UPS batteries

[D Yuniskis]

William Sommerwerck wrote:

I had argued that UPS manufacturers would err in favor of
faster charge times just to reduce the user's perceived
"exposure" *after* an outage.

In the Seattle area, an outage is often followed by a restoration, than a
second outage. I've learned to wait to reboot.

You also have to make sure your PC is set to *neither*
"turn on" nor "resume previous state" when power is
restored. Nothing gets me more anxious than watching
the lights flicker, PC going off, then on, then off,
then on... just let the damn thing go *off* and *I*
can figure out when it's best to turn it back on!

:-/

 

[Sylvia Else]

D Yuniskis wrote:

William Sommerwerck wrote:
I had argued that UPS manufacturers would err in favor of
faster charge times just to reduce the user's perceived
"exposure" *after* an outage.

In the Seattle area, an outage is often followed by a restoration, than a
second outage. I've learned to wait to reboot.

You also have to make sure your PC is set to *neither*
"turn on" nor "resume previous state" when power is
restored. Nothing gets me more anxious than watching
the lights flicker, PC going off, then on, then off,
then on... just let the damn thing go *off* and *I*
can figure out when it's best to turn it back on!

:-/

I suppose it's a matter of taste, and infrastructure reliability. Hard
to know what's going on in Seattle. It sounds as if restoration is
somewhat by experiment. Where I live, a prolonged outage, if it's not
load shedding (which has so far thankfully been rare), it's an equipment
failure, and the technicians are able to fix it definitively before
restoring the power. The guys on the ground seem to know what they're
doing, for which one has to be grateful.

I don't like expecting to do something on my PC and finding that it's
been powered down (PCs in this houseold are left running all the time),
so they're configure in memory mode - they boot up after an outage if
they were running before. We just power the monitors down when they're
not in use.

Sylvia.

 

[D Yuniskis]

Sylvia Else wrote:

D Yuniskis wrote:
William Sommerwerck wrote:

In the Seattle area, an outage is often followed by a restoration,
than a second outage. I've learned to wait to reboot.

You also have to make sure your PC is set to *neither*
"turn on" nor "resume previous state" when power is
restored. Nothing gets me more anxious than watching
the lights flicker, PC going off, then on, then off,
then on... just let the damn thing go *off* and *I*
can figure out when it's best to turn it back on!

:-/

I suppose it's a matter of taste, and infrastructure reliability. Hard
to know what's going on in Seattle. It sounds as if restoration is
somewhat by experiment. Where I live, a prolonged outage, if it's not
load shedding (which has so far thankfully been rare), it's an equipment
failure, and the technicians are able to fix it definitively before
restoring the power. The guys on the ground seem to know what they're
doing, for which one has to be grateful.

I have lived in places where most of the electrical infrastructure
was "hanging from poles" and, in those places, it seemed like
outages caused by "downed lines" (think: ice) often were a
noticeable blink (off) of the lights followed very quickly
by a real outage. Perhaps one is caused by an "unexpected
event" and the other is the system's *designed* reaction to
that event (e.g., a breaker deliberately tripping).

When I lived in those places, I had machines that had mechanical
power switches -- "on" was ON and "off" was OFF! The time between
each of these transitions (blink off, blink back on, then final
outage) was fast enough that you couldn't reach the power switch
to *prevent* the PC from coming back on -- and then off -- again.

I don't like expecting to do something on my PC and finding that it's
been powered down (PCs in this houseold are left running all the time),
so they're configure in memory mode - they boot up after an outage if
they were running before. We just power the monitors down when they're
not in use.

We try to be concious of our energy use (abuse?). Since the
machines use a fair amount of power (triple redundant power
supplies and fans, etc.) we try to turn things off when they
aren't actively "doing something". On the other hand, there
are often 5 or 6 machines running concurrently out of necessity.
(no need for space heaters in those conditions -- and something
to definitely avoid in the Summer months! :< )

 

[Meat Plow]

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:46:03 +1100, Sylvia Else
<sylvia@not.at.this.address>wrote:

<snip>

I don't like expecting to do something on my PC and finding that it's
been powered down (PCs in this houseold are left running all the time),
so they're configure in memory mode - they boot up after an outage if
they were running before. We just power the monitors down when they're
not in use.

