alt Hacker NewsSure, but when you stick a UPS in the closet to power your network or security cameras or whatever for a little while if there is a power interruption, you expect:
a) If the power is out too long for your UPS (or you have solar and batteries and they discharge overnight or whatever) that the system will turn back on when the power recovers, and
b) You will not have extra bonus outages just because the UPS is in a bad mood.
I completely agree with B. But alas, people love buying shitty cheap UPSes.
But A is along the lines of the misconception that I'm referring to... There should be no such thing as "the power being out too long for your UPS". A UPS isn't there to give you a little while to ignore the problem, it's there to give you time to address it. Either by switching to another source of power, or to power off the equipment.
Now, the reason that every UPS that supports auto-restart has it as a configurable option, is because you often don't want to do this for many reasons, e.g.:
* a low SOC battery could not guarantee a minimum runtime for safe shutdown during a repeated outage
* a catastrophic failure (because the battery shouldn't be dead) could be an indication of other issues that need to be addressed before power on
* powering on the equipment may require staggering to prevent inrush current overload
The whole use case of "I'm using the UPS to run my equipment during an outage" is kind of an abuse of their purpose. It's commonly done, and I've done it myself. But it's not what they're for.
But also, if you want a UPS that auto-restarts -- they exist -- but you get what you pay for.