A UPS that lasts?
- Thread starter svetz
- Start date
MurphyGuy
It just needs a bigger hammer
- Joined
- May 20, 2020
- Messages
- 4,129
A small UPS for what purpose?
At my home, we lose power for like 3 seconds about once or twice a week. Its not a big deal, except our desktop computers only take so much of it before one component or another decides to give up the ghost.
I pulled an APC UPS 750 Pro from someone's garbage. The battery was trash so I just threw it into the recycle bin and hooked up a large 12 volt marine deep cycle AGM battery to it.
It runs both of our desktop computers + two 27 inch monitors for about 2 hours.. Its been working for over 2 years flawlessly.. and I haven't had to replace a computer component once.
At my home, we lose power for like 3 seconds about once or twice a week. Its not a big deal, except our desktop computers only take so much of it before one component or another decides to give up the ghost.
I pulled an APC UPS 750 Pro from someone's garbage. The battery was trash so I just threw it into the recycle bin and hooked up a large 12 volt marine deep cycle AGM battery to it.
It runs both of our desktop computers + two 27 inch monitors for about 2 hours.. Its been working for over 2 years flawlessly.. and I haven't had to replace a computer component once.
robby
Photon Vampire
- Joined
- May 1, 2021
- Messages
- 4,118
I still have an APC 1500W and APC 1000W Smart UPS systems from 15 years ago. The first is for my AV room and the second for my computers. Both will run about 2-3 hours but there is one big Caveat with SLA batteries in all UPS systems. They do not like to be run down to often, (often being like 10-12 times). They are great for outages that last seconds or a few minutes but if you run them down to shutdown level they will have a short life. For example I will get 3 years out of the batteries but if at the 2 year point I have an long outage and they run down completely, they will typically not work after that and I get a low battery beep no matter how long I let them charge.
I run APC SmartUPS for my desktop computer. It works good for that, but the batteries last no more than five years. Power rarely goes off, but the UPS does kick in to cover low voltage when my laser printer first fires up. The last time I replaced the batteries one of them was labeled as 240v. That took me by surprise. I would have a tough time using plain lead acid batteries as a substitute.
I've considered doing a milkcrate build as substitute UPS instead. It would last longer and have a longer runtime than the APC, but at a much higher cost.
I've considered doing a milkcrate build as substitute UPS instead. It would last longer and have a longer runtime than the APC, but at a much higher cost.
wattmatters
Solar Wizard
Answering this question is key and it will determine the type of UPS (there are various grades of UPS) and the amount of storage it needs to have, and of course the cost.
We have half a dozen small UPS units for various devices, in particular for our internet connection and router but also for more sensitive electronics, computers, TVs and set top boxes.
I mostly have small Eaton units, with one CyberPower device. They've worked well for our needs.
Because we have a whole of home power backup system, the UPS units don't need to provide coverage for all that long so I expect pretty decent life out of them. Their main job is dealing with all the short duration power interruptions, the 1-3 second outages and to keep things running for the cutover period between grid going out and backup power coming on line (and back again). They handle this pretty well.
I have been buying these used on ebay for the past few years.
Industrial quality, I used many @ work for powering network equipment.
Currently have 4 of them in the house, powering the networks and computers.
I look for units being sold with no batteries so as to save on shipping.
Very important to be sure the “no batteries” UPS do include the battery wiring harness.
(I buy the batteries from DigiKey, Mouser, etc)
Emerson GXT3
Industrial quality, I used many @ work for powering network equipment.
Currently have 4 of them in the house, powering the networks and computers.
I look for units being sold with no batteries so as to save on shipping.
Very important to be sure the “no batteries” UPS do include the battery wiring harness.
(I buy the batteries from DigiKey, Mouser, etc)
Emerson GXT3
svetz
Works in theory! Practice? That's something else
My issue is the circuitry of the last few units, it's been electronic failures rather than battery failures within two years (they did honor the warranty, but a dead unit discovered when the storm hits isn't much help). Part of the problem is I've been using really cheap tiny ones as the draw is about 20 watts ... basically, it's stuff I don't want to reset during an inverter reset. I suspect quality control on those small units is non-existent.
Liking HRTKD's idea, possibly way over-thinking this. The device's wall-wart is a 9V DC output.
Wonder if I could consume one of those useless cellphone power pack bank recharger thingies from the treasure hoard? Never bought one, but have a few that were given to me (for a while it was all the rage). That is have the wall power it, and have it power the device with a boost converter. Let's say it's 20 watts, the biggest I have is 5V@1 amp... so that won't cut it.... would need to be at least 4 amps. So those guys are still useless.
