

We all know that electronic equipments or devices might be damaged by regular brown outs like we are experiencing right now. Here are some problems I’ve got from Wikipedia that we might have to our devices during brown outs.

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1. Power failure — Total loss of utility power, with possibility of severe transient conditions upon failure and/or restoration: Causes electrical equipment to stop working (transients may cause permanent damage).
2. Voltage sag — Transient (short term) under-voltage: Causes flickering of lights.
3. Voltage spike — Transient (short term) over-voltage i.e. spike or peak: Causes wear or acute damage to electronic equipment.
4. Under-voltage (brownout) — Low line voltage for an extended period of time: Causes overheating in motors.
5. Over-voltage — Increased voltage for an extended period of time: Causes light bulbs to burnout.
6. Line noise — Distortions superimposed on the power waveform: Causes electromagnetic interference.
7. Frequency variation — Deviation from the nominal frequency (50 or 60 Hz): Causes motors to increase or decrease speed and line-driven clocks and timing devices to gain or lose time.
8. Switching transient — Instantaneous undervoltage (notch) in the range of milliseconds to seconds: May cause erratic behavior in some equipment, memory loss, data error, data loss and component stress.
9. Harmonic distortion — Multiples of power frequency superimposed on the power waveform: Causes excess heating in wiring and fuses.

So, I am suggesting that always use UPS to any of your electronic devices for your own benefits. In fact, the cost for repair of your devices maybe higher than the cost of a regular UPS =). Hope I’ll have my UPS too ASAP!!