UPS Batteries

[Matrixx]

UPS batteries are designed to charge discharge regularly.

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

The favour I'm owed has resulted in two 7Ah Yuasa batteries ordered this morning from RS!

Thanks all.

You could got the same, cheaper from Screwfix or ADI.

 

[armalites]

You could got the same, cheaper from Screwfix or ADI.

Doubt Screwfix is cheaper than "Owed a favour" which I'm assuming means free

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

We never buy batteries from RS for ups, fire alarm or intruder alarm.
Due to their high cost.
80% we get from ADI Gardeners.

Or if it is quicker from Screwfix.

Nowt more annoying than needing 8 x 7.0ah batteries and having 6 on the van.

 

[Onoff]

Doubt Screwfix is cheaper than "Owed a favour" which I'm assuming means free

FOC, oh yeah!

 

[MetalMonkey]

If the OP goes fir the same 7.0ah they have standard size terminals. It is an industry standard.

You can often get the same 7.2Ah batteries in both Faston 4.8mm and 6.4mm terminal configurations, so you do really need to check which size is required when it comes to UPS.

You could got the same, cheaper from Screwfix or ADI.

Screwfix don't sell Yuasa AFAIK, only their own brand.
Surprisingly Toolstation do sell Yucel, which is the budget Yuasa line for 24.99 each but currently out of stock. The same one online is only £13.99 You do have to pay a bit more for the "full fat" Yuasa.

I only grab them from the counters if I need them in a hurry, otherwise they are almost always cheaper if you shop around online.
If you are doing a change on a big UPS stack with an expansion pack you might have as many as 30 to 60+ of them to change, so even a couple of quid saving per item mounts up fast.

 

[Alan Reynolds]

If you only want to power a router, why not fit just one battery if the old ones are in parallel.

 

[Onoff]

If you only want to power a router, why not fit just one battery if the old ones are in parallel.

Erm...everything's free, I just give the bits to my lad say go and play with that.

 

[Farside]

The APC Smart SMT UPS is a solid choice, but battery swaps can be a bit tricky. I’ve had success using quality third-party replacements as long as the voltage and Ah rating match the originals. Some aftermarket batteries last just as long for a fraction of the cost. If you go that route, make sure the connectors fit properly, and avoid anything with a poor track record for reliability.

I find the APC auto-charging and self-test routines are too stiff. I was able to trim the timings to once a blue moon and just kept a monitor on state of charge. As a result, my first APC batteries lasted nearly ten years..
My second set co-incided with the original software being impossible to operate with later OSs, so had to rely purely on manual, but the shutdown and timing could be used, without letting APC anwywhere near the charging, except initially.
Even so, a know good pair of third-party batteries lasted a mere two years and a third set, the same again.
Obviously the original APC-supplied batteries were v. good quality to last so long and the aftermarket ones not so good, but left to APCs care, the original pair wouldn't have lasted more than a couple of years, I'm in no doubt about that.

 

[Jack Ryan]

I find the APC auto-charging and self-test routines are too stiff. I was able to trim the timings to once a blue moon and just kept a monitor on state of charge. As a result, my first APC batteries lasted nearly ten years..
My second set co-incided with the original software being impossible to operate with later OSs, so had to rely purely on manual, but the shutdown and timing could be used, without letting APC anwywhere near the charging, except initially.
Even so, a know good pair of third-party batteries lasted a mere two years and a third set, the same again.
Obviously the original APC-supplied batteries were v. good quality to last so long and the aftermarket ones not so good, but left to APCs care, the original pair wouldn't have lasted more than a couple of years, I'm in no doubt about that.

I have a few APC SmartUPSs. The original batteries last a decade or more and so do the replacement APC batteries.

I've thought about using 3rd party batteries but can't think of a reason to.

Jack

 

[Farside]

I've thought about using 3rd party batteries but can't think of a reason to.

Availability and price.
Here, APC will rook you blind for the APC sticker on a battery.

 

[Jack Ryan]

Availability and price.
Here, APC will rook you blind for the APC sticker on a battery.

Well, availability is just a mouse click away, so that's not a problem.

I can't remember how much the replacement battery costs but they arrive with the correct connectors and there are no dimensional surprises. For a once a decade expense, why bother?

But of course, each to his own.

Jack

 

[MetalMonkey]

APC always had a reputation for running "hot" with their charging, there was also an issue in the firmware at one point which cooked batteries, which I think was resolved eventually.

The "official" batteries are just banks of standard SLA batteries with some wiring and connectors on the top.
I've changed plenty by just swapping out the batteries with a decent quality brand and transferring the proprietary wiring onto them.
If you stick to something decent like Yuasa you will get the same life for a fraction of the cost – can’t remember the actual price of the last one I did, but it was the sort of difference of say between £320 and £60 – well worth doing, put it that way.

Obviously on mission critical systems its worth going for the official ones, purely to cover your backside (although if it was mission critical, I wouldn’t be using APC in the first place to be honest).
But 99% of the time if you give the customer the choice they are going to go for the cheaper option.