Let's see if I put 3x 18650's together with a 9V voltage regulator and a LiFePO4 charging circuit that would be pretty reliable. Wonder if anyone has those ready-made to go?
Update:
Liking HRTKD's idea, possibly way over-thinking this. The device's wall-wart is a 9V DC output.
Wonder if I could consume one of those useless cellphone power pack bank recharger thingies from the treasure hoard? Never bought one, but have a few that were given to me (for a while it was all the rage). That is have the wall power it, and have it power the device with a boost converter. Let's say it's 20 watts, the biggest I have is 5V@1 amp... so that won't cut it.... would need to be at least 4 amps. So those guys are still useless.
Let's see if I put 3x 18650's together with a 9V voltage regulator and a LiFePO4 charging circuit that would be pretty reliable. Wonder if anyone has those ready-made to go?
Update:
- https://www.amazon.com/Battery-Backup-Uninterruptible-Security-10000mAh/dp/B07W8MCBMS
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099DWWSML
- https://www.amazon.com/Battery-Backup-10000mAH-Uninterruptible-Security/dp/B09CYVGFBP
Last edited:
I have several of the APC 350 units. Basically, big surge suppressor units. I get ‘em free all the time.
I throw the 7ah away, and put in a 9ah and it holds my tv up a few hours.
I have similar on my internet and when power drops out over an hour, I plug it into one of my solar generators.
For big stuff I use some of the apc 700’s or larger. I also have an ANCIENT triplite 750 I stuck a marine battery into… it’s big.
I like the rack mount stuff… I have a few 1400 to 3000 models… fun to tinker with.
I also have a 5500 model, with separate battery bank… but it outputs 240V no neutral… so limited usefulness I could run the range off it…
I throw the 7ah away, and put in a 9ah and it holds my tv up a few hours.
I have similar on my internet and when power drops out over an hour, I plug it into one of my solar generators.
For big stuff I use some of the apc 700’s or larger. I also have an ANCIENT triplite 750 I stuck a marine battery into… it’s big.
I like the rack mount stuff… I have a few 1400 to 3000 models… fun to tinker with.
I also have a 5500 model, with separate battery bank… but it outputs 240V no neutral… so limited usefulness I could run the range off it…
svetz
Works in theory! Practice? That's something else
$1.99 3S 20A 18650 Li-ion Lithium Battery Charger PCB BMS Protection Board
$5.99 9V 2x1.5A 9V IC
$9.99 3 cell 18650 holder
$20.00 18650 Cells
$750 Prusa i3 MK3S+ kit to fabricate a nifty holding box
-- stock -- Various USB connectors, wires, etc. (pulled out of stuff in the hoard)
====
$38 + 750 = ~$800
Diysolar123
Solar Addict
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2021
- Messages
- 675
I also use APC units, however...what I do is rewire them so they can support an external battery pack (xt90 for 24v packs, anderson powerpole for 12v packs) and then I plug in a lifepo4's; easy to do and last a lot longer than the usual SLA batteries that need to be replaced ever couple of years. Actually, I have yet to need to replace any lifepo4 packs.
Which APC units? Like I posted earlier, my SmartUPS 1500 uses a 240 volt battery.
Diysolar123
Solar Addict
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2021
- Messages
- 675
I have several different APC units (all "smart" units), the largers one are almost always 24V units (so I use an 8S lifepo4 pack), smaller units are 12V so thats a 4S candidate.
I do like the APC smart units so that a device can monitor via usb what is going on; I have a couple cyberpower units as well...
I have had several units die, but in florida lightning is an issue and well, nothing is going to stop a direct hit; fyi, direct lighting strikes are really really loud hehe..
When it comes to just providing power from simple overvoltage/undervoltage, hmmm.. it has been many decades but I think I can only recall one APC actually going "bad" where it was clear the controller board had failed.
when you want the MOST reliable devices, the right answer is almost always to get "server rack" commercial equipment...if you can afford it.
I have several APC units around the house in varying size and all have been reliable. We get occasional power interruptions lasting a second or two that cause the Tivo and DirecTv receiver to reboot which takes as long as 10 minutes. The same goes for my cable modem and router.
