This reference book has been created to assist me in determining what type of power equipment I need to order given the requirements of the hardware I'm installing. This book should arm a person with enough knowledge to intelligently communicate with any electrician or power equipment vendor for purposes of installing an uninteruptable power supply. However, note that this book is still a work in progress. I know for certain that there are misconceptions and mistakes in this book. If you have useful input, please send me feedback.

Power equipment is rated and labeled in several different, inconsistent manners, without explanation of how to convert one type of rating into another. This is because the lingo used is the most basic of all electronics lingo (volts, volt-amps, amps, watts, kilovolt-amps, kilowatts and so on) so it is assumed that you can figure it out for yourself. However, my experience has been that systems administrators (people that administrate servers) learn this stuff trial-by-fire, having long since forgotten whatever it was they learned once in school ages past. I'm no exception. So, given that, it's not surprising that the ratings, labels and documentation can be confusing, until you gather up the clues on this page.