Question I want to replace my UPS battery with a solar bank battery ?

[ragez0r]

Okay I have this... Inside is a 12v 7ah ups battery sealed.... But I want to replace it with a 12v 50ah solar bank SLA battery, feel free to say if I'm coaching on Oppenheimer territory or I'm onto something genius.... I'm worried that I might burn the charging part of the ups.. but if my french Canadian theory is correct. Having 600 wh will allow my PC and monitor to run for 4 hours instead of 4 seconds in case of a power outage......

 

[kanewolf]

The charging circuits in a UPS are designed for specific type of battery. AGM (absorbent glass mat) which is typical for a UPS. Your solar battery may be a completely different composition and require very different charging parameters. Migt it work? Maybe. Might you get a fire because you over tax the battery or charging circuit? Maybe.

 

[stonecarver]

If your thinking about doing this I would get more robust inverter. When your unit you have was built it was built with the intention of run time being the drain of it's factory batteries.

Parts were were made with those specs in mind. Not saying It would not function with a higher amp hour set of AGM batteries but it was not made to run that long and heat would be a issue.

I have 4 gage wire for my battery bank "solar" because you also risk over heating the wire on a 12 v system pulling amps all day. I think your unit is wired for most likely 24v so wires can be less demanding. But again those units were made for 20 min run time or less depending on load if you lost wall power and that inverter kicked on.

 

[NedSmelly]

Most SLA batteries are AGM. Gel types seem to be less prevalent.

Technically it should work fine, but the charging output might be set for the smaller battery (e.g. <1A) so charging may take a lot longer than standard. It might need the occasional boost charge from a stronger external charger.

You’d essentially be trickle charging a car battery. So check the UPS charge specs.

 

[ragez0r]

The charging circuits in a UPS are designed for specific type of battery. AGM (absorbent glass mat) which is typical for a UPS. Your solar battery may be a completely different composition and require very different charging parameters. Migt it work? Maybe. Might you get a fire because you over tax the battery or charging circuit? Maybe.

i thought my solar battery IS agm... supposed to be sealed but mine has caps on top.. i live in philippines so it might be a china scam

 

[ragez0r]

i thought my solar battery IS agm... supposed to be sealed but mine has caps on top.. i live in philippines so it might be a china scam

i thought the power from wall outlet to ups battery is exactly how much i pull from the ups ... i havent done anything to it in the 3 months that ive had it and i barely have 4 seconds of power when there is a local power outage.... (common in this great country)...
also i googled ske gp650 specs and came up with nothing... got any other ideas ?

 

[ragez0r]

also my tower pulls 105-110 watts.. my monitor pulls 25-27 watts.. the sealed ups battery cannot be this bad....
hense the decision to want to change and upgrade the battery....

toss in an additional 5-20 watts for my fiber optics wifi modem... im barely pulling 200 watts....

 

[bill001g]

That is a rather low end UPS to begin with.

Mostly this will all depend on what they call duty cycle. How many minutes are the parts designed to run continuously.

If you look at the inverters used on solar stuff they cost a lot more because they are designed to be run 24x7x365. A UPS most times is designed to be run for a short time while you turn off your machine or maybe start a generator.

No way to predict. Could run fine or it could burn out the parts after a extended use.

I have always put larger ah batteries in my UPS when I replaced them but I never went to extremes like you are.

Your current UPS should last at lest 15 minutes with a 200 watt load. In a lot of cases as soon as the battery gets about 3 years old you start to see less and less time. Most do not make it to 5 years.

 

[ragez0r]

That is a rather low end UPS to begin with.

Mostly this will all depend on what they call duty cycle. How many minutes are the parts designed to run continuously.

If you look at the inverters used on solar stuff they cost a lot more because they are designed to be run 24x7x365. A UPS most times is designed to be run for a short time while you turn off your machine or maybe start a generator.

No way to predict. Could run fine or it could burn out the parts after a extended use.

I have always put larger ah batteries in my UPS when I replaced them but I never went to extremes like you are.

