The most common types of UPS’s we encounter are: The Offline or Standby UPS passes power through to the load until a power failure, sag or spike occurs. At that point the UPS switches the load from the primary or utility power to its battery powered inverter. Though the transition results in only a small delay in the restoration of power it has the potential of causing catastrophic system failures. Once the utility power has returned to normal for a predefined period of time the UPS will switch the load back, an additional transition that can create system issues. This design only charges when the power utility is available. It typically has a modified square wave output and is designed for 600VA or less. Though cost effective it will not address most of the power problems listed previously.

The Inline UPS is the best candidate for use with your Ultrasound system. The inline UPS, also called a dual-conversion or double-conversion UPS, isolates the load from the power utility. The Inline uninterruptible power supplies operate by converting incoming utility AC power to DC and then convert the DC back to AC to power the connected equipment. This design isolates the load from the incoming power and generates the sinusoidal output. These UPS’s address all our power concerns and allow for the use of almost any incoming power. Most Inline UPS units have a monitoring system on the output that senses when the voltage or current goes out of specification; a bypass is then activated to shunt incoming AC directly to the attached load without interruption.

What if my system has an internal UPS? The internal UPS provides power to allow the systems CPU’s time to perform an orderly shutdown. These devices are not nearly large enough to supply the needs of your entire system they provide your system the time needed to save pointer, close files and park disk drives.