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