Eskom Survival Tips #1

Todays tip: Using your computer UPS to power other things

Look at the back of your UPS - there should be a few similar plugs, one is connected to your computer, maybe another is connected to your monitor. The plugs are kettle plugs - like the ones you plug into your kettle, if your kettle has a detachable plug. The UPS plugs are the female side. There may be one or two free plugs, in which case you are in business! One of the plugs might be a surge protector, in which case you could maybe move your monitor onto that if you are not actually intending to work on your computer during a power out.

Ok, so now what we want is to hook that extra UPS female kettle plug to a form you can actually attach things to. In my case, I want to run an external harddrive off it. But you could boil a kettle, I suppose, or a run a radio or whatever. I'm not sure how long the power will last, it will depend on how much there is loading your UPS. It will need some experimentation to find out. And it will depend on the specs of your UPS too, of course.

Ok, so we want that female kettle plug hooked up to give power to say a normal 2-prong or 3-prong multi-plug.
So what you do is:

Step 1: Go to a computer store and buy a male kettle plug to female kettle plug cable. I think they are usually used for monitors. The people at the store should know what you are talking about. Mine cost R20, pretty inexpensive.

Step 2: Take some sort of appropriate cutting instrument (pliers are first prize) and cut off the female plug. Cut close to the plug so you keep as much cable as possible. Just in case you don't know, the female side has 3 holes, the male side has the 3 metal connectors that fit into the three holes. Strip the end of the white insulating stuff off, and strip the ends of the 3 coloured wired inside. Just FYI, the blue wire is neutral, brown is live and green/yellow is earth. I don't know why, it wound have made more sense to me to make earth brown, but anyway.

Step 3: Buy an 3-prong plug: the female side, where we will ultimately plug our kettle, harddrive, multi-plug, whatever. I know you can get them with just the plug, but I couldn't find one at checkers, so I had to buy and extension cable. R50 ouch a bit more than I had hoped to pay, but alright. Oh and buy some insulating tape too, its only about R5.

Step 4: If you bought an extension cable like me, cut off the male plug end and strip is, just like you did to the kettle cable in Step 2.

Step 5: Connect the two cables - blue to blue, brown to brown, yellow/green to yellow/green. I connected them by twisting the copper ends together then covering it solidly with insulating tape. Cover well because we don't want the current carrying insides touching each other! If you'd managed to buy just the plug section in Step 3 you could attach stripped wires from the kettle plug cable directly to the 3-prong plug with a screwdriver. That would have been a neater option and more satisfying all round. But hey, you make do with what you have.

And you are done! Plug the male kettle plug end into your UPS and plug whatever you want into the other 3-prong end. I attached a multi-plug to the 3-prong and then attached my two external hard-drives to 2-prong inputs on the multi-plug.

Finally, turn off the power. Hey presto, your UPS is still keeping your external hard-drives (or whatever) running. Hurrah!