APC UPS battery backups

[opentoe]

Every APC I have ever owned has had a failed battery in 2 years or less. I've went through them like wild fire since they are out of warranty there isn't much I can do. And the cost of replacement batteries literally are just as much as a new model. And trust me, if you find a really cheap battery replacement they only last a few months at least. I'm guessing a lot of you aren't using a UPS for your media server, it would almost take a commercial solution for most, but what does everyone use as a battery backup these days? I can't keep filling the pockets of APC. I'm ready to do away with all battery backups and just buy really good line conditioners which last a lot longer.

[sadkisson]

I am using APC 550. Have not had any issues so far. Have had it in service for a little over 2 years.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842101343

[jumperalex]

You should look into the temps your battery is reaching.  That is the #1 killer of batteries is heat.  Make sure your UPS has good air flow and consider that some do better at keeping their battery cool. 

 

My Cyberpowers always kill batteries in two years and i know why.  Despite having good airflow space, the batteries themselves are very enclosed with a lot of heat near them from the innards.  Result: they "idle" at about 38c (based on no-contact temp sensor).  I compare that to my recent purchase of a SmartUPS-750 which reports the battery temp is 27c

 

I have no doubt my SmartUPS batteries will last longer despite using almost identical batteries as my Cyberpowers.

 

Replacement batteries, quality batteries, are not that hard to get at a decent price and cheaper than a new UPS.  As for a line conditioner vs a UPS, that is your call but it won't do anything to protect you from power outages and they are not even mutually exclusive.  If you have really dirty power that a typical line interactive UPS can't handle, then either an online/double-conversion UPS or line conditioner is a good idea.  But the line conditioner alone will not keep your severs online.

[unevent]

APC is notorious for floating at the highest volt per cell or even over-volt per cell which that and heat kills the batteries in short order.  The float voltage is set in the firmware and is very difficult to adjust even if you find someone else that has done it (Google).  I run a smart 1500 rack mount where every two or so years another $60 in batteries are used.  I buy my batteries from atbatt dot com.

[mrow]

Is recommend Chrome Battery batteries. They can be had for a great price with free shipping on Amazon. I've been using them for years to replace my UPS batteries.

[BobPhoenix]

I use APC and I've never had that problem.  I use many UPS's and don't overload them (1500s mostly a few 1000s as well) so that might make a difference.  If the load is over 40% I get another one and move stuff off it to another to get it below 25-33%.  My living room UPS shows 156 Watts out of 780 for instance (powering Satellite system, Ivy Bridge i7 3770s, N54L, Gateway Laptop, Access Point, DirecTV DVR).  I was using X7SBE MBs and Q6600s in basement so the power draw was higher then my C204 class Sandy Bridge PCs now but I've added 30 more HDDs so that probably pushed power draw higher not lower on my UPS's even though the drive power went down as well.

 

Here is my list of UPSs.  The CyberPower 1000s were to replace my APC 1500s but I found they were too small for my ESXi servers so they are not currently being used.  Keep them as backups.

APC: 2  RS BR1500LCD (old version - 3 1/2 years old), 1 RS BR1500VA(8 year old UPS my first or second APC UPS - replacement battery 3yrs - real APC replacement battery however), 1 XS1500LCD (2-3 years old), 1 RS BR1300LCD(4 years & 1 month old - replacement battery 2 weeks not real APC), 1 XS1000LCD(~2 yrs old), ES750 (1st or 2nd APC I purchased never replaced battery but probably should on client PC in bedroom so don't really care more for surge than UPS)

CyberPower: 1 CP1500PFCLCD (2 weeks old), 3 CP1000PFCLCD(3-9 months old).

 

Since the RS BR1300LCD battery died recently I expect the 2 RS BR1500LCD's to die soon since they were purchased within 8 months of each other.  My oldest UPSs were MGE and both are now gone in a landfill probably but purchased them 16 years ago and used them up to 8 years ago.  10 years ago I got a CyberPower 1500 which was still in use until 4 years ago. It is also dead but taking up space in my basement.  I have another RS BR1500 UPS that is dead.  I got it about 3 years ago but it shorted out so I bought the XS1500LCD to replace it.  Just recently opened it (bad RS BR1500LCD) to use the battery in my RS BR1300LCD but found the battery casing was split open.  It evidently was dropped when it was shipped to me and was probably the reason it shorted out.  But as you can see my batteries have lasted quite a while even the genuine replacement has lasted 3 years.  The non-genuine replacement is only 2 weeks old so too soon to tell how long it will last but I bought the 9 amp rather than the 7.5 amp so am hoping it will last years as well.