Nothing special about the batteries, APC don’t make the cells.

 

[Farside]

Nothing special about the batteries, APC don’t make the cells.

The first ones were Yuasa with an APC logo on them. Istr there were codes on the casings which gave the game away.
Second ones were Chinese, but an Irish battery maker (yeah, right) name printed on them by an obliging maker in Shanghai.
To be honest, they weren't too bad, but I object to paying Yuasa money for anonymous crap, which the third set are.
I'm a bit stuck, because having a battery posted is damn near impossible, and when allowed is extortionate, with special carriage terms.

I'm utterly sure the first set lasted a decade because the APC software running on XP allowed me to disable the ferocious self-test regime.
By default it flattened the batteries once a fortnight, which is most certainly not good for them.

 

[Farside]

Well, availability is just a mouse click away, so that's not a problem.

I can't remember how much the replacement battery costs but they arrive with the correct connectors and there are no dimensional surprises. For a once a decade expense, why bother?

But of course, each to his own.

Jack

Physically, there's nothing special about the batteries, there's no particular need to buy originals, in terms of a physical fit, they're standard dimensions and the harness is trivially easy to swap over.
I just object to being done up like a kipper by a greedy corporate.

 

[indy4x]

We have about 400 APC UPS across our estate. Usually go for the 750, 1500 or 2200 rack mounts depending on application

They are all centrally managed by us, they do a scheduled self test every 2 weeks but that self test does not extend to draining the batteries. Pretty sure that setting is not enabled by default and hasn't been for many years

We don't bother with battery replacement, we have a set replacement schedule where the whole UPS is swapped out. Most of ours is powering essential equipment.

Batteries last if looked after, they do have a finite number of full discharge cycles and the temperature they run at has a bearing on their useful life.

Yuasa do have a spec sheet with a graph of expected battery age v's battery temperature for the VRLA batteries. Some of our kit is in plant rooms and run at 30c or more, we get about 3yrs out of the batteries and the heat does not do the capacitors much good either

Yuasa VRLA batteries are used everywhere, not just UPS but fire panels, intruder alarms etc

I'd go with Yuasa batteries, it's what used to be fitted originally and they are pretty good

 

[JOEPRO]

APC always had a reputation for running "hot" with their charging, there was also an issue in the firmware at one point which cooked batteries, which I think was resolved eventually.

The "official" batteries are just banks of standard SLA batteries with some wiring and connectors on the top.
I've changed plenty by just swapping out the batteries with a decent quality brand and transferring the proprietary wiring onto them.
If you stick to something decent like Yuasa you will get the same life for a fraction of the cost – can’t remember the actual price of the last one I did, but it was the sort of difference of say between £320 and £60 – well worth doing, put it that way.

Obviously on mission critical systems its worth going for the official ones, purely to cover your backside (although if it was mission critical, I wouldn’t be using APC in the first place to be honest).
But 99% of the time if you give the customer the choice they are going to go for the cheaper option.

Nothing special about the batteries, APC don’t make the cells.

+1 for Yuasa batteries in a UPS. I had 8+ years out of genuine Yuasa before.

 

[J1nx]

On APC units they do a self test fortnightly by default, this is a short duration test that should have minimal impact on the cells.
On higher range models, the user can initiate a runtime calibration, this will discharge to 10% remaining runtime. This cannot be scheduled, must be user initiated and is only recommended after a couple of years or replacement of battery.
No doubt the APC (Schneider) stuff is the best on the market, you won’t see anything else in big data centres, they go all the way up to about 4 megawatts in those.
They don’t make any batteries, most are just Yuasa so as above just order some NP7-12 or what ever version you have from the cheapest supplier. Watch date codes (stamped on top of yuasa) from eBay sellers tho!

 

[MetalMonkey]

On APC units they do a self test fortnightly by default, this is a short duration test that should have minimal impact on the cells.

If the test fails it drops the load, one of the joys of the self test

No doubt the APC (Schneider) stuff is the best on the market, you won’t see anything else in big data centres, they go all the way up to about 4 megawatts in those.

They are probably the best known, but the Eaton stuff is far superior in almost everyway IMHO. Better built, more reliable, better integration, batteries last longer. I've installed both, but Eaton is my preference, budget permitting. Not that they don't have their own issues of course.

 

[J1nx]

No, the self test just lowers the DC bus so the battery tops up the rectifier output in effect, if the battery fails it won’t even go to bypass, it will stay in dual conversion no problem.

Eaton bought the MGE line of UPS’s when Schneider bought MGE and APC, Schneider sold off the MGE ones as they were pretty far behind and had a much lower market share…
https://www.reuters.com/article/bus...to-sell-mge-unit-to-eaton-corp-idUSL06246038/

Many UK supermarkets used the ONEAC transformer units and then moved onto the MGE/Eaton systems, often fitted with the custom POS red outlets.