Your current UPS should last at lest 15 minutes with a 200 watt load. In a lot of cases as soon as the battery gets about 3 years old you start to see less and less time. Most do not make it to 5 years.

thank you.. im not too concerned about fire because here in Philippines my home is all concrete (and no.. not a jailcell)... ive sent an email to ske and i hope to get a response someday.. im Canadian so i try not to be racist.. however.. i do hate everyone... equally... .. but.. China....
but if the battery i want is 12v 50ah.. i believe that is 600wh.. so gives me more than 3 hours of pc time during a power outage (called brown out here)

is my Quebec brain wrong here?.. apart from the ups sending watts to the ups battery for extended period of time.. i dont see what could catch fire...

 

[bill001g]

You are taking thing too literally. The parts likely will not catch on fire they will just fail. Likely something inside a chip or say a capacitor melts and it just stop working.

The parts used to make these UPS are selected based on the run time. The parts are designed to say tolerate 10 minutes of getting hot because they then have hours to cool down while the batteries are recharged. Even just running the UPS with standard batteries you in effect wear out electronic parts. They have designed it so the parts will not wear out with normal usage.....at least until the end of the waranty

When you exceed the times the UPS are designed for the rate the part degrade accelerates.

 

[stonecarver]

https://www.cdw.com/product/apc-bac...id=AL!4223!3!!!!x!!!21163459171!&gad_source=1

As a proof of concept to what you are asking to do I did with the model in that link. But my reason was someone gave it to me so heck what could I do with it?

My solar panels and inverters were already up and running so I thought could this ACP be useful.

I had to remove the case and on it's side panel cut a hole for a cooling fan and a slit hole for a rocker power switch for the fan to cool the internal parts of the ACP inverter.

It became a great emergency little power source at night if we lost grid power. I used to power LIGHTS only nothing to demanding and not all the time.

So run time was limited.

But that little ACP inverter I NEVER plugged back into the grid AKA wall outlet for safety.
It was wired into 8 120 pound AGM batteries in the bank.

So to answer can it be done yes, should it be done it depends, could you run it everyday for hours with a heavy load not practical , for emergency most likely with COOLING but very limited at that.

If your planning on daily use look into a more robust off grid inverter.

 

[ragez0r]

oh no.. i just game on my poopy pc for 8-10 hours a day to keep my ptsd in check.. nothing else is connected to the back of the ups except a surge protector power bar.. which has a pc tower.. a monitor.. a fiber optics wifi modem and an empty slot that i occasionally use for a table fan....nothing more...

i do however respect that you use "solar?? to keep your ups battery charged.." im trying to use a "solar" system to power my pc, monitor and modem but the battery i have (well 2 now) drop from 14.4v to 12.9 volts after 2 hours.. which tell me the 300 watts per panel i have(3) are complete chinese BS... . also my entire ups cost me.. well i think its marked up there 1200 php which is roughly 30$cad at todays market

as for the inverter.. i have 2.. 1 scary Chernobyl looking one that is supposed to be 300 watts and one that is a modified sine wave inverter.. claims to be 100watts.. but gets hot to touch simply running my pc tower and nothing else after 1 hour.. both inverters are 12v....

 

[Silas Sanchez]

I have good news and bad news.
The bad news is that idea is very very bad and doomed to fail. The good news is I may be the only one can tell you this.

First off, you need to calculate the power consumption of the system in watt-hours. Without this you are going blind. To do this get a AC mains watt meter.

SLA is a cheap affordable type of battery usually designed for motorbikes, cheap flashlights etc. Their characteristic is poor calendar life unless you get a top brand name. SLA being lead acid requires frequent top ups (every few months at least) to prevent sulfation which means capacity fade and early demise. Combined with their awful specific energy and energy density they are just not the right way to go period.
I don't know how they can call a 7ah capacity a UPS? Any large load on such a small capacity would result in really bad voltage drop due to the Peukert effect.

On paper the 50ah has 600wh, but assuming a typical pc load (~15amps at 12V aswell conversion losses from inverter-which will be bad at this price) will bring the capacity down to probably ~70-85%capacity????? I'm too lazy to do the math and the quality of this cheap battery will be a big factor.

Your best bet by far is get a lithium ion battery as they have no sulfation problems and horrible voltage drop. Preferably Lifepo4 which sits at 160+wh/kg vs 35-40 for quality AGM.

As far as burning the charging parts. Usually the charging is a fixed output but with bigger capacity comes more work for it which may overheat the poorly under engineered charger.

