Heat waves and brownouts kill computers. A New Yorker's guide to battery backup (UPS)

Every summer, the grid in New York gets pushed hard. During the June 2025 heat wave, Con Edison cut voltage by 8% across parts of southeast Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island while more than 10,000 customers lost power at the peak (NY1). Long Island has its own history — Tropical Storm Isaias knocked out power to more than 645,000 PSEG LI customers in 2020.

For your tech, the outage itself isn't the worst part. It's the brownout before it (low, unstable voltage) and the spike when the power snaps back. That's when hard drives fail, routers start acting weird, and power supplies quietly die.

Surge protector vs. UPS

A surge protector absorbs spikes. It does nothing for brownouts or outages. Cheap power strips often have no real protection at all.
A UPS (uninterruptible power supply) is a battery that sits between the wall and your equipment. It smooths out low voltage, absorbs spikes, and keeps things running long enough to shut down cleanly — or to ride out a short blip without anyone noticing.

Which kind to buy

Line-interactive with AVR (automatic voltage regulation) is the sweet spot for homes and small offices. It corrects sags and swells without draining the battery — exactly what a NYC brownout needs.
Pure sine wave output matters for many modern desktop power supplies and NAS units. If you're protecting a desktop or server, get pure sine wave.
Skip the cheapest “standby” units for anything important.

How big?

Add up the watts of what you're protecting and buy a UPS rated comfortably above it.

Modem + router + Wi-Fi mesh node: a small unit (around 600VA) can keep your internet up for a long time. This is the best $80–$120 most households can spend — your Wi-Fi stays up when the power flickers.
Desktop + monitor: typically 1000–1500VA.
NAS or small server: 1500VA, pure sine wave, with a USB cable so it can tell the NAS to shut down safely.

What to plug in where

Most UPS units have two kinds of outlets: battery + surge and surge only. Put the computer, NAS, modem, and router on battery. Printers (especially laser printers) go on surge-only — they draw too much power.

Don't forget

Batteries wear out in about 3–5 years. Most UPS units beep or show a warning. Replace the battery, not the whole unit.
Keep it off the floor if you're in a basement or flood-prone spot.
Test it: with everything saved, unplug the UPS from the wall and see what happens.

When to call a tech

We'll size it, install it, configure automatic shutdown for desktops and NAS units, and make sure your backups are running too — because a UPS protects the hardware, and a backup protects everything on it. Want to see what a surge does without one? Run the Crash Test.