[snowboardjoe]

I used APC's for the past 25 years both at home and in business.  The Back-UPS and Smart-UPS models were very reliable and I did make a point to change the batteries about every 3 years which is reasonable.  About 5+ years ago I purchased some of the compact/desktop units that had no display or controls.  They looked like an engorged power strip.  Those started to fail me a year or two after purchase.  New batteries did not help either.  The electronics were inferior compared to the more heavy duty line. 

 

I switched to CyberPower and I've been pretty happy.  They have good electronics and fit the budget better.  I would still consider the non-desktop APC UPS's as good products, but CyberPower is excellent competition IMHO.

 

When I purchase UPS's I spec out models that will not exceed 50% of its capacity.  Unless I need to extend the time, I configure attached computers to shutdown after just being on batteries for 5 minutes (if power ain't restored by then, it ain't comin' back for a long time).  Lead acid batteries are not intended to be drained and it will definitely shorten their lives after a few cycles of that.  Several have mentioned heat which also plays a factor (our home sits at about 70oF year round here in Seattle).

[garycase]

I've had no issues with batteries for any of my APC units.  As long as stay away from the low-end units without AVR, and keep them where they have good airflow, then the batteries should easily last 3 years or so.    This is true for any quality UPS unit ... whether APC, CyberPower, etc.

 

The simple fact is that a new set of batteries every 3 years or so is simply part of the cost of the "insurance" that a UPS provides against power-related issues.

 

[korith]

I use an apc es 550 ups. Every once in a while office depot will have them on sale. A few black fridays ago office depot had them for sale fairly cheap, I think in the $25 range, ended up getting a few. The batteries seem to hold a charge for a few years for me, 3 years like the others mentioned sounds about right. Once battery dies just end up using it like a regular surge protector or tossing it out. Replacing batteries seemed more costly.

 

[mrow]

Check out the brand battery I mentioned above. You can typically find the battery for that model on Amazon for $18-19 bucks with free shipping. They're super simple to replace on that model too. I have 4 that I got from work that were being throw out because of a bad battery. Found those batteries I mentioned and they've been running great for about a year and a half.

[opentoe]

Thanks for all the replies and suggestions. Having my father with the same problem eliminates isolated issues in my home. He has had several APC's drop dead on him way before 2 years. I can't remember how many watts/amps my array takes, but most of the current home models didn't have the capacity to keep my server up for even a couple of minutes. I think there was one CyberPower unit that came pretty close that I was looking to try. I don't necessarily mean to keep the server up and running during power outages, more of an insurance to have time for a clean shutdown really. All of the APC's I have owned were all taken care of, well ventilated. Hearing some other people had issues, especially with those smaller ones kind of confirms my thoughts on APC's quality these days. I'll have to connect my meter to my server to see again how many watts/amps it uses.

Thanks.

 

[garycase]

... but most of the current home models didn't have the capacity to keep my server up for even a couple of minutes.

 

If you're under-sizing your UPS (which sounds likely) you'll not only not have adequate run-time, but this will also cause premature battery failure.    This may be why you're having so much trouble with the UPS units.

 

[jumperalex]

^^^ This ^^^

 

Two factors:

 

1) You will tend to generate more internal heat which kills batteries.  Even with good ventilation, those compact UPS just don't do a good job (read: yes poor design from all brands) of isolating the batteries from the heat generated by the electronics

 

2) All power-loss events over time will put a large drain on the battery.  Even UPS batteries, designed to better hand deep discharge, lose capacity with each successive deep discharge.  That is why sizing a UPS and choosing up-time before shutdown is a important and a delicate cost-benefit tradeoff. I rarely lose power, but if it were a daily/weekly occurrence for me I'd probably size my UPS such that I can shutdown my equipment with at least 75% of battery left if not more.  That is, also taking into account the runtime I wanted to maybe ride out typical very short power dropouts.

 

Now mind you I'm not trying to argue that maybe quality has gone down over time, or that marketing materials for consume-home grade UPS's isn't miss leading (often selling big load numbers with small batteries). But once you step up to something a little more business class and correctly sized, you're likely to have better results regardless of the brand you buy.

[garycase]

The low-cost UPS units are indeed NOT a good choice for reliability.  Never buy a unit without automatic voltage regulation (AVR) [this keeps it from switching back & forth to the battery/inverter during brownouts or overvoltage situations] ... and absolutely be sure you've sized it to provide ample runtime.

 

You've spent a lot of $$ on a nice server ... don't skimp out on power !!    Never use the bottom-end power supplies or the lower-end UPS units and you'll likely have far less hardware issues.

