Ups

[Kevin Vlies]

Hi i have 5 ups each one 500 va. I got them at an office but the batteries aren't working anymore can anybody give me an idea what i can do with these things? And is it possible to put a bigger battery in it ?

Thanks.

[Joe Blake]

I have a smallish UPS which has a replaceable battery, but won't take a bigger than standard. So I have the UPS plugged into my inverter from my solar array batteries. The UPS runs my computer and screen, I can run a fairly small inverter (150 Watts) because I discovered that trying to boot my older (bigger) computer of the inverter directly was not possible, because the high start-up power draw of the HDD and the processor going flat chat was too much. However, when I plugged my UPS into the circuit, that carried sufficient power to get the computer booted up and once it was running, it drew much less power, and could keep the current flowing into the UPS to keep to UPS battery fully charged.

If I have a dull day and there's no sunshine, I plug the UPS into the mains power. If the mains power goes off (as does happen) I've got about 5-10 minutes to transfer the UPS from mains to inverter, so unless I'm outside and don't know the mains power has gone, it doesn't cause any problems.

I suspect it wouldn't be too much difficulty to hard wire an external 12 volt battery into the UPS, but once I nutted out the above solution, if no longer needed to be considered.
Joe

[Kevin Vlies]

Great Joe thanks for the info !!:D

[Patrick Trogothzon]

Hi!
I live in northern Sweden and during the winter it gets really cold outside, -30C and colder.

The central heating is often fired by wood (i know: bad English) and stored in accumulator tanks 1000-3000 liters. When the fire is producing 40-60 kW and the mains goes down and all pumps stops it is not so funny.

My tip to neighbors is to buy a 300 W UPS (with a 12 V battery), throw the original battery an use a car battery instead. It's simple, just attach (hard wire) cables to the original battery cables and down to the car battery. The charger in the UPS *will* charge the battery in a reasonable time. It's designed to charge the original battery quite fast.

In my house i have a big monster: "APC 2200 XL" with a extra battery pack. It serves my server, wireless broadband, switches and on top of that my pellet burner (Janfire Flex A (http://www.janfire.com/eng/products/flexa.htm)) and all automation and pumps for the house. The battery's are coupled for 48 V. I would like to build a big savonius or something and charge the UPS!! I'm just crying for the low wind; 3 m/s in average....:(