Nuthatch said:
Someone gave me an APC brand Backup UPS 280. What can I do with it? Yes, it works.
You can keep the power flowing for a short while to anything that is 250-280 watts and lower. See
http://www.donrowe.com/inverters/usage_chart.html for estimated power draws of some appliances/electronics.
If the UPS 280 fills a need, but you want more time of backup power after the power fails, you can make an outrigger pack of bigger batteries. A set of two 34AH AGMs would give you at least 6 times as much runtime.
And a side note to anybody that uses UPSs without an alarm "kill switch" and want to make it quiet, there are a few choices. One, desolder the buzzer, or clip the leads if it is panel mounted. Two, put a switch in series with it so you can disable it. Or three (my favorite), fill it full of hot glue, this lets you still hear it if you are right next to it (for PCs you still may want to here the error beeps, for UPSs it really doesn't matter. The hot glue trick works whether you are familiar with electronics or not and is safer than the other two methods.
A word of warning, UPSs do convert high voltage, so if you want to take the covers off, make sure that it is unplugged and off, and then always work with one hand (prefferably your right one), with the other away from the unit, this way no possible across the heart voltages if you do get shocked.
Loup Garou