 

[betaman]

I've noticed recently that my Pioneer plasma, NAD receiver, DirecTV DVR, TWC modem and Cisco wireless router plus a 5 port switch can peak at almost 4kW with bright scenes playing on the Pioneer(where avg consumption is around 2.1kW).  All of these items are being fed into a Monster HTS 5100 power conditioner and the conditioner is plugged into the battery backup portion of a Cyberpower UPS.  Currently, I'm only using a 600 Watt unit (CP1000PFCLCD) as I only need it to keep the modem on long enough to send the shutdown command from my UnRAID server to my PC (on separate battery backup in a different room) and I got it more for the AVR functionality for the TV set.  Every now and then the overload alert comes on.  I'm in the process of upgrading this unit to a 900W model (CP1500PFCLCD) but I guess I'm confused on the overload condition.  Do I really need to supply 75% of the peak consumption (4kW) with a UPS to avoid this condition (i.e. having to split the devices to separate UPS's)?  I've never really had a battery issue in the past but I was using an APC BackUPS XS-1500 in the past (with no AVR).  I got the Cyberpower to try out and liked it but I guess it's too small for this application?!  Now I'm wondering if the 900W unit will be enough to avoid overload?

[garycase]

You are significantly overloading your UPS ==> you should NOT have the plasma unit plugged in to the UPS at all.  In fact, the HTS 5100 shouldn't be plugged into the UPS either.

 

A high-end power conditioner like the HTS-5100 is designed to provide noise isolation, filtering, and surge protection for high-energy components like home theatre receivers, plasma TVs, etc.    These are the same functions a UPS provides, but without the battery backup.    If you want battery backup for the plasma, you'll need a significantly larger UPS unit !!    Normally a plasma would not be on a UPS (due to the very high current draw) ... and if you DO want it on one, it should be able to supply the full power that it draws ... i.e. over 2kw.    A UPS with this capacity is significantly more expensive than the typical consumer units usually used for UnRAID systems ... e.g. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842101474

 

And I would absolutely NOT plug the NAD receiver in to the UPS !!  Use the HTS 5100 for that.

 

With the equipment you've listed, I'd use the HTS 5100 for the Plasma and NAD;  and a small UPS for everything else.    But if you want the Plasma on a UPS, get a commercial grade UPS like I just listed; and use it for the Plasma and all the other components EXCEPT the NAD; and use the HTS 5100 for it.

 

 

[jumperalex]

You need way more UPS capacity (battery and load) than you are planning for.

 

If you are referring to my "75%" statistic then you are looking at it wrong, or you said it weird to my eyes (I'm totally willing to accept that possibility).  But what I was suggesting is that if you experience regular power outages (there are users on this board that talk about losing power on a daily basis, for large portions of the day) then you are seeing many cycles on the battery.  Compared to those poor souls I just mentioned, literally 180x more cycles than I see based on my 2x power outages last year. 

 

If you cycle a battery that often, and you draw 50% of its total capacity (read: 50% battery remaining) are you going to have a dead battery very very fast.  Even deep cycle batteries do not like being that deep cycled that often.  To make sure that battery has a chance to live for more than a few months you want to size it, and shut down the server at such a time, to ensure that each power cycle leaves you at about 75% power remaining.  The less frequent your power loss the less you need to worry about each cycle degrading your battery.  But at some point you still need to worry about the UPS load capacity and you still want a reasonable amount of battery time to ride out short power drops.

 

As for your overload situation, you are overloading the electronic circuitry which is different, but related, to the fact that when you lose power I can only imagine how fast your UPS drains.

[jumperalex]

PS the only thing plugged into my HT UPS is the Dish Network DVR so that programs can still keep recording during power outages.  So long as heavy snow hasn't blocked my signal, ain't no one keeping me from recording my stories!!!

 

Everything is, as gary suggests, is just plugged into a good surge surprsessor.  I have no need to keep my TV powered during an outage, nor my amplifier.  A complete waste of battery.

[betaman]

Ok, the only thing I thought was important wrt the plasma was the AVR.  Did I misunderstand the capabilities of the HTS 5100 as I didn't believe it had AVR capability?  I inherited the unit so my overall understanding of its capabilities is limited.

 

In general, thanks for all the detail garycase and jumperalex.  I'll immediately take the HTS 5100 off the UPS and move all the internet related equipment as well as DVR off the HTS 5100 and onto the UPS.