Samsonite801
Solar Wizard
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2020
- Messages
- 2,994
I like those APC UPS 750's too (I still have a few of them laying around). I have one where I took it apart, disabled the charger circuit on the main board, wired it up to 3 external Optima batteries (as I used an IOTA 55a charger to charge them separately), and I also put on a DC-DC regulated 12v power supply to run all the small devices like modem and routers with stable voltage off battery power.
I had also ran UPS Nut Tools ( https://networkupstools.org/docs/man/upsmon.html ) onto a rooted NAS to be a master, and when the battery bank would get down to 'LOW BATT' status on the UPS (had USB-to-serial cable connected between the NAS master and the APC UPS 750 ES), then it would shut down all the slaves (computers) and then shut itself down gracefully.
I like to integrate the safe shutdown strategy on my UPS solutions to gracefully unmount all filesystems to help avoid file corruption.
I have some old pics of it from around 2010 of it below. I don't run anything so fancy today though. Back then I ran a lot of lab stuff for personal training, but now work supplies me prettymuch any hardware I need at their site in the lab to learn about new stuff for my job on.
Today I just have a very simple setup with 2 NAS (one primary, one backup)...
Here's a couple of fun pics. APC 750 is the one on bottom left shelf in the rack, the IOTA charger is just to the right of that:
You can see my little black/red battery leads coming out of the UPS on the bottom right corner of it. I still have that modified UPS sitting around somewhere in the storage. That UPS I only had running one PC and two NAS's in that rack that I cared about, the rest of those servers were just for lab stuff so I didn't care if those lost power...
A few years ago, for my Stepdad, he wanted a backup power for his pellet stove (so it wouldn't smoke up his house when the fan/feeder would die on a power outage) so I wired him up an APC UPS 1500 VA (24v battery setup), where I hooked it up to 2 large external AGM 12v batteries in series (instead of the tiny internal batteries it had before). It would run his pellet stove for several hours on that.
You can always connect bigger batteries to them if you want, I just put jumper leads on them and run them outside the case or original battery tray of the unit. They will charge bigger batteries fine, it just takes a while longer to charge, which is why on the setup in the above pics, I installed the IOTA 55a charger so charging recovery would be faster than the APC UPS 750 ES could provide with the onboard charger.
Last edited:
Samsonite801
Solar Wizard
- Joined
- Oct 15, 2020
- Messages
- 2,994
Just recently, I dug up one of these old APC UPS 750 ES's out of my storage, and donated it, along with a small PC w/ SSDs (runs OpenMediaVault), also a backup Dlink NAS w/ HDDs (running ALT-F firmware), and Linksys switch, to our co-op for installing in the off-grid Welcome Center (powered by Sol-Ark 12k).
I also put UPS NUT Tools on that setup, for querying UPS battery status and performing safe shutdown. OpenMediaVault NAS code has a built-in plugin option for UPS NUT Tools, and so does ALT-F NAS firmware, so it was easy to get the system set up to talk to the APC UPS via cable (USB driver is included in OMV operating system).
It only draws around 53w (around 42w when secondary NAS HDDs spin-down) so the APC internal batteries were good enough (although I installed a new one), it lasts a long time on battery, at least an hour-and-something before it trips LOW BATT and shuts slave and master off.
Drives asleep:
Drives alive:
You could also easily install UPS Nut Tools onto a Raspberry Pi or any available Linux host if desired.
I also put UPS NUT Tools on that setup, for querying UPS battery status and performing safe shutdown. OpenMediaVault NAS code has a built-in plugin option for UPS NUT Tools, and so does ALT-F NAS firmware, so it was easy to get the system set up to talk to the APC UPS via cable (USB driver is included in OMV operating system).
It only draws around 53w (around 42w when secondary NAS HDDs spin-down) so the APC internal batteries were good enough (although I installed a new one), it lasts a long time on battery, at least an hour-and-something before it trips LOW BATT and shuts slave and master off.
Drives asleep:
Drives alive:
You could also easily install UPS Nut Tools onto a Raspberry Pi or any available Linux host if desired.
Last edited:
WoodsieLord
New Member
Personally, I'm a fan of Emerson's GXT series. I Also recommend them!
I bought a used GXT2 2kva unit a few years back. The only thing I didn't like about it is that my model was not able to cold start. Is the GXT3 able to cold start?
offtopic:
My first glances at solar power was running this UPS (gxt2) for hours with a smallish battery bank while being (re)charged by solar. That was my entry drug: Survived a neighborhood-sized power outage. I wanted MORE.
