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My work got a huge Roland VG2-640 Plotter Printer with is 8 amp or 1090W.

Our site has bad power but does have a Generator that kicks in after 5 minutes. This thing is expensive and does 20 minute jobs.

They asked me what battery backup choice for the printer. I usually don't recommend UPS for something like that but more a line conditioner option as something this big will kill a UPS in my experience. I contacted Roland but couldn't get anyone on the phone or no response yet from email. A 1500 Watt unit could? At the same time this is all NEMA 5-15P plugs. Meaning anything higher will require new wiring and outlet.

Has anyone had experience doing this with such high wattage?

Any help would be appreciated. I'd like to have more concrete info than it won't work or you are going to have to spend some money to get your result.

My work got a huge Roland VG2-640 Plotter Printer with is 8 amp or 1090W. Our site has bad power but does have a Generator that kicks in after 5 minutes. This thing is expensive and does 20 minute jobs. They asked me what battery backup choice for the printer. I usually don't recommend UPS for something like that but more a line conditioner option as something this big will kill a UPS in my experience. I contacted Roland but couldn't get anyone on the phone or no response yet from email. A 1500 Watt unit could? At the same time this is all NEMA 5-15P plugs. Meaning anything higher will require new wiring and outlet. Has anyone had experience doing this with such high wattage? Any help would be appreciated. I'd like to have more concrete info than it won't work or you are going to have to spend some money to get your result.

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[–] [deleted] • 2 pts

You could setup a system with a larger lead acid deep cycle battery but I suspect a 1500w UPS would work fine. Buy one and test it! Five minutes before the generator kicks in makes me think this would work fine.

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt

I had a Old APC smart UPS 1500 which is 1000w with 40ah batteries and it worked but was freaking out.

[–] • 3 pts (edited )

Yeah, that was probably exceeding the limit of what the UPS could do.

When I spec a system, I always follow the 80% rule. You want your load to be no more than 80% of capacity. In this case your load is (appx, according to the spec) 1090W, which means you'd want to rate for at least 1362W. A 1500W unit should work ok, but you're going to need to keep up on maintenance and batteries.

It's not going to be cheap, you probably want one with true sine capability and under/over protection. You're looking into commercial units at this point, not necessarily consumer.

Something I wanted to mention: A lot of UPS units rate their output in VA, or Volt-Amps which is exactly what it says, volts * amps. Make sure that you're getting something rated 1500W, not 1500VA.