Also that blub says 650VA which will be way too small for any significant PC, even my inverter with 700W surge can't start my old PC which chugs along at 93watts idle. The inrush is too much even after first charging the PSU's capacitors. Finally the cheapo stuff and their ratings are very dubious and I would take them with a grain of salt.

Serioulsy, these cheap things are a waste of money, when will people learn you have to spend some serious coin.

I don't know what "Solar bank battery" is, you could go something like an ecoflow??? or diy??? Personally I just use my portable camping system with 180ah lifepo4, a 50A victron mppt. When the power goes out, I use my thinkpad workstation laptop instead of my main PC, which draws 45watts average for heavy multitasking and my 30" dell screens draw around 26-28watts each. No way you gonna run 200watts of system draw off anything but a good lithium system.

 

[stonecarver]

I don't know what "Solar bank battery" is, you could go something like an ecoflow??? or diy??? Personally I just use my portable camping system with 180ah lifepo4, a 50A victron mppt.

Do solar panels need batteries? Find out the truth - SolarInfoWorld

When you set up a solar energy system, there are important decisions to be made. For example, do I want a grid-tied solar system, or do I want a standalone

solarinfoworld.com

Your right it does cost money and safety knowing what your doing. Again best answer for your purposed project is get a more robust sinewave inverter.

 

[ragez0r]

oh no.. i just game on my poopy pc for 8-10 hours a day to keep my ptsd in check.. nothing else is connected to the back of the ups except a surge protector power bar.. which has a pc tower.. a monitor.. a fiber optics wifi modem and an empty slot that i occasionally use for a table fan....nothing more...

I have good news and bad news.
The bad news is that idea is very very bad and doomed to fail. The good news is I may be the only one can tell you this.

First off, you need to calculate the power consumption of the system in watt-hours. Without this you are going blind. To do this get a AC mains watt meter.

SLA is a cheap affordable type of battery usually designed for motorbikes, cheap flashlights etc. Their characteristic is poor calendar life unless you get a top brand name. SLA being lead acid requires frequent top ups (every few months at least) to prevent sulfation which means capacity fade and early demise. Combined with their awful specific energy and energy density they are just not the right way to go period.
I don't know how they can call a 7ah capacity a UPS? Any large load on such a small capacity would result in really bad voltage drop due to the Peukert effect.

On paper the 50ah has 600wh, but assuming a typical pc load (~15amps at 12V aswell conversion losses from inverter-which will be bad at this price) will bring the capacity down to probably ~70-85%capacity????? I'm too lazy to do the math and the quality of this cheap battery will be a big factor.

Your best bet by far is get a lithium ion battery as they have no sulfation problems and horrible voltage drop. Preferably Lifepo4 which sits at 160+wh/kg vs 35-40 for quality AGM.

As far as burning the charging parts. Usually the charging is a fixed output but with bigger capacity comes more work for it which may overheat the poorly under engineered charger.

Also that blub says 650VA which will be way too small for any significant PC, even my inverter with 700W surge can't start my old PC which chugs along at 93watts idle. The inrush is too much even after first charging the PSU's capacitors. Finally the cheapo stuff and their ratings are very dubious and I would take them with a grain of salt.

Serioulsy, these cheap things are a waste of money, when will people learn you have to spend some serious coin.

I don't know what "Solar bank battery" is, you could go something like an ecoflow??? or diy??? Personally I just use my portable camping system with 180ah lifepo4, a 50A victron mppt. When the power goes out, I use my thinkpad workstation laptop instead of my main PC, which draws 45watts average for heavy multitasking and my 30" dell screens draw around 26-28watts each. No way you gonna run 200watts of system draw off anything but a good lithium system.

wow, first off, i will have to establish that i will only work with familiar tech, lithium is a no go for me.. if charging agm may cause issues for the ups. cant imagine what headache lithium will give me....

i just tested the tower to my wattometer.. it topped at 110 watts and idled at 96....

battery "claims" to be made in Germany.... company is dcpolarity...

