I got out my trusty big multi-meter I got back in the 90s and checked the voltage on the old battery. It is reading >12v! :|

Hold on there pardner . . . almost all UPS batteries are based on two 12V batteries in series. The voltmeter should read around 26V for a healthy battery.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I got out my trusty big multi-meter I got back in the 90s and checked the voltage on the old battery. It is reading >12v! :|

Hold on there pardner . . . almost all UPS batteries are based on two 12V batteries in series. The voltmeter should read around 26V for a healthy battery.

Depends on the rating of the UPS.
Very low capacity units just use a single battery, higher capacity units 2*12V batteries in series. Higher still capacity/longer backup times UPS units use multiple batteries in series.

One of my UPS units recently stopped working when the power went out when under normal load, less than 100W load it would work. One of the batteries had crapped out- voltage under no load was OK, but put a bit of a load on it & the voltage dropped. A lot of a load- it dropped to next to nothing.


Edit- a fully charged 12V lead acid battery with no load should read a bit over 13V.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

I got out my trusty big multi-meter I got back in the 90s and checked the voltage on the old battery. It is reading >12v! :|

Hold on there pardner . . . almost all UPS batteries are based on two 12V batteries in series. The voltmeter should read around 26V for a healthy battery.

Hi Keith,

Just as Grant said above. My UPS takes a single 12v battery.

I was just looking for a replacement UPS and tried to find one that takes the same battery. There is one that seems to be an upgrade of mine, looks identical. It's battery, although it looks identical to what I have, has a different model number than what mine takes. My current battery is RBC114, the one I found takes an RBC17.

Maybe I'll just go ahead and get the APC BE650G1 UPS and just use the other as a multi-power source for stuff that doesn't need backup power.

Have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Most UPS batteries are pretty much a standard size of brick shape (with a not so common larger and smaller size), just with varying capacities (and battery quality). It's only the really weird units that require a specific non-standard type of battery. If you've got one of those & the battery dies, buy another UPS- this time one using a standard type of battery.
If you have to get a different than usual battery, you will be paying for that privilege.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Maybe I'll just go ahead and get the APC BE650G1 UPS and just use the other as a multi-power source for stuff that doesn't need backup power.

Have a great day! :)

Siran

You can always parallel the other batteries to the new UPS externally and bump up the run time.

---

You can always parallel the other batteries to the new UPS externally and bump up the run time.

Depending on the UPS, it may require external cooling.
I had a cheapy UPS and the load on it was less than 50% of it's rated continuous output & I replaced the internal battery with a car battery. Charging wasn't an issue (as it's charge rate was very low), but when it came to running without mains- after 10min I could smell the tranny cooking. It just wasn't built with long runtimes in mind, so I had to take the cover off & have an external fan blowing on it to keep it to a low boil, temperature wise...

---

Grant
Darwin NT

You can always parallel the other batteries to the new UPS externally and bump up the run time.

Depending on the UPS, it may require external cooling.

Good point, though I'd have to ask how close to rated output you were drawing it, as that sounds more like a load issue. A lot of folks assume that just cause you can draw that much through it with AC present means it will support the load on batteries. Seldom so. Ask the old APC 2kva unit I smoked. :(

---

Good point, though I'd have to ask how close to rated output you were drawing it, as that sounds more like a load issue.

From memory it was rated as 1.5kVA, 900W, actual load was only 500W (so a bit over 50%).
It was a cheap unit, and that 900W was a pretty optimistic rating on their part.

A lot of folks assume that just cause you can draw that much through it with AC present means it will support the load on batteries. Seldom so. Ask the old APC 2kva unit I smoked. :(

Which is a fair assumption as that's what the rating is meant to mean- the load it can support when not on mains- it certainly is the case for the better units. But those better units certainly come at a price, but at least their performance can justify that price (if you can afford it).

People tend to mistake Volt Amps for Watts, and tend to look at the peak rating for a unit (as that's often what the model number is), not it's continuous rating.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Having some time to digest what happened here I'm sure a wonky power strip eventually blew two UPS.

Have three UPS all plugged into the same power strip, each feeding a different rig.

