Question Anyone noticed how difficult it is to find replacement batteries for a UPS

[Winterson]

I have used a combination UPS and surge protection box for many years and in the past if I needed a replacement battery for a UPS it was easy to find at the local office supply store that sold these devices. Now I have a combination of APC and Cyperpower UPS boxes and cannot find OEM replacement batteries for either type. There are third party batteries but they had 1-year instead of a 3-year warranty and do not inspire trust for the buyer. Many people are choosing to spend $200 on a new UPS rather than $100 on a replacement battery from a second tier supplier.

I am starting to rethink my approach. In the 1980's I used line conditioners that would maintain a minimum voltage for devices and also provided the highest level of surge protection. Now for about the same cost as a UPS I can buy a Tripp-Lite line conditioner with 1200 Watt capacity and never need to replace a battery. I can also buy it from Home Depot and avoid Amazon altogether.

 

[Priscus]

When I have used a UPS, it is because I had been domiciled in a rural area, where power outages were not an infrequent occurrence, but it sounds as if your needs are not for continuation of supply, but guarantee of quality of supply. Yes, I would try to avoid the need for battery if the energy storage is not required. As you say, they have a finite service life.

I have not used my UPS for years. I know the batteries are now useless: (lead-acid types)

Still trying to decide whether to consign it to the garbage, or replace with Li-ion, which would require redesign of charging and battery management system sufficient to keep such cells safe. Probably will choose the former.

I live now in a city, and find my supply fairly reliable. Only had one incident, and I doubt that protection devices would have saved me. I do not know if I actually received a lightening strike, or just a surge from a near miss!

No more than a metre from my computer, I saw the flash just outside my window, It could not have been very far away, as there is a wall in the way. There was not a rumble of thunder, but a bang: the explosion blew the window apart with such force that shards of glass were propelled across the room and embedded in the far wall. Thankfully, none hit me.

My telephone socket, computer, mains socket and mains cable supplying this socket were black and smoking,

Surprisingly, when I checked , main fuse had not blown. Earth conductor must have taken the current.

I thought that all the devices were trashed, but not so. The cordless phone needed a new PSU, but phone itself was unharmed.

So, turned my attention to computer. PSU was damaged, Optical drive and HDD also. Just a single memory location failed. All else was functional. (GEIL replaced the memory stick, honouring their lifetime guarantee even though it was destroyed in the way described)

Replaced optical drive and HDD. Of course having loaded XP onto my new HDD it needed activating, and obviously did not automatically qualify.

Silly me, I though telephone to Microsoft would sort things.

All I got from them was "cannot activate as this serial number has already been used"!

Exasperated I told them of course it has, did you not hear what I have just explained.....

Could not get them to cooperate, so have been a dedicated Linux user ever since.

 

[cuvtixo]

Could not get them to cooperate, so have been a dedicated Linux user ever since.

In MHO, the happiest ending possible!

 

[kanewolf]

I have used a combination UPS and surge protection box for many years and in the past if I needed a replacement battery for a UPS it was easy to find at the local office supply store that sold these devices. Now I have a combination of APC and Cyperpower UPS boxes and cannot find OEM replacement batteries for either type. There are third party batteries but they had 1-year instead of a 3-year warranty and do not inspire trust for the buyer. Many people are choosing to spend $200 on a new UPS rather than $100 on a replacement battery from a second tier supplier.

I am starting to rethink my approach. In the 1980's I used line conditioners that would maintain a minimum voltage for devices and also provided the highest level of surge protection. Now for about the same cost as a UPS I can buy a Tripp-Lite line conditioner with 1200 Watt capacity and never need to replace a battery. I can also buy it from Home Depot and avoid Amazon altogether.

Not difficult at all. Most UPS use standard 12V 7AH or 9AH batteries. They can be purchased from any number of sellers.
A UPS is an insurance policy. They provide time to cleanly shutdown your hardware in the event of a power failure. In addition, some, like double conversion UPS provide a constant output voltage. I use only double conversion UPS for my compute and network.

 

[bill001g]

I find little issue getting batteries. I seriously doubt any UPS vendor actually builds their own batteries. Almost everything is imported from china where there are fewer environmental laws.

