[Gllug] OT: Merging UPS outputs

[John Winters]

On Mon, 2005-08-22 at 01:06 +0100, Nix wrote:
> On Thu, 18 Aug 2005, Alain Williams whispered secretively:
> > You could take power at (say) 5 volts -- feed is straight into your
> > motherboard. The trouble is that everything else would need to
> > take input at 5 volts. To get the same amount of power (volts X amps)
> > you would need 50 times the current: which would mean having to have
> > much thicker cables and a much greater distribution loss (ie loss
> > in getting from the local substation to you).
> 
> Plus, it would be much more dangerous. What's that saying: `it's amps
> that kill'?

Possibly more dangerous, but not for that reason.  If your power was
supplied at just 5V, it doesn't matter how many amps are flowing through
the cables, they won't flow through you because there isn't the pressure
there to make them take that route.

The way it would be more dangerous is because the fuses would have to be
much larger (to accommodate the larger currents) and thus less able to
cut off the current before spectacular fire-inducing things happened.
Try dropping a spanner across the terminals of a car battery to see the
sort of thing I mean.

John

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