I have the power! (He-Man)

I HAVE THE POWER

Let me tell you about power. Like in electrical power.

Bangalore has electricity flowing to most residential and commercial areas, most of the time. However, at times, supply is exceeded by demand, especially during the hot season, when all A/Cs are switched on. So, BESCOM, the electricity supplier of Bangalore, has to go creative.  Ever heard of brown-outs? Well, it’s a scheduled black-out of a certain area at a certain time. For example, your neighborhood and your house will receive no electricity between 14:00 and 17:00 on Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays. That way the rest of Bangalore can be given power, until the next neighborhood gets its turn for shutdown.

Add to this the occasional real black-out, the unplanned one, where something happened to the relay station, or somebody managed to cut the main cable under the street...

To survive this, hotels, businesses, hospitals and some residential buildings have a generator on stand-by, and when Bescom fails, the generator will do its best to take over.  In most cases, it will supply only to some lights, power plugs, not all of them. And usually, within minutes.

So if you have an electric oven, and were baking a cake, well…. you are baking it no more.

If you are playing a game on your Xbox/PS3, or watching a movie, say bye bye to it. And let’s not even mention online gaming, where you usually lose the game, but your Internet provider might lose power too.…

But worry not, UPS to the rescue! The Uninterruptible Power Supply, is just a box full of batteries, that charges when the power is available, and will switch to battery power if the power goes down. And your TV or computer or console will not see the difference. Until the power stored in the batteries is depleted, then all goes black. Usually, the generator or the Bescom power would have returned. A side benefit of the UPS is also that in case of thunderstorm or any other kind of electrical surge, the UPS will be the first to take the hit and will blow a fuse or die. Not your expensive Xbox or 52” TV…

Those mystical boxes are very common in India, available from shops like Stapples or Croma, and come in several sizes, depending on the kind and number of devices you’d like to protect. May the UPS power be with you!