Not very environmentally friendly are we? Most modern PeeCees consume
a hundred watts or more when idle. I hit the sleep button on mine and
in 10 seconds it goes down. Hit the button again and it takes 10
seconds to wake and is ready to use. Since we have two in the house
it saves energy and we're more in tune with the ecology. It also may
help explain why our batteries last a long time.

 

[Sylvia Else]

Meat Plow wrote:

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:46:03 +1100, Sylvia Else
sylvia@not.at.this.address>wrote:

snip

I don't like expecting to do something on my PC and finding that it's
been powered down (PCs in this houseold are left running all the time),
so they're configure in memory mode - they boot up after an outage if
they were running before. We just power the monitors down when they're
not in use.

Not very environmentally friendly are we?

Yes we are. We're happy to have a nuclear power station built.

Sylvia

 

[David Brodbeck]

William Sommerwerck wrote:

I had argued that UPS manufacturers would err in favor of
faster charge times just to reduce the user's perceived
"exposure" *after* an outage.

In the Seattle area, an outage is often followed by a restoration, than a
second outage. I've learned to wait to reboot.

Some high-end UPS units, like the APC SmartUPS rack mount ones, will let
you set a turn-on delay for this purpose.

 

[David Brodbeck]

William R. Walsh wrote:

Don't expect that it will work. If any of my APC UPS units (about 12)
are anything to by, the only way you'll know the battery is dead is
when it fails to support the load. Most of these are not cheap units,
either--they are SmartUPS units that have a true sinewave inverter. So
far, only one has ever illuminated the "battery fault" indicator as a
result of a self test.

I've had mixed luck with that, too. What I do now is log the battery
voltage and percent charge, and judge by how far they drop during the
self-tests whether the pack is on its way out.

 

[David Brodbeck]

D Yuniskis wrote:

Hi,

I don't have anything other than "gut feel" to resort to
as evidence but it sure *seems* like most UPS designs
EAT batteries!

My empirical experience is that there are three issues here:

1. UPS quality. I mostly use APC units, and the cheap desktop BackUPS
units do seem to destroy batteries faster than the more expensive
SmartUPS units meant for servers.

2. Temperature. If it's hot in the server rack the batteries will die
an early death.

3. Charge/discharge cycles. More and/or deeper cycles will kill the
batteries faster.

I've worked at two sites that had APC SmartUPS 3000 XL units. These are
3 kVA rack-mount UPSs that take eight 12V gel cells in series-parallel
to make a 48V pack.

At the first site, the server room was pretty hot and the power was
really unreliable. We'd fully discharge the pack every couple of months
on average. Typical battery pack temperatures were around 100 F. We
were putting in new batteries every two to three years.

At the second site, we practically never had outages and the server room
was relatively cool. We got five years out of those batteries before
the voltage started to drop precipitously during the weekly self tests.

BTW, some of the early SmartUPS 3000 units don't use a battery tray and
have all the batteries slide into the front of the UPS single-file.
It's a hell of a job to change them out when a battery fails and swells
up, wedging itself in place! Later ones have a removable
tray/cartridge, much easier.

 

[Sylvia Else]

David Brodbeck wrote:

2. Temperature. If it's hot in the server rack the batteries will die
an early death.

How hot is hot? I commented elsewhere in this thread that the battery
compartment of my UPS is about 10 degress Celsius above ambient. I'm
wondering whether I should extend the leads, and put them outside the case.

Sylvia.

 

[David Brodbeck]

Sylvia Else wrote:

David Brodbeck wrote:

2. Temperature. If it's hot in the server rack the batteries will die
an early death.

How hot is hot? I commented elsewhere in this thread that the battery
compartment of my UPS is about 10 degress Celsius above ambient. I'm
wondering whether I should extend the leads, and put them outside the case.

