Why can my uninterruptible power source handle an entire workstation and 4 monitors for half an hour, but dies on my toaster in less than 30 seconds?

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Lost power today. My toddler wanted toast during the outage so I figured I could make her some via the UPS. It made it all of 10 seconds before it was completely dead.

Edit: I turned it off immediately after we lost power so it was at about 95% capacity. This also isn’t your average workstation, it’s got a threadripper and a 4080 in it. That being said it wasn’t doing anything intensive.
It’s also a monster UPS.

Edit2: its not a TI obviously. I’ve lost my mind attempting to reason with a 2 year old about why she got no toast for hours.

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15 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Devices that are designed to generate heat from elelctricity (eletric kettle, toaster, coffee machine, space heater, dishwasher, washing machine, etc) will be designed to basically draw the maximum amount of electricity that they are physically and/or legally able to when they try to generate heat.

That electrical energy is all needed to generate that heat, so the more power it uses, the faster it can heat it up, and the less time and energy is wasted.

Your toaster is ‘just’ a toaster, but its simplicity doesn’t make it use less power to heat up.

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