.

Well, the way it works in our office, all the red points are connected to the UPS which is why they have the flat point. Don't want us plugging in radios, phone chargers etc etc into the UPS.
 
Only an electrician will be able to tell you how your building is wired. Each building is unique.

Ours for example is just on a separate circuit but still go through the earth leakage circuit breaker and through a central lightning protection system on the DB.
That said we have dedicated one phase of our 3 phase supply to the pc's' The other 2 phases is for aircons and lights/Kitchen.

The general idea though is that stuff like heaters /kettles and the vacuum machine going faulty don't trip out your computers.
 
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At work, I know they are connected to UPS so when the power trips your computers are still fine.
At home, the red plug just bypasses the trip switch so when the electricity trips it doesn't turn off that plug.
 
As stated above red plugs are generally for computer equipment.

They can be connected to a UPS or bypass the earth leakage or even just be a dedicated circuit.

The whole bypassing the earth leakage thing is that a computer power supply will send a few mili-amps of current down the earth leakage no matter what. Now this isn't a problem but when you start to get more than about 20 p.c. (this happened to me) the earth leakage will trip. And it can be a problem.

When the red plugs are connected to a UPS it generally is not a good idea to connect your printers and copiers to it, only ones using lazer technology. This is because a lazer printer lets say a HP 4050 lazer printer will have a startup load that will kill a 1000 VA UPS. By kill I mean I have seen APC 1000 VA UPS' smoke and blow when it starts to print.
Newer printers are a lot more energy efficient.

So it is always a good idea to first find out how the plugs are wired before plugging all your computer equipment into it.
 
Kroks said:
As stated above red plugs are generally for computer equipment.

They can be connected to a UPS or bypass the earth leakage or even just be a dedicated circuit.

The whole bypassing the earth leakage thing is that a computer power supply will send a few mili-amps of current down the earth leakage no matter what. Now this isn't a problem but when you start to get more than about 20 p.c. (this happened to me) the earth leakage will trip. And it can be a problem.

When the red plugs are connected to a UPS it generally is not a good idea to connect your printers and copiers to it, only ones using lazer technology. This is because a lazer printer lets say a HP 4050 lazer printer will have a startup load that will kill a 1000 VA UPS. By kill I mean I have seen APC 1000 VA UPS' smoke and blow when it starts to print.
Newer printers are a lot more energy efficient.

So it is always a good idea to first find out how the plugs are wired before plugging all your computer equipment into it.
Click to expand...

I understand your point but I think that Printers should not be plugged into a UPS.
 
Correct .. Printers .. Air-cons and lights should not be connected to the UPS [Uninterrupted Power Supply]

Also .. a Red plug doesn’t mean that the Building has back up power [UPS or Generator], it basically means that that particular plugs is not linked to an earth leakage [White Plugs on earth Leakage - if plug 1 Fails, the earth leakage would trip which means that all circuits connected to it will trip .. it can be up to 15 plugs]

Also note that the UPS is there to give you time to shut down your kit if you don’t have a Generator.
In the case of a generator, the UPS is there to carry the low until the Generator kicks in.

Besides the Red plugs with the shaven earth, there's also the Black Plug which also has a shaven earth, but the pin is slanted. In some cases, this is used for Air-cons or to indicate Generator Back-up power.
 
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