[opentoe]

What does everyone think of this UPS? My unraid server pulls 200 watts constantly and 1.5 amps. I don't spin the drives, since I'm constantly using them and they are always being written/deleted from. This UPS looks sufficient enough, I'm also trying to get away from the APC name too.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842111050

 

 

[jumperalex]

OMG I was going to ask how the hell you are pulling that many watts and then I saw you had all black drives   I bet that is even without a monitor isn't it?

 

Based on their half load runtime I'd say you'll get 20-25 min run time out of it.  Though I wouldn't let it run for more than 10min before starting shut down to keep from deep cycling your battery.

 

As for how good it is ... newegg reviews aren't too great [shrug], amazons are better.  But both only show 14 and 18 reviews respectively.  Anecdotes aside, there is a reason "everyone" uses APC.  The trick is, all "consumer desktop" book-sized UPS are not made to the greatest tolerance or with the greatest heat management.

 

something like this should give better results: http://www.amazon.com/APC-SMC1000-Smart-UPS-120-Volt-Uninterrupted/dp/B007ZT2K9I/ref=sr_1_19?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1394579825&sr=1-19  Or consider going used / refurb like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/APC-SUA750-SMART-UPS-750VA-500W-USB-120V-TOWER-POWER-BATTERY-BACKUP-UPS-/290983571758?pt=US_Uninterruptible_Power_Supplies&hash=item43bff8f12e

 

I went the ebay route for obvious cost reasons with this exact UPS, from this exact vendor and am pretty happy with it.  Though I admit I need more time to fully review it.  I've had it for about 3 months now

[unevent]

What does everyone think of this UPS? My unraid server pulls 200 watts constantly and 1.5 amps. I don't spin the drives, since I'm constantly using them and they are always being written/deleted from. This UPS looks sufficient enough, I'm also trying to get away from the APC name too.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842111050

 

With similar price, better features such as true sine wave output vs. the Omni stepped approximation, my vote would be for http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842102134.  Batteries are similar in price.

Newegg side-by-side comparison

[garycase]

What does everyone think of this UPS?

 

It's fine.  Tripp-Lite is a good brand that's been around for a good while.  Any of the major makers ... APC, Tripp-Lite, CyberPower, etc. are fine as long as you get one of their higher-end units with AVR.    True Sine-Wave output is nice to have (and better for the most sensitive electronics) ... but not nearly as important as good voltage regulation.  ALL of the makers low-cost units without AVR should be avoided ... e.g. I wouldn't use an APC ES series if they paid me to do it 

 

The CyberPower True Sine-Wave unit noted above is also a very nice unit, although it has less than half the full-load runtime as the Tripp-Lite.  Either would work well for what you want to do.

 

[opentoe]

What does everyone think of this UPS? My unraid server pulls 200 watts constantly and 1.5 amps. I don't spin the drives, since I'm constantly using them and they are always being written/deleted from. This UPS looks sufficient enough, I'm also trying to get away from the APC name too.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842111050

 

With similar price, better features such as true sine wave output vs. the Omni stepped approximation, my vote would be for http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842102134.  Batteries are similar in price.

Newegg side-by-side comparison

 

I'll end up grabbing this one...been a while since I've even had the time to get back to it.

 

[opentoe]

OMG I was going to ask how the hell you are pulling that many watts and then I saw you had all black drives   I bet that is even without a monitor isn't it?

 

Based on their half load runtime I'd say you'll get 20-25 min run time out of it.  Though I wouldn't let it run for more than 10min before starting shut down to keep from deep cycling your battery.

 

As for how good it is ... newegg reviews aren't too great [shrug], amazons are better.  But both only show 14 and 18 reviews respectively.  Anecdotes aside, there is a reason "everyone" uses APC.  The trick is, all "consumer desktop" book-sized UPS are not made to the greatest tolerance or with the greatest heat management.

 

something like this should give better results: http://www.amazon.com/APC-SMC1000-Smart-UPS-120-Volt-Uninterrupted/dp/B007ZT2K9I/ref=sr_1_19?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1394579825&sr=1-19  Or consider going used / refurb like this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/APC-SUA750-SMART-UPS-750VA-500W-USB-120V-TOWER-POWER-BATTERY-BACKUP-UPS-/290983571758?pt=US_Uninterruptible_Power_Supplies&hash=item43bff8f12e

 

I went the ebay route for obvious cost reasons with this exact UPS, from this exact vendor and am pretty happy with it.  Though I admit I need more time to fully review it.  I've had it for about 3 months now

 

My idea of buying only the "black" series drives was for the extra warranty period. I would have definitely bought all green drives if they had a 5 year warranty.