Red Dragon: Pure vs Simulated Sine Wave

[BradB]

I bought a simulated sine wave UPS for my Red Dragon main return, and it works reasonably well. I had an unrelated issue with the pump, and support mentioned they strongly recommend a pure (vs simulated) UPS.

I thought I didn't need to worry about this for computers, as I have a laptop and several other devices with batteries. But today I lost power for several hours working remote, and learned my modem and router need electricity too and was reduced to my cell phone for data. I might just buy a smaller UPS for my Internet, but now is a good time to upgrade the aquarium UPS if I am going to do that.

Any reason they'd recommend a pure sine wave?

 

[laverda]

Some AC motors don't run well on them. Even if they do, they tend to run a lot hotter. More wear and tear on the pump.
Is your red dragon pump ac or DC? If DC I can only guess it has to due with the controller components.

 

[BradB]

It's marketed as a DC Pump, but from my understanding, it is really more of an AC pump. I do know it is impossible to run off DC power.

Wear and tear really aren't an issue unless it is really extreme. Well over 99% of the time the pump will be running on standard AC power (which isn't always perfectly clean either).

Heat might be an issue since heat means the pump is using more power and the UPS battery is limited. But this really isn't a big issue either, since the pump's controller is set to 100W and it will always draw 100W and only 100W. If the output is decreased, this really doesn't matter to me.

 

[BradB]

From the manufacture: "it is recommended to us a pure sine wave ups as it produces much smoother and more stable output for sensitive Equipment like Computers/Controller. Simulated sine Wave can produce little gaps which are not good for the Equipment and the risk of failure is higher. As its a sine Wave Motor and a Computer Controller the Pump needs a stable output. Basically the risk of damage is much higher with a simulated Unit."