At first I had no clue there was an issue with me. Occasionally I find a log entry that there was a power hit. Just thought it was a momentary glitch. UPS did their thing and kept stuff going.
Months pass and one day I find one of the rigs off. Doing checking I find the UPS won't run on battery. Grrr. Well stuff happens, and I replace the UPS.
More months pass. Then one day I sitting there and I hear an nasty electric spitting sound. Now that isn't supposed to happen. One of my boxes goes down. But the power comes back.
Some fiddling and I come to the supposition it might be a power strip from the UPS feeding the dead box and its external drives, speakers, USB hub etc., so I replace it. At this point the UPS still seems to be working.
A week passes and I hear the spitting noise again. Same box down, but no way is it the power strip I replaced. Scratch head.
A few minutes later it hard fails. No juice going to any of the UPS.
Easy enough to see that the light on that power strip is off. No the breaker doesn't need a reset or is it tripped. On off switch does nothing.
Yank it out, replace it. When I'm done, another UPS is failed. Pissed.

Since I've replace that power strip I haven't had another log entry for a power hit.

Both the failed UPS would charge the battery, and pass 120, but neither of them would run off the battery. Not even if the load was just a 4W night light! Something got zapped from the bad connection in the power strip.

Unfortunately the saga didn't end there. One of the crunch boxes must have also had enough power crap sent down the line, its power supply gave up the ghost.

So, moral of the story, every couple of years toss your power strips and get new ones. The surge protectors in them have a finite life.

I got out my trusty big multi-meter I got back in the 90s and checked the voltage on the old battery. It is reading >12v! :|

Hold on there pardner . . . almost all UPS batteries are based on two 12V batteries in series. The voltmeter should read around 26V for a healthy battery.

Depends on the rating of the UPS.
Very low capacity units just use a single battery, higher capacity units 2*12V batteries in series. Higher still capacity/longer backup times UPS units use multiple batteries in series.

One of my UPS units recently stopped working when the power went out when under normal load, less than 100W load it would work. One of the batteries had crapped out- voltage under no load was OK, but put a bit of a load on it & the voltage dropped. A lot of a load- it dropped to next to nothing.


Edit- a fully charged 12V lead acid battery with no load should read a bit over 13V.

Yes, that is typical of a failed battery. It has surface charge that reads at full voltage when measured with a voltmeter. But put a real load on it and the internal resistance of the battery from sulfated cells will show very low voltage and the inability to source any current to the load.

You always have to test batteries with a real or simulated load to determine their actual health.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

You can always parallel the other batteries to the new UPS externally and bump up the run time.

Depending on the UPS, it may require external cooling.
I had a cheapy UPS and the load on it was less than 50% of it's rated continuous output & I replaced the internal battery with a car battery. Charging wasn't an issue (as it's charge rate was very low), but when it came to running without mains- after 10min I could smell the tranny cooking. It just wasn't built with long runtimes in mind, so I had to take the cover off & have an external fan blowing on it to keep it to a low boil, temperature wise...

A car battery is a poor choice for a continuous load. It is only designed for instantaneous cold cranking amps. You need a storage battery designed for continuous load like a deep discharge marine battery or a AGM battery. Car batteries have very thin plates that can supply a large current for a short period of time as when you crank over your motor in your car. Deep discharge batteries have much thicker plates and can supply a smaller amount of current but over a much large period of time without the voltage falling from no load condition that much.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

People tend to mistake Volt Amps for Watts, and tend to look at the peak rating for a unit (as that's often what the model number is), not it's continuous rating.

And that isn't even considering whether the UPS output is a modified sine wave or a True RMS sine wave. The amount of power the UPS can source all comes down to "the area under the curve" which is a simplistic way of saying whether all the theoretical mathematical value of power in the waveform can be tapped into.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Both the failed UPS would charge the battery, and pass 120, but neither of them would run off the battery. Not even if the load was just a 4W night light! Something got zapped from the bad connection in the power strip.

A good chance that by that time the batteries had given up.
When a UPS keeps switching from mains to battery to mains again- even for only very brief periods- over an extended period, the batteries don't get a chance to re-charge fully and will end up too flat to recover.

So, moral of the story, every couple of years toss your power strips and get new ones. The surge protectors in them have a finite life.

All surge protectors have a limited life span - generally so many Joules of energy for an extremely brief period of time with a particular maximum voltage on only so many occasions.
Other than devices designed & built for commercial/industrial surge protection (which also have limited life spans), surge protectors built in to power strips, and many of the commonly available domestic surge protectors are more to make the owner feel comfortable than provide any meaning full surge protection.

