Long life UPS batteries available in Canada

Hydraglass · 2025-02-07T14:26:49+00:00

Everyone always needs new UPS batteries right? My problem is, my one UPS is strictly for my bell fiber and my home router (netgear), thats all that runs on it - maybe 15W of total load - and its the "more critical" ups on my network, as with those two on, if the power goes out we still have wifi for our phones and laptops. I have a relatively run of the mill CyberPower 1500VA UPS that has qty 2 of the 12V 9A lead acid batteries in it. Even with "cheaper" lead acid batteries it is about $100 to replace the two of them, and with "better" ones its about $125-$130. The UPS was only like $200 to start with. Here's my problem though - our power only goes out or blinks here about once every 18-20 months, but always seems to do it at the most inopportune time, like while my son is working with his tutor on a teams call, or my wife or I are in teams meetings for work, or my wife is in the middle of her online yoga class on Zoom. And without fail, almost every time, the batteries in the UPS have gone bad without warning and the UPS just shuts off. Someone has to come down to the basement, press and hold the power button on it, and then it comes back on (and claims the batteries are fine) - but if you pull the cord it turns right back off. So - I go and order 2 new batteries at $100, put them in, and it works fine - I test it a few weeks later - it's still fine - I forget about it - and the next time the lights blink the batteries fail and our internet turns off again and everyone's upset. Not sustainable - unhappy wife and kids - unhappy life. So - to the question - are there any suppliers or products available to us here in CA that sell "super extra long life heavy duty" lead acid (or drop in replacement for lead acid) UPS batteries that'll sit in the UPS for 5, 7, maybe 10 years and function when needed - I don't care if they are $200 per battery - I just need them to last "forever" and work when needed. I know my other option is to buy one of the LiFePO4 power stations that offers UPS pass thru - like Oukitel or Ecoflow - but that gets even more expensive (coming in around $800-$1000 for a 1000 watt unit) and I don't know how well they would like their LiFEPO4 batteries sitting at 100% charge 100% of the time other than 5 minutes once every 18 months.

[deleted]

Guspaz Just attach an external LifePo4 batt to your ups. look few posts above for pic.

Hydraglass

[deleted] The concern I've seen with just using large external lifepo4 batteries is the float voltage - apparently LiFePo4 batteries are good to charge to something like 14.5v for the 4S configured pack, BUT, they don't like to float above something like 13.5VDC (27 for 2 in series)-- have you checked what your float voltage from your UPS is? Lead Acid can float to something like 13.8VDC (27.6 for 2 in series) and I read a lot of the UPS units sit around there on their "maintain" voltage which will severely shorten the life of the LiFePo4 battery pack - since they are something on the order of $250 for a 12V100AH battery or $500 for a 24V100AH - it's not a cheap battery I just want to throw away after 2 years because the UPS burned it up. I'll be digging into mine today to see what shape it's in currently, and I may try load testing the batteries outside the UPS to see what happened to them, and may check what the charge and float voltage of my UPS is. I also don't really need that much capacity so I may see what I could get 2 of the 25AH12V or one 25AH24V batteries for -- considering the lead acid are just 9AH - my capacity right now is 9x24 or 212Wh --- if I went to 25AH24V that would be 600Wh - or almost 3 times the capacity. (100Ah is serious overkill - that would be 2400Wh - I could run the UPS for like 48 hours on that with my 50W load).

[deleted]

Its my understanding that the BMS will not allow the battery to be overcharged. Its been a year with a couple batteries and a bit less with others that I have and I have seen no degradation, the calibration results are exactly the same.

I have tested the current that is going into the battery after the UPS think it's fully charged it, and its practically zero, just a few milliamps.

I'm willing to give this a try, since I cannot find any source of good quality SLA batts, for reasonable price. All my UPS'es are SmartUPS 1500 , which use 2x18ah 12v batteries, which nowadays cost about $140-160 for a set, and I have been replacing them every 2-3 years in the past 5-6 years. The price is only going higher.

Dick

Hydraglass , most LiFePo batteries have a 1C discharge rate.

These LiFePo batteries have a max discharge current of 12A and would be a drop-in for the 12V 9Ah.

I guess if you draw less than 250W, they could work for you.

These ones seem to be decent VRLA batteries.
Another source

By the way, many UPS chargers that use 2 batteries in series have no balancing circuit. You often find one battery floating way too high and the other one getting no charge.

Hydraglass

Dick By the way, many UPS chargers that use 2 batteries in series have no balancing circuit. You often find one battery floating way too high and the other one getting no charge.

This is a good point - my UPS just has the batteries with a jumper in series - there's no center-point management or BMS control - it just puts out about 28V during charging. Chances of today's LeadAcid batteries being matched well enough to have equal internal resistance and float characteristics is probably low - meaning one battery may be charging to 12 and the other to 16, and thus cooking the one while the other never gets up to proper voltage. LiFEPo4 batteries with a built in BMS system designed to be series and/or parallel connected would eliminate that issue as each individual BMS would manage the battery up to where it needs to be and then shunt any power past it.

I definitely don't need more than 250W - I've got a Bell HomeHub3K fiber router and a Netgear Nighhawk RS500 wifi router plugged into it - my Kill-A-Watt says they suck down a total of 36W continuous. Those 12A(1C) rated batteries should do fine, and they are 12AH vs my 9AH, giving me 30% more capacity at the same time. Price is about 2X cheaper lead acid batteries but if they last 5-6 years I've got no complaints.

[deleted]

Dick

Dick By the way, many UPS chargers that use 2 batteries in series have no balancing circuit. You often find one battery floating way too high and the other one getting no charge.

That's why i got a 24v LifePo4, so it would be one battery instead of two in series. it's working great.

Sparky77

Friendly neighborhood battery guy here... (Laz on the old site) - Lifespan of a lead acid battery is 5 ish years... some will last longer, some not so long - but that's about what you can count on.

The smaller 12v blocks (12v7, 12v9, 12v12, etc) it doesn't really matter the manufacturer - PowerSonic is good, but they're a consumable... Not until you get into larger, more advanced UPS, do they properly float/manage the battery, and I've yet to see a consumer grade UPS that temperature compensates battery charge.

Thane_Bitter

FrathosCAN

FrathosCAN inspect your UPS batteries at least once per year to see if they've started swelling

True, also test the voltage of each battery (disconnected from other ones), In a perfect world one has a big ceramic resistor to put a load on so you can test current and voltage just for good measure. Once those things swell up they can be a mega PITA to get back out of a UPS that involves having to totally power it off, pulling it out of the rack, remove the top that is held on with too many screws and then go at it with more internal disassembly with crowbars.

Thane_Bitter

That does sound like the APC is not playing nice with its cells, I don't know anything about that design so I cannot help you figure out what the issue is. On older APCs it was possible to either edit settings in the microcontroller and or making a few adjustments to the resistors to make the charge voltage a nominal amount.

« Previous Page