My CyberPower CL1000EVR Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR)

A few months back, when I upgraded my CyberPower UT800EG UPS with APC BV1000I-MSX 1kVA/600W Easy UPS for power protection to my desktop PC and network equipment, I've relocated the old CyberPower UT800EG UPS to my living room to provide power protection for my TV, IPTV box and cordless phone.

Later, I decided to retire the old UPS and to protect my TV, IPTV box and cordless phone with a more proper Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR).

Advantages of replacing the old CyberPower UT800EG UPS with a CyberPower CL1000EVR AVR:

• At the cost of below RM100, the CyberPower CL1000EVR AVR is cheaper than the UPS.
• Generally, AVR has a very long lifespan of easily more than 10 years, while UPS has a much shorter lifespan.
• The battery in the UPS can only last around 2 years. After that, it would need to be replaced for the UPS to continue function as designed. Faulty battery could also be a potential cause of fire hazard.

As printed on its packaging box, this CyberPower CL1000EVR AVR is able to perform:

• Output voltage regulation with surge protection and AVR function (prevent overvoltage as well as undervoltage)
• Overload protection with circuit breaker

It is pretty small in size, about the same as a household UPS. This is how it looks like:

At its back, it has a power switch and 4 universal power outlet sockets.

The seller has attached a flyer of CyberPower range of products in UPS, AVR and surge protector, which I find is pretty useful in providing comparison information among them.

Surge protector power extension could be an even cheaper option, but bear in mind that:

• Surge protector can only protect overvoltage spikes but not undervoltage.
• Surge protector cannot regulate the voltage waves.
• Surge protector normally makes use of varistor to capture the spikes. The varistor itself has a limited lifespan, and it sacrifices itself to capture the spikes. For each spike it captures, its lifespan will reduce tremendously.

If you want to have the maximum power protection for your expensive electrical equipment, you can make use of a combination of surge protector, AVR and UPS by connecting the AVR to surge protector, and connecting UPS to AVR, then connecting your devices to the UPS.

How much fuel cost can electric vehicle (EV) save compared with petrol car?

Electric vehicle (EV) has been steadily trending in the automotive talk-about nowadays.

The key selling points of EV cars being:

• Environmental friendly
• Fuel cost saving
• No need to periodically change engine oil

While the "environmental friendly" argument is widely debatable, as the generation of electricity at power plant, and the production as well as the disposal of rechargeable batteries, might not be as "clean" as you think, the statements of cost-saving in fuel and engine oil are no doubt for EV cars.

Let's do some calculations on how much driving an EV car can save compared with driving a petrol car.

City driving of a typical 1.5cc~1.6cc petrol car consumes 1 litre of petrol for a journey distance around 12km. That will be 8.33 litres per 100km.

With this assumption, we can come out with the petrol car's fuel expenses on both RON 95 and RON 97 respectively.

A typical EV car will use up 16~17 kWh of battery power per 100km. During charging, there will be around 10% of energy lost. Let's take 18 kWh/100km for our calculation.

The electricity cost in the calculation above is based on the current residential rate. If you charge your EV car with charging station or using commercial/industrial electricity, you will need to work out your own calculation.

As the TNB tariff is accumulative based on electricity consumption bands, and charging of EV car is considered as additional electricity consumption to the household, we take the TNB rate at the highest consumption band. For example, if your household electricity consumption including charging of EV car falls under the band of 301~600 kWh, your EV car charging cost will be 51.6 sen/kWh.

From the 2 tables above, we can further calculate the amount of fuel savings of EV car compared with car using RON 95 petrol and RON 97 petrol respectively:

From here, we can observe that the fuel cost savings of EV car to RON 95 is not much. You can probably save around RM10~20 for each 1000km.

If you compare with those cars that pump RON 97 petrol, the savings is a little bit more, at RM80~90 for each 1000km.

Anyhow, there are still additional savings from fewer maintenance needed, and no cost for engine oil replacement.

However, there are also additional considerations on:

• Depreciation and lost of second-hand value
• Battery replacement cost when the time has come

Fixed Windows Explorer not responding issue

Today, my laptop suddenly experienced the Windows Explorer not responding issue.

The symptoms were like this:

• When you double-click on a document, for example a PDF file or an Excel file, by right, the file should be opened by its associated application. Now, it hangs when the application trying to load up. The rest of the Windows and running applications will still function well, only the portion of Windows Explorer or File Explorer hangs up.
• When you right-click on a file icon, by right, a pop-up option menu should appear. Now, it hangs before the pop-up menu is able to show up.

To fix this, you will need to go to command prompt window with administrator's right.

Because the right-click function no longer working, you can no longer just call out the CMD icon, right click on it, and select "Run as administrator" anymore.

Luckily, there is still alternative way to do so without using the right click menu.

To do so, press Win-R to open the Run dialog box, key-in "cmd" and press ctrl-shift-Enter. The command prompt window with administrator's right will be opened.

Then, run the System File Checker (SFC) to scan and repair your system files that could be corrupted.

The command is:

C:\> sfc /scannow

The process will take some time before it reached 100% completion.

Next, run the Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool to further scan and repair any corrupted critical system files.

The command is:

C:\> dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

Your computer needs to be connected to the Internet when you execute this command.

After the process is completed, restart your computer. Hopefully, this is able to fix your problem. It did fix my laptop problem!