Is the home light showing flickers while the PC is operating on the inverter?
Is the home light showing flickers while the PC is operating on the inverter?
Initially thank you for the thorough clarification. However, I'm still a bit puzzled about whether a pure sine wave and a true sine wave inverter are actually the same. Also, I feel reassured that running my PC on an inverter shouldn't cause any issues. I recently got this PC (my first one) last month, and I'm confident none of my components are broken, as I had previously suspected something about my PSU or another part being damaged. Thanks for your assistance!
Hi,
I had a question about why the flickering seems to occur only with the inverter and not with the mains electricity, considering you mentioned it's due to Electro Magnetic Interference from the power supply.
True sine wave is the exact hardware we're discussing. We often deal with various fake products, particularly regarding power supplies; if I had money for every time someone here found a PSU in Southeast Asia or India claiming "true rated 700W" only to discover it was a 250W unit, I could buy a mansion made of solid gold.
Good point. The label on the invertercould indeed be making false claims about "true sine wave output". Perhaps we should enquire as to the the manufacturer and model number of the UPS. If it was an APC unit, I'd have some confidence in the label, otherwise, who knows.
If it was my UPS I'd connect one of my oscilloscopes across the output, taking suitable precautions. This is NOT something untrained personnel should attempt. Mains can be LETHAL A 'scope would immediately prove whether or not the UPS was true sine or stepped sine wave approximation.
As for the reason why the lights only flicker when running from UPS, the reason is simple. The two supplies have significantly different impedance and power rating characteristics.
Your local town mains supply is very low impedance and has the capacity to deliver enormous short duration current transients on demand. Many ATX PSUs will pull 50 to 100A for a few milliseconds from the town mains supply at switch on. This initial current spike charges up the 400V bulk storage capacitor in the ATX PSU.
A typical UPS inverter has a far lower peak current capability and will "squash" any demands from connected equipment for high current peaks. Instead of a relatively "clean" short duration spike when an ATX PSU powers up, the "squashed" long duration pulse(s) delivered by an inverter may be rich in additional harmonics creating more EMI.
Switched mode power supplies pull a series of short current spikes from the mains all the time they are running. On a low impedance town mains supply, these spikes will be attenuated to a greaterextent than possible, from the higher impedance current-restricted inverter output. I have no idea what waveform is output from the OPs inverter when running a PC and LED lights together, but it's obviously rich in harmonics and hence the flickering lights. The town mains supply will be much cleaner with a lower impendance and hence the lights won't flicker.
In the USA most electronic equipment bears the UL mark. In Europe it's the CE mark. In theory this means the manufacturer is claiming their equipment meets the relevant Emissions and Immunity (EMC and EMI) regulations. They don't necessarily have to fully test their equipment, but they must provide adequate documentation as evidence of their claim for full compliance. I've spent many hours in large and small anechoic RF test chambers testing product for compliance. A small chamber is shown below.
Unfortunately, many unscrupulous manufacturers just print a UL and CE symbol on their producta and flagrantly ignore all compliance regulations.
If the OPs inverter is not a "pure sine wave" and compliant with EMC and EMI regs, it may be generating a horrible spectrum of frequencies, rich in harmonics. Hence the flashing LED lights,
I overlooked mentioning that during the PC build, I accidentally damaged the BIOS button located on the back of the motherboard, and this broken button remains within its outer protective cover. Could there be a chance it’s causing the inverter to flicker?
I also face the same issue. My 80+ gold PSU shows only 120 watts being drawn. Even after turning off most devices on the home inverter, the LED lights still flicker throughout the house. These LEDs don’t flicker when the PC isn’t running and more loads are connected to the inverter than the PC would normally use. In India, we lack proper ground wires in our homes. Everything works fine when the grid power comes back on.