Generally cooler is better, but that doesn't sound at all excessive
unless the room the UPS is in is also very warm.

 

[Bob Larter]

On 9/12/2009 10:05 AM, Sylvia Else wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:

I don't think you understand the principals of demand or load well
enough.

blink> Where did you get that from?

A normal 1000VA unit would not usually have sufficient storage to
provide anything approaching 1000VA for an hour. So unless it's a
specially high capacity unit, the fact that it can supply its actual
load for an hour suggests that that load is nothing like 1000VA.

Generally[0], UPSes will produce the rated output for 20 minutes, so if
yours worked for an hour, that suggests that your load is only 333VA.

[0] At least, that's the figure I've extracted from various UPS
spec-sheets over the years.

--
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. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Dave Platt]

In article <009edc14$0$26891$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>,
Sylvia Else <sylvia@not.at.this.address> wrote:

2. Temperature. If it's hot in the server rack the batteries will die
an early death.

How hot is hot? I commented elsewhere in this thread that the battery
compartment of my UPS is about 10 degress Celsius above ambient. I'm
wondering whether I should extend the leads, and put them outside the case.

Gel cells "prefer" a lower float (and charge) voltage at higher
temperatures. If your UPS doesn't have a thermistor circuit to reduce
the float voltage at the higher battery temperature, keeping the
battery cooler might extend its life by avoiding overcharging.

--
Dave Platt <dplatt@radagast.org> AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

 

[Meat Plow]

On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:02:49 +1100, Bob Larter
<bobbylarter@gmail.com>wrote:

On 9/12/2009 10:05 AM, Sylvia Else wrote:
Meat Plow wrote:

I don't think you understand the principals of demand or load well
enough.

blink> Where did you get that from?

A normal 1000VA unit would not usually have sufficient storage to
provide anything approaching 1000VA for an hour. So unless it's a
specially high capacity unit, the fact that it can supply its actual
load for an hour suggests that that load is nothing like 1000VA.

Generally[0], UPSes will produce the rated output for 20 minutes, so if
yours worked for an hour, that suggests that your load is only 333VA.

[0] At least, that's the figure I've extracted from various UPS
spec-sheets over the years.

I've been involved with enterprise power solutions
for the past decade. That includes the APC Matrix line.
The 3750 watt 5000va model had a full load runtime of 25 minutes.

 

[William R. Walsh]

Hi!

, UPSes will produce the rated output for 20 minutes,
so if yours worked for an hour, that suggests that your load is
only 333VA.

I suppose that's true of higher end UPS units. However, consumer grade
units run at their full load may only last 3-7 minutes by the
manufacturer's own admission. (I have a feeling that their admission
is also somewhat inflated from the reality.)

That's why I suggest anyone buying an average UPS get one that is
larger than they need. The inverter will also be a lot happier since
it isn't being run so close to its limits.

William

 

[Dave]

On Dec 7, 4:09 pm, D Yuniskis <not.going.to...@seen.com> wrote:

Hi,

I don't have anything other than "gut feel" to resort to
as evidence but it sure *seems* like most UPS designs
EAT batteries!

We rarely have outages here.  So, there is no real
draw on the batteries in our UPS's.  So, they should just
be on float charges.

Yet, the batteries seem to wear out far too frequently, IMO.

I could possibly understand regular outages cycling the
batteries too deeply.  And, chargers too aggressively
replenishing them (after all, a UPS that quits because its
battery wasn't fully recharged earns a bad reputation for
its manufacturer).  But, I can't see how even periodic
battery tests (performed by the UPS itself) could be the
problem -- unless there is something wrong with the
approach being used?

Can anyone with firsthand knowledge shed some light on this?
I.e., what *is* the UPS doing to/with the battery when it
is not being used to supply the load?

