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First, I debated whether to put this on stack exchange or here, but it seems like it is a tech question that suits this site fine.
Background
I have a room with a 115 V, 6000 BTU window AC unit plugged into one outlet. Then a bunch of electronics (~800 W measured) plugged into a 1500 VA, 900 W UPS plugged in to a second outlet across the room. Finally, I have two 50 W strands of Christmas lights in series (100 W total) I tried to plug into various outlets around the room.
Problem
The first problem is that whenever the room gets too hot, the compressor for the AC unit turns on and the Christmas lights will all flicker. This is not just an annoyance, because the first strand of lights I had in the room actually got burned out one by one, starting at the light closest to the wall outlet.
So I got another strand and was surprised to see the flickering happens even if they are plugged into the UPS (which does have an internal automatic voltage regulator). This made me concerned for the electronics plugged into the UPS, which includes a PC and monitors. However, I do not notice any flicker on the monitor when the compressor turns on. On the other hand, I have been getting some strange pc crashes lately (which would make some sense because only recently did it cool enough for the AC to not be running constantly) that may be related. This could also be due to installing a second gpu recently, etc though.
Questions
I have two main questions:
1) What is the best way to stop the flickering?
2) If the lights are flickering even when plugged into the UPS, should I also be concerned about the other electronics that are obviously also experiencing a momentary power reduction?
Some secondary questions:
3) Does it make sense to put another AVR between the UPS and the wall, eg something like this?
4) Is there something I can put between the AC unit and the wall to help?
5) This is a rental so I would prefer not to do any maintenance on the AC unit, but is this an issue you would report to the landlord?
Any ideas?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday November 12 2019, @03:21AM
I salute you for already having an 80 Plus Platinum power supply.
If it works, the simplest thing to do is put the A/C unit on a separate circuit. You may have to do a little checking to find out which outlets are on which circuit breakers, but that's not hard, and doesn't take too terribly long, maybe 15 minutes. Turn a breaker off, and plug a light into each outlet in turn to test if it's live or dead. Moving things to different outlets so the A/C has a circuit to itself may provide enough isolation.
But if the A/C makes lights throughout the entire building dim when it turns on, then you'll have to do something else. One problem is that many of the possible solutions may be more costly than a better window A/C unit.
You could do things manually. Cut power to the lights and electronic equipment, by unplugging them or flipping a switch, let them run off a UPS for a moment, turn the A/C on, wait 3 seconds for it to settle into operation, then restore power to everything else. Far from ideal for gadget lovers who'd much rather have that be automated, but it can be a quick, cheap stopgap until there's something better in place.