 

[ragez0r]

i actually have 2 of the formentioned batteries linked in parallel (to maintain 12v) for my solar system, what are the chances i can replace the ups battery with those 2 ? instead of 1x 12v 50ah battery. i have 2... and connected to them is an mppt (glorified solar charge controller).. connected to the mppt is i dont know.. MAYBE 150 watts of solar power.. cant know for sure until i receive my clamp meter and visually see how many watts are flowing to the mppt...

can i keep these 2 batteries as is and link them to the ups and keep collecting solar power and have the wall outlest replace the remaining power that im using ???
i tried plugging in the pc tower to my scary chinese inverter.. but the voltage display on the mppt lcd is going down, not up.. which leads me to believe hat the 3 solar panels arent the 300watts+ each as advertised...

and PS the cable linking pos to pos and neg to neg is 6 gauge... i calculated for 200 watts max to flow between the 2 batteries and i completely forgot to calculate the watts that will flow between to balance out both batteries.. but i checked the cables all day when i linked em together.. and they were not warm to the touch...

 

[stonecarver]

At the stage your at and trying to figure things out you should look for the out of print but floating out there on the internet a magazine called Home Power.

Go back to when they started to publish in the late 80's there all on PDF's and you can see the pit falls and the how to stuff and come away with a great understanding and how to or not to make things work.

The earlier first few years of the magazine were the magic of making it work hands on vs later years more commercial focused.

Oh also if you do look and find the earlier copies on PDF's buckle up as your going to say they look like some dude printed them up off a home computer and well he did hence the title of the magazine.

The information in those old first few years is where the real value is.

Yes there are some completely out dated ways of doing stuff there as well but what your looking for is still relevant.

https://www.homepower.com/archive-browse

First and foremost please be safe.

Don't mix batteries of different amp hours and or types.

Have a fuse that cuts off batteries to inverter for safety.

On a 12 volt system lower gage wire is not only for safety but needed to move those amps to work load as in the inverter.

But again you need a more robust sinewave inverter.

 

[ragez0r]

At the stage your at and trying to figure things out you should look for the out of print but floating out there on the internet a magazine called Home Power.

Go back to when they started to publish in the late 80's there all on PDF's and you can see the pit falls and the how to stuff and come away with a great understanding and how to or not to make things work.

The earlier first few years of the magazine were the magic of making it work hands on vs later years more commercial focused.

Oh also if you do look and find the earlier copies on PDF's buckle up as your going to say they look like some dude printed them up off a home computer and well he did hence the title of the magazine.

The information in those old first few years is where the real value is.

Yes there are some completely out dated ways of doing stuff there as well but what your looking for is still relevant.

https://www.homepower.com/archive-browse

First and foremost please be safe.

Don't mix batteries of different amp hours and or types.

Have a fuse that cuts off batteries to inverter for safety.

On a 12 volt system lower gage wire is not only for safety but needed to move those amps to work load as in the inverter.

But again you need a more robust sinewave inverter.

i have a 80 amp fuse on the posaitve side between mppt and battery.. as for inverter.. since i will not be pulling more than 200 watts.. isnt the ups built in inverter sufficient ???

 

[stonecarver]

So to answer can it be done yes, should it be done it depends, could you run it everyday for hours with a heavy load not practical , for emergency most likely with COOLING but very limited at that.

If your planning on daily use look into a more robust off grid inverter.

 

[ragez0r]

im sorry, i thought i answered all that.. not practical no however not everyone is stupid enough to leave a socialist country where everything is free and dive into a capitalist 3rd world country but im here.. must tell you that im not all there .... i will be receiving a table fan sized.. fan.. that clips on straight to a 12v battery to blow on the inside of the ups casing...

as for inverter... does changing the storage amount need to have the output source changed ???

 

[bill001g]

Your problem with the inverter is how long it is designed to be used.

You can in a way think of this as your family car. The engine is designed to be used on your normal roads. You can run it at higher speed for short periods of time say to pass someone on a road. If you were to take this to a race track and run it at high speed for long times you will wear the engine out faster. Now if you spend lots of money you can buy a race car that is designed to run at high speed for long periods of time.

The parts used in a UPS are cheaper than say a solar inverter that is designed to run for constantly. The parts in the UPS are designed to only run for short times and then need to be turned off to cool completely. The parts in the UPS also have a much shorter "on" lifetime. Say the total time the parts can run is 20 hours. That would let you run the UPS say 3 times a year for 10 minutes each time. The UPS would last 40 years if used like that. If you could run it constantly the UPS would fail after 20 hours of continuous use.