If this hasn't been discussed already. I would say the batteries have
top priority. Regardless of what charging rate is used, brand, etc..
In the last 15 years or so...I've had numerous brands such as; APC,
Cyberpower, Trip-lite and some other "X" brands as well, all of them
with many years of good service.
For me, the average lifetime of a SLA battery has been about 3 years.
Several have passed the 4+ year mark, and a few for several months.
I consider this to be GOOD.
I have had "fairly" consistent input power, nothing unusual, mostly
several seconds, and maybe once in awhile 10-15 minutes of outage.
Once in a blue moon it goes out for several hours; therefore I shut
everything down, once that annoying beep gets past 15 minutes or so.
IMHO. I would say the QUALITY of the battery is the most important
factor. A well built battery, will be able to handle those odd
charging rates a lot better.
The best batteries (again, IMO) have been Panasonic & Yuasa. I have
seen others fair well too, but I cant recall their brands. The best
would be made in Japan, Taiwan and USA. (in no particular order) Some
Chinese have fared well, but they are not on the top of my list. I can
only imagine the quality will increase since most manufactures will
(if they haven't already) eventually move their assembly to mainland
China.
Bottom line: The quality of the battery is almost everything in a UPS.
Just my 25 cents worth (I added 20 for inflation
Cheers
Dave

 

[D Yuniskis]

Dave wrote:

On Dec 7, 4:09 pm, D Yuniskis <not.going.to...@seen.com> wrote:
Yet, the batteries seem to wear out far too frequently, IMO.

I could possibly understand regular outages cycling the
batteries too deeply. And, chargers too aggressively
replenishing them (after all, a UPS that quits because its
battery wasn't fully recharged earns a bad reputation for
its manufacturer). But, I can't see how even periodic
battery tests (performed by the UPS itself) could be the
problem -- unless there is something wrong with the
approach being used?

If this hasn't been discussed already. I would say the batteries have
top priority. Regardless of what charging rate is used, brand, etc..
In the last 15 years or so...I've had numerous brands such as; APC,
Cyberpower, Trip-lite and some other "X" brands as well, all of them
with many years of good service.

Hmmm... I'm not sure I would agree "unconditionally"; if
the UPS's are designed in such a way that they prematurely
age batteries, then I'd rather figure out how to *fix*
that -- no sense "wasting" what are otherwise good batteries!

For me, the average lifetime of a SLA battery has been about 3 years.
Several have passed the 4+ year mark, and a few for several months.
I consider this to be GOOD.
I have had "fairly" consistent input power, nothing unusual, mostly
several seconds, and maybe once in awhile 10-15 minutes of outage.
Once in a blue moon it goes out for several hours; therefore I shut
everything down, once that annoying beep gets past 15 minutes or so.
IMHO. I would say the QUALITY of the battery is the most important
factor. A well built battery, will be able to handle those odd
charging rates a lot better.
The best batteries (again, IMO) have been Panasonic & Yuasa. I have

I use Panasonics exclusively. I haven't found any of the "off
brands" to be significantly cheaper or "better". I've had
associates use all sorts of different brands in an attempt to
save a few pennies here or there but usually with no better
results than me.

seen others fair well too, but I cant recall their brands. The best
would be made in Japan, Taiwan and USA. (in no particular order) Some
Chinese have fared well, but they are not on the top of my list. I can
only imagine the quality will increase since most manufactures will
(if they haven't already) eventually move their assembly to mainland
China.
Bottom line: The quality of the battery is almost everything in a UPS.
Just my 25 cents worth (I added 20 for inflation

 

[David Lesher]

Thomas Tornblom <thomas@Hax.SE> writes:

My APC SmartUPS 700 successfully ran selftests up until one of the
batteries failed and everything it supplied went down. :-(

It runs with a maximum load of 30%.

I have been contemplating using two full size 60Ah car batteries
externally instead of the small 7Ah internals.

Not the best choice.

I have a SmartUSP 1200 {that's 1200VA in their hype..}. I have used
external batteries for ~10 years. I had two 50AH deep cycle batteries
until they died. Now I have some ~18 AH ones. The 50's would take
days to recharge, but so what?

Car batteries are a poor choice; get deep-cycle batteries.


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