full_mosey wrote:
I'll take a shot at explaining.
Standby = UPS, as you would expect at a cell tower with unscheduled and infrequent frantic discharge. E.g., there may only be enough battery to allow for 15min until auto generator start.
Be careful ! There are UPS batteries and then there are UPS batteries !!
The little UPS you might buy for your home computer or even the medium sized ones used in small businesses are just plain old Valve Regulated Lead Acid (VRLA). You are correct, they only have enough capacity to start the generator or do a controlled shut down.
I used to supervise a LARGE computer server room (the size of a couple of basket ball courts). When the Northeast Black out of 2003 occurred we rode for about 20 minutes before starting to shut down the servers. Actually, I was watching the temps more because the A/C was obviously out. I was rather surprised how well things worked. We even had functioning flashlights in addition to the emergency lighting.