The only surge protection that's guaranteed to work, is have the device disconnected from the mains. If you've got crappy mains power, you'd be better off with a power conditioner. If your power is really crappy, then an active power conditioner is the way to go. Power conditioners also provide some level of surge protection.

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Grant
Darwin NT

A car battery is a poor choice for a continuous load. It is only designed for instantaneous cold cranking amps. You need a storage battery designed for continuous load like a deep discharge marine battery or a AGM battery.

For a low capacity UPS a car battery is actually a good choice- yes they are designed for short periods of very high currents- but they are also suitable for very long periods of low power draw. What they can't cope with is being significantly discharged, especially repeatedly.

Which is where AGM/Deep Cycle batteries excel- low to middling current output ability, but capable of being discharged deeply (for a lead acid battery) and recharged, repeatedly.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Greetings,

Hi Keith,

You always have to test batteries with a real or simulated load to determine their actual health.

Ok, so how do I load test this battery to find out it's real life? Never done anything like that before.

Have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Greetings,

Hi Keith,

You always have to test batteries with a real or simulated load to determine their actual health.

Ok, so how do I load test this battery to find out it's real life? Never done anything like that before.

Have a great day! :)

Siran

I'd just take it to an auto electrician as he should have a load tester. ;-)

Cheers.

Ok, so how do I load test this battery to find out it's real life? Never done anything like that before.

I'd just take it to an auto electrician as he should have a load tester. ;-)

Or a battery shop, many of them offer free battery testing these days.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Both the failed UPS would charge the battery, and pass 120, but neither of them would run off the battery. Not even if the load was just a 4W night light! Something got zapped from the bad connection in the power strip.

A good chance that by that time the batteries had given up.
When a UPS keeps switching from mains to battery to mains again- even for only very brief periods- over an extended period, the batteries don't get a chance to re-charge fully and will end up too flat to recover.

Didn't bother and add I did get new batteries, same result, no run.

The electronics of the charging circuit of the UPS can go bad. I had two early SU1500 models go bad after ten years. Kept thinking it was the poor aftermarket batteries I was putting in that was the problem. Turned out the charging circuit was bad and was killing perfectly good new batteries by overcharging them. So sometimes you just have to replace the entire UPS.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

The electronics of the charging circuit of the UPS can go bad. I had two early SU1500 models go bad after ten years. Kept thinking it was the poor aftermarket batteries I was putting in that was the problem. Turned out the charging circuit was bad and was killing perfectly good new batteries by overcharging them. So sometimes you just have to replace the entire UPS.

Hi Keith,

Wow! 10002 posts. ;)

The charging circuit in my UPS does seem to still charge the battery. The new one I installed is now at 100% charge. How likely is it for whatever circuit is used to keep things running, off the battery during a power outage, to go bad? Any ideas? That's what I think is wrong with this UPS.

Here is what I get running:

upower -d
Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/ups_hiddev1
  native-path:          /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-6/1-6:1.0/usbmisc/hiddev1
  vendor:               APC
  model:                906.W1 .D
  serial:               4B1650P31604  
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Sat 09 Nov 2019 10:48:52 AM CST (19 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  ups
    present:             yes
    state:               fully-charged
    warning-level:       none
    time to empty:       1.0 hours
    percentage:          100%
    icon-name:          'battery-full-charged-symbolic'

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/mouse_hidpp_battery_0
  native-path:          hidpp_battery_0
  model:                Wireless Mouse M510
  serial:               4051-2a-45-1d-71
  power supply:         no
  updated:              Sat 09 Nov 2019 10:48:54 AM CST (17 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  mouse
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               discharging
    warning-level:       none
    battery-level:       normal
    percentage:          55%
    icon-name:          'battery-good-symbolic'

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/DisplayDevice
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Sat 09 Nov 2019 10:15:52 AM CST (1999 seconds ago)
  has history:          no
  has statistics:       no
  ups
    present:             yes
    state:               fully-charged
    warning-level:       none
    time to empty:       1.0 hours
    percentage:          100%
    icon-name:          'battery-full-charged-symbolic'

Daemon:
  daemon-version:  0.99.7
  on-battery:      no
  lid-is-closed:   no
  lid-is-present:  no
  critical-action: PowerOff

Have a great day! :)

Siran

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath