Mike, if you want to force the unit to relearn its endurance on battery power, you have to put about half a load to it, and execute the self test multiple times a day for about 3-4 days. Hold down the power button while its turned on for a total of 6 seconds. 2 seconds will power the unit off, and you get the single beep, DO NOT LET IT GO, continue to hold it for another 4 seconds and you will get a second beep, then release the button and it puts the unit into 'Self Test' which forces battery usage for 5 seconds. another way to help it relearn, is cycle the batteries, go full charge and then run them down on a roughly 80-100w load , when the unit dies, hold down the power button and force a 'brain dead' sequence upon it. hold the button for 5-15 seconds. APC Backups units have logical sense in them. clearing the logic by forcibly doing a logic brain dead procedure clears its prior memory of the batteries it once knew. after a few times of fully cycling the batteries you should start seeing some really impressive numbers as the unit re-learns the numbers as it works.
@@louistournas120 where are you getting that? the firmware doesn't even know how to display that so it would just say 999 or error out to ERR until it got back down to 3 digit capacity.
Instead of the conductive metal hose clamps, you could use large plastic zip ties pulled down tight - non conductive. And yes, those batteries definitely need vented to outside. Hydrogen has a very broad explosive range, 4.1 - 74% and very light, rises up.
Hi Mike. What you probably don’t know is that APC sizes their components to match the runtime of their batteries. Attaching a super large battery, and a full capacity load, will eventually cause most UPS models to overheat. Instead, use the TrippLite automatic PowerVerter if you want an external battery bank. That’s what I did 20 years ago. They are also fan-cooled.
I like the idea of the PowerVerter, but it does not have auto-switching from AC mains. I wonder if the PowerVerter could be simply installed behind the APC UPS, which means once the acid batteries run out, then the APC will take over for it's tiny 5-10 min and shut stuff down?
@@MAustinP Sorry for the late reply, but the PowerVerter does have an automatic version that auto-switches from the Mains should they fail. I know, because mine does that, just like an APC UPS. I have the 1200W model and it's attached to a 100AH deep cycle AGM battery. Please see TrippLite P/N: APS1250
Still going strong after 18 months. The UPS charging circuit brought the batteries all the way up after several days, and since the batteries are so large, it's as if the batteries are on a trickle charger, like they would be anyway. The minute counter on the display is still meaningless, because the UPS has no idea how big the batteries are, but it is somewhat useful for judging relative charge. The minutes just tick down at a much slower pace. I haven't needed to use them for more than about an hour or so since I installed them, and the internal charger on the UPS worked just fine. Now I plan to use my large auto charger if I run them down a lot so as not to strain the UPS charger circuit. So far so good... Stay tuned.
@@driftkings2740 Hey, yes, you can use car batteries. There is a comment down there that says as much. However, car batteries' thinner plates are not to be discharged very deeply. (Only about 10%) so size your batteries accordingly. Also, most car batteries do not specify a capacity, because they don't have to. All they care about is cranking amps. So, there's no way to know what you'll be able to achieve with them. Thanks for watching!
@Richardo Diaz Probably just want to run a longer cable and not install this sort of unit in the living room. Otherwise, looks like a bad-ass blueprint. Anyone else trying to game on green energy? Found an older Dell server that uses around 100watts under load, going to pair it with an external gpu and then an array of batteries and panels, and maybe just maybe, some way to capture wasted heat. If I ever build a house, I swear I'm rigging my waste heat to pex and setting up heated floors at the very least.
@@userhandle3378 I wonder if there would be a way to use a TEC to recover heat back to energy? Doubt it would be worth it, but I thought it was an interesting idea.
@Richardo Diaz it would be min off gassing as you would really need be pushing the changing amp up for that start happing but you could always go with Seal Lead Acid or AGM or Lithium-Ion Battery
I did the same thing a while back. This set up works but one thing has to be considered, UPS' are not design to work for extended periods of time. They have very small heatsinks on the Mosfet/transistors and most don't even include a fan to keep them cool so they end up getting damaged by overheating. Of course to help on this issue you can add your own fan.
Your comment is true for the cheap line-interactive UPS where the inverter stage is only working when the mains go off, but the more expensive dual-conversion units (2X to 3X cost) are designed to work full time and constantly supply clean inverted power. My Eaton 9125 dual-conversion units have internal fans that keep them cool. They also come with connections on the back of the case for plugging in an external battery pack to extend survival time eliminating the need to hack the insides of the unit as shown in this video.
You have to plug in the Data communication cable to the system and install the software and calibrate the battery and change the status as new battery it will give more backup hours
About "installing software to calibrate the battery and change the status as new battery it will give more backup hours", I just picked up a sine wave, APC BR1000MS to use with my 100 ah battery but it shuts off at the estimated runtime of the small batteries it would normally have. this is a bummer. my older model would run as long as the battery . can this new model be dumbed down to run for the amp hours I have? otherwise I just wasted $100 on this used thing that only runs for minutes. so bummed. I hope you can point me in a good direction to make this happen.
I know this is an old video, but you can calibrate the ups to those batteries. I found that out with two apc units I have. Just have to unplug let it run on it's normal load untill it is dead and re-charge. My one 1000Va was only telling me 7 minutes after I upgraded it's batteries, but now it shows 45 minutes which is still less but closer to real time. Enough time for me to get out the generator. Just something for you to try to get a better remaining time display.
The UPS was designed for lead acid batteries. I would NOT use batteries of a different chemistry (like lithium iron phosphate). Each chemistry has a characteristic voltage and applying a charging voltage that is wrong for the batteries that you install is dangerous. Nope.
There are 2 issues. If you attach a larger battery, when it needs charging, the internal resistance of the battery is low and will draw a lot of current. The charger circuit of the UPS would overheat. The other issue is that lithium ion batteries needs a specific circuit to charge them properly. I think, also, that they should not be overcharged. With lead acid batteries, overcharging just causes electrolysis of the water (emission of hydrogen + oxygen).
Thank you for this video. I have several heavy duty ups unit and wanting to experiment . Just gotta get inside the unit to rid that beeping when operating of batteries.
I have been doing that for years. The best wire that is about 10 gauge and flexible can be found at the automotive shop. I use heat shrinking tube over the connectors that I solder the wires to. In a tight spot getting the outboard battery(s) where you can service them is a real help.
Hello from Oklahoma-----Several years back, I did what you did by running two UPSs off of one car battery. Both UPSs operated on 12 volts so I got by with 1 battery. What I found out, and, what you are going to find out, is that the battery charging circuit in the UPS is not strong enough to keep a much larger battery charged. A trickle charger needs to be attached to the battery to maintain a charged up state so that when the power goes out, you will have a long run time. Yes, it will work for a while until the batteries go dead, which they will. In your case, with two 12 volt batteries, you need to put a charger on each one about once a week to maintain a charged up status. You can charge each one separately without removing the connector wire between your 2 batteries or removing any of the other battery wires.
Good post. I've measured the battery charging output on a UPS XS1300 at 300mA. So Large batteries obviously will take a long time to recharge if discharged even several Ah. Adding an external 1Amp charger would be a very good idea. It's what I did about 10 years ago with mine. Be aware that the extra runtime and charging time will push the capacitors on the board fairly hard and so you might need to check and or change them every year or two.
I did this on my tv and internet as well. I put a 12v 12ah battery on mine. Will run the tv and internet for well over 6 hours. It’s great and has been running for many years now.
Umm. 12V 12Ah means 144 watts for one hour or not more than 24 watts for 6 hours, not taking power losses into account. I seriously doubt your TV draws only about 18W. I think you are wildly exaggerating there.
If you are going to do this please install a full time vent system to the exterior. Maybe even move the batteries to a vented box outside and run your wires in. Gases from an unsealed lead acid battery are explosive, especially when overcharging. Like you stated, the UPS has no idea what type/size of batteries you connected. “So far, so good” are famous last words.
Open to the open house, is it a concern? I see hydrogen gas is flammable from 4-72% (an additional half volume of oxygen is also produced) at a rate of 27 cubic inches per AH. I wonder if human "off-gassing" of methane after consuming sauerkraut or beans has similar explosive concerns.
@@RemmikRotus I would yes put a venting system for the battery's as they will get a bit hot and because they are unsealed but again the charger literally has values LOWER than the battery's and no software is going to make that charger just overclock itself 80% that's not how it works
Thanks for the video, I liked your idea and now plan to execute on my BR1000G. Its internal battery are dead. Will the current from APC be sufficient for charging high capacity batteries? Any limitations to consider while choosing the battery size?
I’m currently adding 2 100a agm batteries in my suv for a power supply. Is it possible to take the display off my apc 1500pro and it displays everything as when It had the two 12v 7.5a batteries in it. It would just be nice to see all the information it displays
Hello. I have the same apc as you and when I doubled the size of my battery amp hours, my apc will still shut off with the same amount if time used as before my upgrade. How did you trick your apc to stay on longer than it was programed to be on from the factory with a specific amount of load? Very frustrated because I didn't get any benefits of doubling my batterys
If you're not using the shutdown software, the UPS will shut off based on battery voltage. This means you don't have to trick the UPS if you change the battery capacity. The bigger the battery, the longer it will take for the battery voltage to get down to the shut-off level, therefore you automatically get longer runtime. The only exception is that some APCs will automatically shut off if the load is too low for them to detect, but the manual shows you how to disable that feature.
Great idea, as I have an APC UPS Pro 1300 as well and the batteries are shot too, and I also have a used 12Volt LifePo4 battery too, this is excellent, thanks for sharing your knowledge man, much appreciated.
Float and voltage difference will kill your Lifepo4s. Good luck. This guy should have warned about lead acid (which is what most cheap UPSs use) and AGM voltage difference. Try to charge AGM with Lead Acid voltages and the cell will swell and short... Put a BMS on the Lifepo4s and you might have them survive. (Cut off high and low). Problem is, low cut off will lock the BMS in most cases and you need to manually charge the battery above the low cutoff
Lithium batteries use different charging methods than lead acid and they don't like to be trickle charged. Unless you have very specific knowledge about this I think you need to stick to lead acid batteries or as XiaorRulez mentioned maybe do your own battery management. I was an electrical engineer when lithium ion batteries came out and they were withdrawn from the market because they were catching on fire in Japanese cordless phones. Over the years lithium batteries have continued to catch on fire. They even caused an airplane crash. Personally I wouldn't mess with any kind of lithium battery for this purpose.
My first thought when I saw this video. This is why all indoor battery backups used sealed batteries. There is also more of risk generating more explosive gases with charging batteries from a drained state and charging with a charger that, like he stated, has no idea what batteries are attached. Improperly charging batteries can be very dangerous and having two of these indoors and in a cabinet is asking for trouble. “Good son far” but hope nothing bad ever happens. I have no idea but maybe even possible that the insurance could even deny a claim. With this being fully disclosed on TH-cam, it’s more build a case on.
@@RemmikRotus Aren't these marine batteries, intended for used in boats in the tiny enclosed space batteries normally are installed? You don't install batteries on deck or on the roof.
@@RemmikRotus those are sealed lead acid battery .. even if they are flooded they are still sealed. , And this ups charges at 3 to 5amp which is really low for this type of battery these can handle 50amp of charge. Normal alternators on car boats or rv are atleast 120amp capable. This setup will only harm the ups as the ups will have to work harder to charge such a large capacity of battery & long discharge timr
I just wanted to mention, that if you take apart the battery pack, it is two batteries connected by a card. You can remove the card and it is much easier to access the leads on the card. They are also marked as positive and negative. The card can only be inserted in the correct way. I plan to try this on my my network rack in the basement.
I would assume you could run this set up with the battery bank connected to a solar array, basically just converting the ubs to an inverter with lots of outlets?
What you did can be very dangerous depending on the UPS model. Some UPSes do not isolate their circuitry from mains. Always check for this per UPS before attaching an external battery.
i forgot what you did, but for anyone interested or if you don't already know- marine deep cycles operate slightly differently than normal 12V lead acids or gels. should be 13.4V When fully charged if not damaged inside too much. or maybe 13.2/13.3 is perfect health usually. Having a health tester is a godsend. really let's you know what's going on under the hood so to speak. But hope your setup is working ok! It must have some intelligent charging going on. So that's good. Any old ups would not be recommended for just any marine battery. Although they may work, they might be damaged or unreliable or just not perform as well as they could. Just saying from experience lol. plus always make sure it's a True deep cycle. They are between a starting and deep cycle, lots of people don't realize but some aren't fully deep cycle. Great video boss xD
The RS 1000 and 1500 models have an expansion port to add an external 24v battery pack, no drilling, no mod necessary. For safety, I'd only use SLA batteries.
im trying to find how much VA my UPS need but i cant find a good calculation. lets say my PC is using 200watt on 230volt and 1.26A. how long would a 1000VA UPS last?
Hi Mike, i'm gonna do the same thing with my old apc ups, the only point is the battery dimension and weight, unfortunatelly the only way to go is to use car batteries so i decided to use two of 100Ah so i should get enough power to keep my NAS up and running, i'm also thinking to add a solar panel to charge the batteries, so it will become a double UPS-Powebank project, great video!
@@ramborums You should calculate the current value for charging. Low current means more time for charging and that's not good if the power consumption is higher than the charging power...I'm thinking to change my project and build a big powerstation, i will powerup the pc with powerstation and at the same time i will keep the battery charged. In other words i will feed my NAS power supply with batteries, like a notebook, so i will avoid also power loss from the wall.
@@ramborums I'm guessing it should be fine. Canadian Tire sells small solar panels for delivering 12 V, for charging car batteries. They say it delivers 40 W, which means it can deliver 3.33 A with enough light falling on the photocells.
The big problem I've run into is voltage drop along the feeder lines from the battery to the UPS DC input, and also within the internal wiring supplying the inverter. I'm running an APC Smart-UPS 750 and under high load (250+ watts) the DC voltage across the inverter input (on the board itself) can be as much as 0.6V less than that measured at the battery terminals. It causes the UPS to think the battery is about to die even though it's not even close. I replaced the external feeders with 10awg and this reduced the voltage drop to about 0.3V, and my next step is to replace the internal wiring with 10awg as well as eliminate as many of the spade connectors as possible as they are all sources of higher resistance and therefore voltage drop. I'd expect the 16awg extension cord you're using to suffer quite a lot of voltage drop; what, if any, issues have you had with that in your case? edit: Be advised, when you calculate the number of amps using I = P / V , the number you get is the *average current* drawn, averaged over time. In reality, the current drawn from the battery is not a constant current, it is a pulsating current consisting of periods of current draw, and periods where little current is drawn. Thus, I = P / V tells you 25A, the average current over time is 25A, but because the current is pulsating, the pulses will actually be well in excess of 25A, and as a result, voltage drop will be higher than you would expect if you simply used V = I / R without further consideration. To illustrate, consider a constant 2A through a resistance of 1 ohm. By P = I^2 * R, the power dissipation is 4 watts. Now consider a pulsating current with periods of 4A (on) and 0A (off) at a 50% duty cycle. The current averaged over time is 2A. By P = I^2 * R we see that power dissipation is 16 watts while the power is on. At a 50% duty cycle, power dissipation is 8 watts, twice as much as a constant current of 2A, even though the average current over time is still 2A. Your UPS draws a current that pulsates in time with the switching transistors, it does *not* draw a steady, constant current and this definitely does impact performance (voltage drop and power loss as heat higher than expected, battery life shorter than expected). Finally, as to heat issues, I run my APC Smart-UPS 750 on the 7.5AH internal battery paralleled with a pair of marine batteries (in series) of 115AH. Properly managed (turn off unnecessary lights, etc.) the unit will run for 18 to 24 hours. The transformer does get warm (temperature exceeds 80°C) without additional cooling. I put a 3-inch computer fan onto one of the case vents and as far as I can tell, even at high load the transformer temperature (external, measured on the iron core) never exceeds 40°C, generally doesn't exceed 30°C. That is quite acceptable and in my opinion active air cooling is highly effective at removing waste heat and keeping temperatures in check. Ideally, to minimize these issues, all of the wiring in the low voltage circuit should be replaced with 10 awg, and all blade/spade quick connects or other plugs should be removed and/or replaced with soldered connections, including soldering directly to the transformer's connection tabs. On my UPS the low voltage circuit contains exactly nine (9) connection points, each of which is a point of higher resistance and therefore voltage loss. Eliminating just two of these and replacing just the external feeders with 10 awg cut voltage drop by half and resulted in longer runtime and lower waste heat load. I will be replacing the rest of the wiring with 10awg this weekend. Easy to do and no reason not to.
Hey thanks much for this comment. I had originally used a y-adapter off the primary (2) batteries in my Back-UPS Pro 1000S, with 16 awg feeder lines to external batteries. After reading your comment, I'm going to upgrade those external connections to 10awg. The problem I see now is that the UPS doesn't yet recognize the new capacity, and shuts down based on time. Another comment here mentions performing self-tests and "brain dead" factory resets to get it to recognize the new capacity.
@annestywest7488 I bought a Cyberpower cp1500pfclcda 1500va 1000w sine wave battery back-up system it has 2 9AH batteries 24v so I added 2 100AH sealed lead acid batteries 24v but it can't see that I added more AH to it and at 207w it only runs 44 minutes then shuts off but the batteries are still at 24.5v when it cuts off. Can I hack the system to change the settings? Should I just buy a power inverter to run my things on?
I’m trying to charge an APC backup Battery with my inverters and they won’t charge the APC back up; any advice? The inverter converts the 12volt to 120volts to charge the battery but it won’t accept that power for some reason
Great work, however I have doubts on that ups to charge the batteries. It may take ages, have you tasted that yet? Anything above 20A battery will take longer.
I had doubts too. It's not meant to charge stuff this big. I didn't use the UPS charger to charge them initially or after I used them during a storm overnight. I used the car battery charger for that. Thanks for watching!
Thanks for making this video, i was wondering why I was buying 5mins of backup power for $210....now i can run my gaming PC for two days..... Hooray!!!
UPS's have two ratings, but the one they publicize is that VA rating, which isn't real power. You have to dig deeper into the specs to find the wattage, which is invariably less than the VA rating. Volt Amps only equal watts for purely resistive loads, which isn't what you'd want to plug into a UPS. So, both numbers are important, and try to use devices that have published power factors close to 1, then the two numbers will be the same. Thanks for watching! I hope that helps.
Yes that helps thanks! Now I know what to focus on. Also I just got a car battery and under capacity it says 85 . I think may have been reserve minutes though and not amp hours? Is there a way to translate this to figure out amp hours? Thanks!
@@Skyyyyyy-8m Hello again! When a car battery talks about capacity, it's a reserve capacity in minutes if it's not specified as amp-hours. It's the number of minutes a 25 amp draw can safely be maintained without draining the cells too low.
I removed the internal battery and extended wires to fix a 12v 80 amp truck battery to my APS UPS. I find that there is no difference in the lasting time of the UPS when the power is not on! Do I connect an external charger to the big external battery?
Most UPSs are not designed to charge LiFePo4 batteries. They need a higher voltage to charge 100%, specifically 14.8v. Unless you can tune the settings of what the UPS charges at, you will be wasting your money.
@@NoSQLKnowHow I would not say it's a waste of time, you won't get a "full charge" but you will also increase the longevity of the cells as they are not being charged and held at full. so it's a trade off, but far from a waste of time.
@@paulo159 how does the BMS react when the supply voltage from the UPS to it never gets up to the charging voltage needed to charge it fully? Can it take the amps and create more volts like reverse of a solar MPPT charge controller?
Hello. Very good video. I have been thinking to do the same for my ups long time ago. The issue here is; 1) When the ups will be in battery mode, its inverter will starts to overheat. How much depends on the load that will be at the output. 2) If it works for a long time, or many hours then the mosfets is most likely to break down. The manufacturer has calculated a specific time based on the output load and the autonomy of the battery. If you go through this then it is most likely to burn the ups as well. In my opinion, if someone makes such a modification like this, to increase the amperage of the battery by almost twice and not more. For example, if it is 9Ah to go to 18, etc. This will make the inverter less likely to burn out.Again a very nice project, greetings from beautiful Greece!
One rule of thumb to avoid this issue. Always use less then half the rated load. I keep mine around 25 to 40 percent off rated wattage. Because you are correct. If you have a 1500Va rated at 900watts, and you try to fully load that at 900 watts and add batteries, yes it will fail and very quickly. But if you are staying down around 200 watts, it should, in theory handle the load just fine for an extended period.
I did this mod on what I can tell exactly the same UPS. One word of wisdom to share- do not put much load on it without also doing a fan mod. Mine overheated after around an hour, shut off and never worked again. I did not place more load on it than it was rated for, but I think the assumption by their engineers is that the duty cycle will be limited due to the limited duration of the included batteries.
Yup, go good project to work on. But if possible, try to find an inverter that runs off of 48 volts as they run more efficiently and this is one I would like to use to run my gas furnace on. My problem is trying to find true deep cycle batteries that I dont have to take out a mortgage on.
hello mike. great video but i have one slight problem. I have the same unit and have it set up the same way. I need something to last a long time to keep my coal stove running. I'm gone 10 hours a day and if the power goes out, the stove is out. so I wanted to see how long it would last on battery power. when i unplugged it from the wall it went to battery power. The time meter was at 55 minutes. after about an hour the meter went to 0 and the unit shut off. Had a volt meter on the battery;s and still showed 25.4 volts. put my battery charger on the battery's. it took only 5 minutes to bring the battery's back up to full charged. Turned unit back on and the meter said 0. So I put the original battery's back in the unit and let it charge. the next day I did the same routine to see how long it would last. It lasted about an hour, the battery meter counter went to 0 and the unit shut off.. I took the battery's out of the unit and tested with volt meter. Both battery's still were charged at 24 volts. My question is ,,,,, is that meter some kind of memory timer that will only let the unit operate for a certain amount of time and is there any way to reset it or shut it off.. Give it a try and see if this happens to yours. Any help would be a great help. Thanks Ed.
I wondered about the possibility of doing something like this. I thought it was possible that the manufacturers might do something to prevent it., the way Canon has tried to prevent non Canon batteries from being used in their cameras. It's nice the UPS manufacturers haven't done something like that. I also wondered about the safety of using lead acid batteries in your house. Are there any issues with hydrogen outgassing that could catch on fire?
I would say no. A battery that is low and that is charging should not do much electrolysis of the acid but when it is fully charged, all the energy goes to electrolysis. A battery that gets overcharged often will eventually need some distilled water added. I don't know how the UPS works? Does it detect that it is fully charged and just stop trying to charge it? As for hydrogen, I would not worry about it. As a teen, I produced lots of hydrogen. I compressed the hydrogen into a small propane tank 1.5 L. It will float up and hang around the ceiling and eventually diffuse away. You won't be producing massive amounts of hydrogen. The nastier product is ozone. Most of the product is oxygen but in one test I did, I smelled ozone. There is some official documentation about this.
when power goes out, can the APC heat sinks keep up if several devices draw power for an extended period? my understanding is they're solid heat sinks that don't radiate heat, so once they get hot they can catch fire if enough further time elapses
The issue I see with this is that if the power goes out usually the node that supplies internet to your home goes out too since most of them aren't on battery backups. I have a 6 kilowatt Eaton 9PX 6K at home with 2 EBM's on it. There are 75 12 volt 5 Ah batteries in that sucker which can run my normal load of 1200 watts for about 4.5 hours. The issue is that our node isn't backed up at the ISP level so if the power goes out the internet goes with it regardless of what I can do in the home.
@@atesone76 dude even the data would go off, he said it, the nodes dont have backup batteries to work on after a blackout and if they do, they wouldnt run for long. in my area the max is 1 hour
Interesting, I would have never thought the charge circuit and battery monitor circuit would be up to the task, but I guess it probably doesn't take more current to charge, just takes longer. I came across this when looking for solutions why a new set of batteries are fully charging, but the same model ups as yours doesn't see that they're charged, you have to leave it overnight, and it's "dead" after leaving on with no load for a half hour or so, but the batteries are still considered "full" according to my meter. The only difference from the old batteries and these is a slightly higher amp rating. A load test er on the batteries say they're good as well.
I'd be more interested in running a forced air gas furnace for a couple days to keep the house warm during a power bkackout. Would there be any output capacity differences between the wet cell batteries vs. the SLA battery types??
two questions: the first is about running your electronics off a modified sine Wave inverter and second, have you increased the cooling or current carrying capacity ie swap out the MOSFETs etc? These units have a pretty short duty cycle unless the board can be populated with transistors to add capacity. many of these units all have the same circuit boards, just increased capacity with changes to the output stage.
I tried this with a Cyberpower 1350VA that I originally purchased from Costco. I installed two 12V 36 amp hour batteries to replace the original batteries but ran into problems with using the usb connection that allows your computer to tell if the UPS is about to run out of power so it can initiate the shutdown process on the PC. My use case is pretty unique, so it's the key thing causing problems I know. I am using the UPS to protect my 36 bay super micro server that I run unraid on. I adjusted it (but may have done it wrong) to begin shutdown is there is less than 10% of remaining power in the UPS battery. If the power goes out, the server immediately begins powering off, but with the UPS having two thirty-six amp hour batteries it should be able to hold the server up for about 8 to 10 minutes or so. It has a single 1200W Super quiet power supply module. Is there any way to get the monitoring circuit in the unit to recognize that larger capacity batteries are installed?
if you're using NUT to monitor the UPS then it might be possible to power the server off based on the voltage of the batteries rather than what the UPS thinks the capacity is. just read the manual
He did it right but remember folks, many UPS units aren't 24 v. like his, some have only one battery inside, that unit is a 12v unit. You will have to run the power cables in parallel if your unit had only one battery.
i did this in 1995 in the Virgin Islands. two car batteries. . ran tv and stereo for weeks. got from offices old UPS systems whose batteries did not hold enough charge,.. new car batteries did it all. actually older boat batteries.
So can we make some forever battery's...using that same set up but running the battery through a quincer instead of a doubler while funneling back into it self with an outlet to power lets say a fridge think about it...it should go smoothly and before any power outages you could help alot of people if you build a simple blue print to follow....just a thought
Can I replace my UPS battery with a lithium battery 100ah for more capacity? I have a 600 watts UPS in which I have my computer, 2 monitors and the router plug in. Can I use that type of battery ( lithium battery 100ah and can it be charge by the UPS) Thank you for your time and assistance!
Excellent Video Mike. I know nothing about UPS devices but I had to purchase one recently for back up power on a home CCTV system. It was a good used one, apparently, but I have yet to get my head around how it functions etc. I suspect the batteries will need replacing as the old owner reckons he's had it for around 4 years or so, so that would tell me that the battery life cycle is almost due. It's an APC C1500 model, the one with the LCD display. Not sure what Ah sized batteries it contains, but I'd love to upgrade them if possible. Hopefully I can find the same physical sized batteries but with a higher output. I'll have to do more research on this. Thanks for the video. It's opened my mind about battery expansion.
*GET THE OLD BATT.. OUT !! **#FAST** ..* *JUST BEFORE THEY ARE ..."DEAD" THEY CAN "WILL" GO REAL **#BAD** ...* *GET "HOT" ... AND MELT **#INSIDE** YOUR **#UPS** ......* *JUST SO YOU KNOW ....... OK MISTER*
I'm looking into doing a similar project as this but I'm not very familiar with battery specs... Here's my question, the APC uses a 12 volt battery. How is the APC compatible with 24 volts? It seems like the 24 volts would not work with the APC inverter. Could the APC over or under charge the 24 volt battery?
Hey David. I haven't come across a 12v UPS yet, but I'd bet some of the smaller ones do run off 12v because they're rather small. In that case, you wouldn't connect the batteries in series like I did. You could do a parallel setup and get Ludicrous run-time. I haven't had any trouble with the UPS keeping the batteries charged so far. Now, of course the charging circuit is low amperage, but it's like a trickle charger/maintainer with batteries of this size. If I do draw them down a lot, I'll disconnect them and put them on an auto charger. Just make sure you match the voltage and you'll be good. Disclaimer: Of course, you shouldn't officially do this. Thanks for watching.
@@MikesInventions Maybe I didn't give you the correct information. I have two CyberPower battery backups that I bought on Amazon (CP1000PFCLCD PFC and CP1350PFCLCD PFC). Theoretically, can you tell me which is better- 12v or 24v setup)?
@@davidwitte6439 So, since you're planning to add external batteries, it matters a lot less about the capacity. I'd consider the ports and plugs instead and make sure it had what you needed. So, if you get the 12v system, you only need 1 battery, and adding capacity means adding 1 battery in parallel, or 2, or 6, so it'd be a cheaper initial setup and easier upgrade. If you go with the 24v system, you need to add 2 batteries every time you want to add capacity. With 24v, you get to use smaller wires, but this thing isn't flying, so cost and weight savings there is a non-issue. I'd go with the 12v system.
Thanks for the video, I was wondering, how safe is it to run a UPS for much longer than they are designed for? Don't they get very, very hot eventually as they are no fans?
It's a little more than that. I don't know if a UPS can start a house fire, working beyond its rated time.. I also wrestled with the same problem. They DO have marine and other inverters that are meant to run continuously. If you had a relay that could switch from the UPS to the continuous inverter you might have something there. But again we have a problem with the relay AND the continuous inverter. Is the continuous inverter UL approved for homes?? And if you make your own relay circuit, you would have to get it UL approved. I don't know if house fire insurance would accept these things as a cause of fire. ..Maybe I'm paranoid. But insurance companies as a whole are getting real slick about insuring things.
You could easily just put some fans in it. Cut away part of the battery compartment, since you aren't using it anyway, and install some PC case fans. Maybe cut some slots on the other side so it has a place to expel air.
My APC UPS that looks a lot like the one in the video has a built-in cooling fan that runs continuously when on battery power. It annoys me because I only run a modem and a couple of routers off of it and the fan is probably using more power than they are! But, I think it will keep its cool when running these off of larger batteries. I just need convince myself that it's ok to charge the bigger batteries. It sounds like it is.
I've been running a similar setup in an off-grid application for over 2 years with no issues so far. My UPS is rated for 450W nominal, and it's typically pulling around 30-100W. It's been running almost 24-7 for most of that time. I have a solar charge controller and AC battery charger which keep it topped off, so it doesn't rely much on the internal charging circuit. The experiment went well enough that I set up a 2nd UPS the same way in another spot about 6 months ago.
look at the wall wart for your router... probably 12vdc output. You can just connect router direct to batt/delete the wall wart and save the loss through the inverter. Use the inverter for the T.V.
I hate to say it, but these things are made to run the duration of the batteries that are in there. I have done this exact test about 4 times now with 4 different UPS and they will all run fine for small things well under the rated max power output. However if you do run enough enough to start heating up components inside the unit, the heat will not be stopped by that fan they added. it will overheat and burn your place to the ground. Most units are passively cooled, and basically begin heating the the moment they switch to UPS. At the rated power there will be no issue because the UPS will shut down before the heat builds beyond what is expected with the factory battery. but if you extend the run time with these huge batteries they will keep going even when they are smoking and on fire. It's well known, and I have seen it on my end more than once. You are safer with a power inverter that has a backup feature. they are built to run for long periods. If that is not affordable, you could modify that UPS to make it "safer" by adding more fans, better (NOISY) airflow. just keep in mind, if a fire starts in this thing, the fans will help fan the flames and spread the fire quicker.
May have been mentioned by someone else earlier, but two major items to keep in mind when increasing the runtime of ANY UPS unit... ITEM 1 - "FLOAT CHARGE" CAN BE WAY TOO HIGH FOR DIFFERENT BATTERIES The "float charge" voltage ("standby" voltage the UPS keeps on the battery(ies) at all times when they are not being discharged or charged (just sitting there in standby)) can vary by a significant amount depending on the battery type used. The vital information here is that the float charge for one type of recharageable battery (e.g. an arbitrary typical SLA battery) can be a LOT different than the float charge for a different type of rechargeable battery (e.g. a marine-type Deep Cycle battery). It can even vary from one type or model of SLA battery to another type or model depending on manufacturing. From what I've observed, many models of UPS units typically provide a float charge voltage that is too high...even for the originally supplied batteries. What this can mean is that the batteries may not last as long (edit to add: 'as they should last') because the float charge being too high will, over time degrade the batteries faster than if the float charge was set at the right voltage for the batteries being used. Example, instead of supplying a specified float charge of 13.5V to 13.8V for a given SLA battery, the UPS may be supplying a float charge of 14.5 to 14.8V. I have measured such high float charge levels on various UPS units. A suspicious person might conclude that UPS manufacturers intentionally use fractionally higher float charge values to cause early life battery failures in order to increase their replacement battery sales. *_A float charge higher than the specified value for a given battery WILL take months to years off the battery life of that battery, depending on just how high the float charge voltage is above the level specified for the batteries_* I recommend batteryuniversity.com for more information on "float charge" and how it can damage batteries to cause significantly earlier battery failure. (edit to add: 'I have no personal or financial interest in anything associated with batteryuniversity.com' ) ITEM 2 - UPS OVERHEATING DUE TO LONGER RUNTIMES Some UPS units are designed in a way that they are LIMITED in how long they provide backup power due to overheating issues. If they run too long (e.g. users replace original batteries with MUCH higher Ah capacity batteries) then an UPS can overheat and possibly cause catastrophic damage to itself and/or attached devices due to uncontrolled output voltages caused by damaged control circuitry. When I've added higher capacity Ah batteries for longer runtime, I always make sure that the UPS unit will not overheat due to the longer runtime. This may be a simple matter of not keeping the UPS in a closed storage area, or adding more ventilation to the storage area, or even adding more ventilation to the UPS case. I have also installed a fan in two units (one CyberPower and one APC) as they started reaching dangerously high sustained temperatures when they ran for longer than about 20 minutes. (edit to add: 'Running at sustained high temperatures is not good for ANY electronic equipment and at the least can cause early equipment failure. In particular, very high sustained temperatures (even higher internal ambient temps) can cause electrolytic capacitors to vent and cause failures with unpredictable results.') *_One should not always assume the UPS's self-protection for overheating will always work and provide a controlled shutdown, or that a given UPS even has such protection built into it_*
Mike, if you want to force the unit to relearn its endurance on battery power, you have to put about half a load to it, and execute the self test multiple times a day for about 3-4 days.
Hold down the power button while its turned on for a total of 6 seconds.
2 seconds will power the unit off, and you get the single beep, DO NOT LET IT GO, continue to hold it for another 4 seconds and you will get a second beep, then release the button and it puts the unit into 'Self Test' which forces battery usage for 5 seconds.
another way to help it relearn, is cycle the batteries, go full charge and then run them down on a roughly 80-100w load , when the unit dies, hold down the power button and force a 'brain dead' sequence upon it. hold the button for 5-15 seconds.
APC Backups units have logical sense in them. clearing the logic by forcibly doing a logic brain dead procedure clears its prior memory of the batteries it once knew.
after a few times of fully cycling the batteries you should start seeing some really impressive numbers as the unit re-learns the numbers as it works.
But how is it going to display the remaining time? 20 h is 1200 min. I don't think the LCD has a place for a 4 th digit.
@@louistournas120 where are you getting that?
the firmware doesn't even know how to display that so it would just say 999 or error out to ERR until it got back down to 3 digit capacity.
@@louistournas120 nice job on necro bumping a 2 year old comment also
@@CapStar362 I am basing it on my own UPS. It can only display 3 digits.
However, I haven't modified it so I don't know what it would do.
The UPS I have when you go above 999 it just flashes HIH (Or basically the shortened terms for Higher than it can display)
Thannks, i had this idea recently...but for my deep freezer. Lots of power outage recently...thanks for your video
Instead of the conductive metal hose clamps, you could use large plastic zip ties pulled down tight - non conductive. And yes, those batteries definitely need vented to outside. Hydrogen has a very broad explosive range, 4.1 - 74% and very light, rises up.
Even a common cable gland would be perfect.
Hi Mike. What you probably don’t know is that APC sizes their components to match the runtime of their batteries. Attaching a super large battery, and a full capacity load, will eventually cause most UPS models to overheat. Instead, use the TrippLite automatic PowerVerter if you want an external battery bank. That’s what I did 20 years ago. They are also fan-cooled.
I like the idea of the PowerVerter, but it does not have auto-switching from AC mains. I wonder if the PowerVerter could be simply installed behind the APC UPS, which means once the acid batteries run out, then the APC will take over for it's tiny 5-10 min and shut stuff down?
@mcw0530 any way to hack the ups to fully utilize the bigger battery?
Just make sure the load lies within the specification of the USC. Better if you keep the load about 20% below the spec.
I bought a surplus APS, and it has a connector on the back for an external battery. So what does APC recommend for externals? Why does it overheat?
@@MAustinP Sorry for the late reply, but the PowerVerter does have an automatic version that auto-switches from the Mains should they fail. I know, because mine does that, just like an APC UPS. I have the 1200W model and it's attached to a 100AH deep cycle AGM battery.
Please see TrippLite P/N: APS1250
Still going strong after 18 months. The UPS charging circuit brought the batteries all the way up after several days, and since the batteries are so large, it's as if the batteries are on a trickle charger, like they would be anyway. The minute counter on the display is still meaningless, because the UPS has no idea how big the batteries are, but it is somewhat useful for judging relative charge. The minutes just tick down at a much slower pace. I haven't needed to use them for more than about an hour or so since I installed them, and the internal charger on the UPS worked just fine. Now I plan to use my large auto charger if I run them down a lot so as not to strain the UPS charger circuit. So far so good... Stay tuned.
So bro didn't it give any problem after the installment and can i use car batteries
@@driftkings2740 Hey, yes, you can use car batteries. There is a comment down there that says as much. However, car batteries' thinner plates are not to be discharged very deeply. (Only about 10%) so size your batteries accordingly. Also, most car batteries do not specify a capacity, because they don't have to. All they care about is cranking amps. So, there's no way to know what you'll be able to achieve with them. Thanks for watching!
@Richardo Diaz Probably just want to run a longer cable and not install this sort of unit in the living room. Otherwise, looks like a bad-ass blueprint. Anyone else trying to game on green energy? Found an older Dell server that uses around 100watts under load, going to pair it with an external gpu and then an array of batteries and panels, and maybe just maybe, some way to capture wasted heat. If I ever build a house, I swear I'm rigging my waste heat to pex and setting up heated floors at the very least.
@@userhandle3378 I wonder if there would be a way to use a TEC to recover heat back to energy? Doubt it would be worth it, but I thought it was an interesting idea.
@Richardo Diaz it would be min off gassing as you would really need be pushing the changing amp up for that start happing but you could always go with Seal Lead Acid or AGM or Lithium-Ion Battery
I did the same thing a while back. This set up works but one thing has to be considered, UPS' are not design to work for extended periods of time. They have very small heatsinks on the Mosfet/transistors and most don't even include a fan to keep them cool so they end up getting damaged by overheating. Of course to help on this issue you can add your own fan.
Your comment is true for the cheap line-interactive UPS where the inverter stage is only working when the mains go off, but the more expensive dual-conversion units (2X to 3X cost) are designed to work full time and constantly supply clean inverted power. My Eaton 9125 dual-conversion units have internal fans that keep them cool. They also come with connections on the back of the case for plugging in an external battery pack to extend survival time eliminating the need to hack the insides of the unit as shown in this video.
@@jamesskinner7744 Rack mount APC units also work well for this as like Eaton UPS are designed to be on for years at a time.
I think everyone would have liked to see this work. As well as some runtime information!
YES DID NOT SEE ALL OF THE CONNECTIONS APPLIED. WHAT TYPE CABLES OR CONNECTIONS NEEDED TO THE UPS.
run time was around 75 - 88 hrs
You have to plug in the Data communication cable to the system and install the software and calibrate the battery and change the status as new battery it will give more backup hours
About "installing software to calibrate the battery and change the status as new battery it will give more backup hours", I just picked up a sine wave, APC BR1000MS to use with my 100 ah battery but it shuts off at the estimated runtime of the small batteries it would normally have. this is a bummer. my older model would run as long as the battery . can this new model be dumbed down to run for the amp hours I have? otherwise I just wasted $100 on this used thing that only runs for minutes. so bummed. I hope you can point me in a good direction to make this happen.
Which wire the 10A fuse attached to ??
I know this is an old video, but you can calibrate the ups to those batteries. I found that out with two apc units I have. Just have to unplug let it run on it's normal load untill it is dead and re-charge. My one 1000Va was only telling me 7 minutes after I upgraded it's batteries, but now it shows 45 minutes which is still less but closer to real time. Enough time for me to get out the generator. Just something for you to try to get a better remaining time display.
oh yes, enough time to bring out the dino juice'ator
can you put the link to buy the cable
Im wondering if it would work with thes new lifepo car batterys, that have build in bms ect,.
Great video, great helper! Question, can you replace those lead acid batteries with the same value lithium iron phosphate batteries???
The UPS was designed for lead acid batteries. I would NOT use batteries of a different chemistry (like lithium iron phosphate). Each chemistry has a characteristic voltage and applying a charging voltage that is wrong for the batteries that you install is dangerous. Nope.
There are 2 issues.
If you attach a larger battery, when it needs charging, the internal resistance of the battery is low and will draw a lot of current.
The charger circuit of the UPS would overheat.
The other issue is that lithium ion batteries needs a specific circuit to charge them properly. I think, also, that they should not be overcharged.
With lead acid batteries, overcharging just causes electrolysis of the water (emission of hydrogen + oxygen).
Thank you for this video. I have several heavy duty ups unit and wanting to experiment . Just gotta get inside the unit to rid that beeping when operating of batteries.
I have been doing that for years. The best wire that is about 10 gauge and flexible can be found at the automotive shop. I use heat shrinking tube over the connectors that I solder the wires to.
In a tight spot getting the outboard battery(s) where you can service them is a real help.
well how did you install the 10 amp inline fuse?????
Hello from Oklahoma-----Several years back, I did what you did by running two UPSs off of one car battery. Both UPSs operated on 12 volts so I got by with 1 battery. What I found out, and, what you are going to find out, is that the battery charging circuit in the UPS is not strong enough to keep a much larger battery charged. A trickle charger needs to be attached to the battery to maintain a charged up state so that when the power goes out, you will have a long run time. Yes, it will work for a while until the batteries go dead, which they will. In your case, with two 12 volt batteries, you need to put a charger on each one about once a week to maintain a charged up status. You can charge each one separately without removing the connector wire between your 2 batteries or removing any of the other battery wires.
Good post. I've measured the battery charging output on a UPS XS1300 at 300mA. So Large batteries obviously will take a long time to recharge if discharged even several Ah. Adding an external 1Amp charger would be a very good idea. It's what I did about 10 years ago with mine. Be aware that the extra runtime and charging time will push the capacitors on the board fairly hard and so you might need to check and or change them every year or two.
How did you deal with the battery constantly beeping after the power is disconnected from the UPS?
I think everyone would have liked to see this work. As well as some runtime information!
How did you overcome problem with full charging higher capacity batteries? It needs 10% charging power from total capacity
how are you dealing with the hydrogen gas from the charging of the batteries
Be careful of using flooded lead acid batteries due to off gassing.
I suspect one can also use AGM batteries too instead of lead acid right ?
Do they have to be lead acid ?
@@tonymontana897 no AGM works but are twice the price of flood lead acid bats.
@@tonymontana897 AGM is lead acid, it's just that the acid is absorbed into a mat instead of flooding the lead plates.
@@charleshorseman55 is it safe to put the UPS sideways like in the video with AGM batteries?
@@AmongUs-mb4qx sideways, but not upside down. Not ideal, but should work.
I did this on my tv and internet as well. I put a 12v 12ah battery on mine. Will run the tv and internet for well over 6 hours. It’s great and has been running for many years now.
Umm. 12V 12Ah means 144 watts for one hour or not more than 24 watts for 6 hours, not taking power losses into account. I seriously doubt your TV draws only about 18W. I think you are wildly exaggerating there.
@@maartenvandenberg4223 it could be 2x 12v ?
If you are going to do this please install a full time vent system to the exterior. Maybe even move the batteries to a vented box outside and run your wires in. Gases from an unsealed lead acid battery are explosive, especially when overcharging. Like you stated, the UPS has no idea what type/size of batteries you connected. “So far, so good” are famous last words.
Open to the open house, is it a concern? I see hydrogen gas is flammable from 4-72% (an additional half volume of oxygen is also produced) at a rate of 27 cubic inches per AH. I wonder if human "off-gassing" of methane after consuming sauerkraut or beans has similar explosive concerns.
Well the ups won't overcharge it at all. As the charger in the ups has values lower that the battery's so no overcharging is going to happen
Really? Never possible at all? You would stake a family’s life on that? As if errors in software driven hardware could never occur.
@@RemmikRotus I would yes put a venting system for the battery's as they will get a bit hot and because they are unsealed but again the charger literally has values LOWER than the battery's and no software is going to make that charger just overclock itself 80% that's not how it works
Yes, my thoughts exactly. Large batteries need venting and placing them remotely, in a well vented, sheltered spot would be ideal.
Great video! I'm with you on off-grid power.
Can this also work on 12v 7ah UPS ?
Thanks for the video, I liked your idea and now plan to execute on my BR1000G. Its internal battery are dead. Will the current from APC be sufficient for charging high capacity batteries? Any limitations to consider while choosing the battery size?
UPS will charge battery, just potentially at a slower rate I would think (assuming constant current charging)
can you permanently leve the batteries hoock't up? like there were part of the ups?
Subscribed when you said, "I'm obsessed with off-grid power." :)
I’m currently adding 2 100a agm batteries in my suv for a power supply. Is it possible to take the display off my apc 1500pro and it displays everything as when It had the two 12v 7.5a batteries in it. It would just be nice to see all the information it displays
how much time the batt last until they go off?
How is the fuse incorporated
Hello. I have the same apc as you and when I doubled the size of my battery amp hours, my apc will still shut off with the same amount if time used as before my upgrade. How did you trick your apc to stay on longer than it was programed to be on from the factory with a specific amount of load? Very frustrated because I didn't get any benefits of doubling my batterys
If you're not using the shutdown software, the UPS will shut off based on battery voltage. This means you don't have to trick the UPS if you change the battery capacity. The bigger the battery, the longer it will take for the battery voltage to get down to the shut-off level, therefore you automatically get longer runtime.
The only exception is that some APCs will automatically shut off if the load is too low for them to detect, but the manual shows you how to disable that feature.
Mike, What about overheating I need to rub amini computer and a satellite receiver. Probably 8 hours at a time.
Where's exactly did you install the 10amp fuse?
I Love this video. Make more of these in different enviroments please. i promise i will watch them all :)
Do this apc ups have a pure sine wave? 🤔
Depends on model.
Great idea, as I have an APC UPS Pro 1300 as well and the batteries are shot too, and I also have a used 12Volt LifePo4 battery too, this is excellent, thanks for sharing your knowledge man, much appreciated.
Float and voltage difference will kill your Lifepo4s. Good luck. This guy should have warned about lead acid (which is what most cheap UPSs use) and AGM voltage difference. Try to charge AGM with Lead Acid voltages and the cell will swell and short... Put a BMS on the Lifepo4s and you might have them survive. (Cut off high and low). Problem is, low cut off will lock the BMS in most cases and you need to manually charge the battery above the low cutoff
Lithium batteries use different charging methods than lead acid and they don't like to be trickle charged. Unless you have very specific knowledge about this I think you need to stick to lead acid batteries or as XiaorRulez mentioned maybe do your own battery management. I was an electrical engineer when lithium ion batteries came out and they were withdrawn from the market because they were catching on fire in Japanese cordless phones. Over the years lithium batteries have continued to catch on fire. They even caused an airplane crash. Personally I wouldn't mess with any kind of lithium battery for this purpose.
so the UPS will "learn" the new capacity of the larger battery on its own? or do you need to do a few charge/discharge cycles?
My question can I add solar control to charge batteries
I have 2kva at 1500watts Ups ,can i use 2x 12v,26ah battery,is it safe? Is it going to be enough to charger 2 or more batteries
why did you put 24v if the initial battery replaced was 12v?