Key thing here to think about is if you could just take the inverter out of a UPS for $20 why would you buy a solar inverter for $1000. Then again someone on ali-express likely does take inverters out of UPS and pretend they are solar inverters and then just close the site down when they get too many complaints.

 

[ragez0r]

Your problem with the inverter is how long it is designed to be used.

You can in a way think of this as your family car. The engine is designed to be used on your normal roads. You can run it at higher speed for short periods of time say to pass someone on a road. If you were to take this to a race track and run it at high speed for long times you will wear the engine out faster. Now if you spend lots of money you can buy a race car that is designed to run at high speed for long periods of time.

The parts used in a UPS are cheaper than say a solar inverter that is designed to run for constantly. The parts in the UPS are designed to only run for short times and then need to be turned off to cool completely. The parts in the UPS also have a much shorter "on" lifetime. Say the total time the parts can run is 20 hours. That would let you run the UPS say 3 times a year for 10 minutes each time. The UPS would last 40 years if used like that. If you could run it constantly the UPS would fail after 20 hours of continuous use.

Key thing here to think about is if you could just take the inverter out of a UPS for $20 why would you buy a solar inverter for $1000. Then again someone on ali-express likely does take inverters out of UPS and pretend they are solar inverters and then just close the site down when they get too many complaints.

i understand, but in my mechanics class i learned that as long as there is oxygen, petrol.. an engine will just go. at any speed.. all highways in my arrogant province are topped at 100 kph (60 mph for the rest of you)...

the ups is only used for the pc, monitor and modem, nothing else.. well occasionally a table fan that draws only 13 watts..... and that is only active.. lets say.. 12 hours a day ??? just because i intend to link the ups to larger batteries doesnt mean i intend to jam all my appliances into it...honestly if i can make my own ups, i would.. but i really want to continue absorbing the sunlight .. to reduce any reliance on grid power...

as it stands, i do have a.. umm.. modified sine wave inverter that has frightening mandarin all over it.. and 1000watts printed in yellow... however.. it does get hot to the touch if i only use my pc tower.. so heres a thought.. the only way i can charge my 2 solar bank batteries is solar power..... this ups.. or a trickle charger.. if you can tell me how i can plug in my 2 solar bank batteries to the grid (local power plant).. just to put into the batteries what solar cant.. im listening...

 

[stonecarver]

I gave you the off grid link to the Bible AKA Home Power magazine.

Like I said please get the early black and white copies of the magazine that started in 1987 and skim what you need and skip what you don't.

Do a two week crash read. I admire what your trying to do as most people would sit there in the dark.

It all comes down to parts and execution.

There is a wealth of information in the Home Power magazine.
From exploding batteries and to correct that from happening to all the way to keeping batteries topped off with and old motor on a water wheel if you have a stream to charge your batteries 24/7.


As far as charging batteries from the grid to than deplete batteries to use grid to charge up batteries in the end is just really using grid power with extra steps.

 

[NedSmelly]

FYI I’ve found the specs (more or less) for your UPS. Charge current is 1.0A. So if you’re charging the 50Ah battery on-grid via the UPS circuit, it’ll take around 2 days to charge from deep discharge.

A regular car battery bulk charger delivers around 4-12A. Rule of thumb for charge speed vs battery life is C/10 - i.e. 5A for 50Ah.

 

[ragez0r]

I gave you the off grid link to the Bible AKA Home Power magazine.

Like I said please get the early black and white copies of the magazine that started in 1987 and skim what you need and skip what you don't.

Do a two week crash read. I admire what your trying to do as most people would sit there in the dark.

It all comes down to parts and execution.

There is a wealth of information in the Home Power magazine.
From exploding batteries and to correct that from happening to all the way to keeping batteries topped off with and old motor on a water wheel if you have a stream to charge your batteries 24/7.


As far as charging batteries from the grid to than deplete batteries to use grid to charge up batteries in the end is just really using grid power with extra steps.

thank you, i have your "bible" link open here i will try to skim through it at my leisure
no what i actually want to do is tie in my solar system as much as possible to reduce my dependance on local electricity gradually.... although most local power comes from a geothermal power plant.. some of it is primitive coal power...