Tiny AGM, short life - not RV
AGM battery in UPS in my home died after 5 years and zero cycles. Probably was dead for a while, only there was no power outage for the last 3 years. Yesterday blackout happened and it shut down imme...
Forum Discussion
theoldwizard1 wrote:wa8yxm wrote:
Many confuse GEL with AGM ...
I always thought those small UPS batteries were GEL cells. 5 years is a reasonable life.
AGM batteries in UPS units are a more recent thing. Within say the last 10 yrs or so AGM prices dropped enough to be close to Gelcell batteries to be not much more cost and perhaps a bit cheaper with AGM. Basically manufacturing costs have dropped making AGMs attractive to OEMs.
The OEM batteries in my newer UPS units are AGM, it is plastered on the sides of the batteries.. The oldest UPS I have is a APC from the 1990s came with Gelcells which also is plastered on the side of the battery.
theoldwizard1 wrote:
Folks who have larger size UPS should know that most we designed to NOT run continuously ! They shutdown either from time or temperature even if they have sufficient battery power remaining.
That is a myth perpetuated forever on the Interweb.
None of the UPS units I have encountered, have any such time or temperature limitations and are designed to run the full time with full load until the battery charge expires.. There are UPS units which have external battery terminals which allow you to add on additional batteries to expand the run time.
Smaller UPS units in small packages (like the surge protector style) tend to have very small batteries which means they will run for a much shorter time. They are all designed to operate the full time without overheating or shutting off before the battery runs out of charge.
I think where this myth originated from was folks "modifying" small surge protector style UPS units to run from an larger capacity external battery without the understanding that the small package of the unit was going to limit how much heat the unit was able to dissipate over time..
I have done that external battery mod many yrs ago on a APC 450VA UPS successfully. Used it to power equipment for many hrs at a time at flee markets. Powered PCs and stereos all day long and the unit never overheated or failed.. Still have that unit laying around since it was one that ran from 12V it was easy to mod.. Of coarse the APC unit I used was not a small compact surge protector style so the UPS had lots of ventilation.
