The uninterruptible power supply, commonly known as UPS or the battery backup is something that is used at several places for emergency situations. An UPS is something that stores power inside it and provides power as and when required to the electric devices. It is used with several electric devices, such as computers, data centers, home power systems etc.
The main reason why people use UPS is to provide short term supply of power to different devices for different purposes. They are not only used for supplying power but also used for the purpose of correcting some power errors such as changes in voltage, noise, instability of the frequency of the system etc. Depending on the type of source they used for charging or the way the power is supplied, the UPS can be of different types.
One of the most commonly used UPS systems is the offline or the standby system, which is the basic UPS used for providing power and electricity for very short term periods. The equipment which requires power in emergency situations is connected directly to the UPS and sources power from there. There is a particular setting of the voltage, which tells the UPS when to provide power and when to withdraw the same. The one that is usually connected to the computer systems is one of the offline systems used around.
There is a special design called the online or the double conversion design, which is used mainly for the environments or situations where in the device that needs to be sourced power either requires isolation or is extremely sensitive to any sort of voltage or current fluctuations that take place. These UPS systems lead to the generation of a new firewall between the power that comes in and the electronic equipment and thus that leads to the provision of safety.
A special multi-tap variable-voltage autotransformer is often added to the standby or offline UPS system, which helps in altering the magnetic field of the