Pretty much almost everything uses the same size 12 volt batters that have rating between 7 and 9 ah. You can check the physical size of your batteries to be sure they are the same but the most common ones are all interchangeable. The only thing you have to be a bit careful of is there are 2 very common terminal sizes and you need to buy the batteries with the correct size terminals. They make very cheap adapters.

Note there are some UPS that have battery packs made up of say 2 batteries. The ones that come with the extra wires/plastic to make them appear as one block greatly increase the costs. You can easily disassemble old battery packs and replace just the batteries.

I have UPS that I have replaced batteries in 3 or 4 times and is getting close to 15 years old.

 

[stonecarver]

Those batteries that go into a UPS are also the same ones used in the country clubs out in Indian Wells / Palm Springs area for the homes alarm system. The original batteries lasted a few years and like you said the replacements needed replacements about every 16-18 months.

I had no hand in where they were bought from just remember they seemed to be to early to be needing to be flipped so soon from the last change out.

 

[kanewolf]

Those batteries that go into a UPS are also the same ones used in the country clubs out in Indian Wells / Palm Springs area for the homes alarm system. The original batteries lasted a few years and like you said the replacements needed replacements about every 16-18 months.

I had no hand in where they were bought from just remember they seemed to be to early to be needing to be flipped so soon from the last change out.

A quality UPS will do a self test on the batteries, by transferring the load to battery every once in a while. If that test fails, then the UPS reqports a fault and you replace the batteries. My APC Smart UPS-Online UPS units can all have the batteries replaced without removing output power.

 

[BFG-9000]

They are still readily available on Amazon and easy to ship because lead-acid gel batteries are leakproof. A box store would rather only carry new UPSes because the profit would be much higher.

However the truth is, nobody should use those batteries anymore, now that LiFePO4 in the same capacity are equivalent in price. These can be cycled many more times than lead-acid in a UPS which automatically shuts down at 10v per battery, because technically that's 0% state of charge for both LiFePO4 which handles this fine, and lead-acid--which doesn't because you aren't supposed to drain it below 50% state of charge if you ever want to use it again.

The biggest problem are those extra-short and fat 9Ah ones with spade tabs because there doesn't appear to be any common LiFePO4 equivalent size available.

Skinny 7Ah APC RBC2 with spade tabs is 6x2.6x3.7" and many size equivalents are available in 6Ah-7.2Ah LiFePO4. Two battery RBC5 and 4-battery RBC23 cartridge packs can be assembled with multiple 12v batteries of this size (do take care to research if the BMS can handle 48v for the latter). Note however that most LiFePO4 batteries in this size typically only have a 6A BMS so these should only be used in lower-wattage applications, but some do come with 10A ones.

Fat 11-12Ah APC RBC4 with spade tabs is 6x4x3.7" and many size equivalent 12Ah rated LiFePO4 are around.

Extra-tall 17Ah APC RBC7 with bolt terminals is 7x3x6.6" and the usual size equivalents are 12v 20Ah. Two-battery pack RBC55 should really instead use a 24v 25Ah replacement instead. Most of my UPSes that take these however are large 3000VA models which could technically draw 65A from them despite only coming with 10AWG wire (the packs come wired with a 100A fuse) so instead I use truck battery sized 24v 100Ah LiFePO4 instead, which obviously won't fit inside the case but extends runtime from just 7 minutes to about an hour at maximum load.

I don't use these at maximum load so can tell you ISPs may not have as much battery capacity as you do at the local node, meaning don't be surprised if the internet goes out 4hrs into a power outage because of their end. The transformer efficiency is probably well below 70% at low wattage, but hey it's cheaper to just buy more battery capacity than a more efficient switchmode inverter!

Long ago, the genuine APC battery packs contained excellent quality and very heavy lead-acid batteries supplied by Yuasa/Genesis or Panasonic which lasted 5-8 years, but if you desticker them now you will discover APC uses the same lighweight crappy no-name cheap batteries inside as the third parties, which only last about two years even if they are never cycled, and can be killed if deep-cycled only once. If you can't buy good quality OEM batteries anymore, then just don't buy them. I mean if you really wanted lead-acid, Yuasa/Genesis and Panasonic still do make the good ones but they cost more and you'd have to assemble packs yourself.