Do you worry about hydrogen gas generation as those are wet cell batteries?
I was gonna say, filling the cabinet with hydrogen, if that UPS sparks, you'll hear a big boom
My first thought when I saw this video. This is why all indoor battery backups used sealed batteries. There is also more of risk generating more explosive gases with charging batteries from a drained state and charging with a charger that, like he stated, has no idea what batteries are attached. Improperly charging batteries can be very dangerous and having two of these indoors and in a cabinet is asking for trouble. “Good son far” but hope nothing bad ever happens. I have no idea but maybe even possible that the insurance could even deny a claim. With this being fully disclosed on TH-cam, it’s more build a case on.
@@RemmikRotus Aren't these marine batteries, intended for used in boats in the tiny enclosed space batteries normally are installed? You don't install batteries on deck or on the roof.
@@RemmikRotus those are sealed lead acid battery .. even if they are flooded they are still sealed. , And this ups charges at 3 to 5amp which is really low for this type of battery these can handle 50amp of charge. Normal alternators on car boats or rv are atleast 120amp capable. This setup will only harm the ups as the ups will have to work harder to charge such a large capacity of battery & long discharge timr
Nay- hes already drinking lead polluted water- he doesn't care
I just wanted to mention, that if you take apart the battery pack, it is two batteries connected by a card. You can remove the card and it is much easier to access the leads on the card. They are also marked as positive and negative. The card can only be inserted in the correct way. I plan to try this on my my network rack in the basement.
I just wanna know if you can use 2 pure sinewave units on 1 outlet/circuit. 🤓
I would assume you could run this set up with the battery bank connected to a solar array, basically just converting the ubs to an inverter with lots of outlets?
very good idea. My APC NS1250 battery needs to be changed. The cable connector has 3 slots. I wanted to use a 24V marine battery. Is it possible ?
But what about the charging function of the UPS now or has some bigger lumps to charge? Does it just take longer?
What you did can be very dangerous depending on the UPS model. Some UPSes do not isolate their circuitry from mains. Always check for this per UPS before attaching an external battery.
What I want to do is get the lead out and go with 12V 10Ah lithium phosphate with F2 connectors, any thoughts?
how much VA's i need in one UPS for one PC ( power supply 700w) + one monitor ?
i forgot what you did, but for anyone interested or if you don't already know- marine deep cycles operate slightly differently than normal 12V lead acids or gels. should be 13.4V When fully charged if not damaged inside too much. or maybe 13.2/13.3 is perfect health usually. Having a health tester is a godsend. really let's you know what's going on under the hood so to speak.
But hope your setup is working ok! It must have some intelligent charging going on. So that's good. Any old ups would not be recommended for just any marine battery. Although they may work, they might be damaged or unreliable or just not perform as well as they could. Just saying from experience lol. plus always make sure it's a True deep cycle. They are between a starting and deep cycle, lots of people don't realize but some aren't fully deep cycle. Great video boss xD
I measured my UPS batteries. Each is 13.24 V. There are 2 of them and they are connected in series.
Are UPS batteries deep cycle batteries?
What about AGM batteries?
The RS 1000 and 1500 models have an expansion port to add an external 24v battery pack, no drilling, no mod necessary. For safety, I'd only use SLA batteries.
im trying to find how much VA my UPS need but i cant find a good calculation. lets say my PC is using 200watt on 230volt and 1.26A. how long would a 1000VA UPS last?
Hi Mike, i'm gonna do the same thing with my old apc ups, the only point is the battery dimension and weight, unfortunatelly the only way to go is to use car batteries so i decided to use two of 100Ah so i should get enough power to keep my NAS up and running, i'm also thinking to add a solar panel to charge the batteries, so it will become a double UPS-Powebank project, great video!
Will this unit be able to charge two 100AH batteries?
@@ramborums You should calculate the current value for charging. Low current means more time for charging and that's not good if the power consumption is higher than the charging power...I'm thinking to change my project and build a big powerstation, i will powerup the pc with powerstation and at the same time i will keep the battery charged. In other words i will feed my NAS power supply with batteries, like a notebook, so i will avoid also power loss from the wall.
@@diegogavani5679 my point is if the batteries draw higher current than what the charger is designed for, would that not blow the charger?
@@ramborums it depends by the load! ;)
@@ramborums I'm guessing it should be fine. Canadian Tire sells small solar panels for delivering 12 V, for charging car batteries. They say it delivers 40 W, which means it can deliver 3.33 A with enough light falling on the photocells.
The big problem I've run into is voltage drop along the feeder lines from the battery to the UPS DC input, and also within the internal wiring supplying the inverter. I'm running an APC Smart-UPS 750 and under high load (250+ watts) the DC voltage across the inverter input (on the board itself) can be as much as 0.6V less than that measured at the battery terminals. It causes the UPS to think the battery is about to die even though it's not even close. I replaced the external feeders with 10awg and this reduced the voltage drop to about 0.3V, and my next step is to replace the internal wiring with 10awg as well as eliminate as many of the spade connectors as possible as they are all sources of higher resistance and therefore voltage drop.
I'd expect the 16awg extension cord you're using to suffer quite a lot of voltage drop; what, if any, issues have you had with that in your case?
edit: Be advised, when you calculate the number of amps using I = P / V , the number you get is the *average current* drawn, averaged over time. In reality, the current drawn from the battery is not a constant current, it is a pulsating current consisting of periods of current draw, and periods where little current is drawn. Thus, I = P / V tells you 25A, the average current over time is 25A, but because the current is pulsating, the pulses will actually be well in excess of 25A, and as a result, voltage drop will be higher than you would expect if you simply used V = I / R without further consideration.
To illustrate, consider a constant 2A through a resistance of 1 ohm. By P = I^2 * R, the power dissipation is 4 watts. Now consider a pulsating current with periods of 4A (on) and 0A (off) at a 50% duty cycle. The current averaged over time is 2A. By P = I^2 * R we see that power dissipation is 16 watts while the power is on. At a 50% duty cycle, power dissipation is 8 watts, twice as much as a constant current of 2A, even though the average current over time is still 2A. Your UPS draws a current that pulsates in time with the switching transistors, it does *not* draw a steady, constant current and this definitely does impact performance (voltage drop and power loss as heat higher than expected, battery life shorter than expected).
Finally, as to heat issues, I run my APC Smart-UPS 750 on the 7.5AH internal battery paralleled with a pair of marine batteries (in series) of 115AH. Properly managed (turn off unnecessary lights, etc.) the unit will run for 18 to 24 hours. The transformer does get warm (temperature exceeds 80°C) without additional cooling. I put a 3-inch computer fan onto one of the case vents and as far as I can tell, even at high load the transformer temperature (external, measured on the iron core) never exceeds 40°C, generally doesn't exceed 30°C. That is quite acceptable and in my opinion active air cooling is highly effective at removing waste heat and keeping temperatures in check.
Ideally, to minimize these issues, all of the wiring in the low voltage circuit should be replaced with 10 awg, and all blade/spade quick connects or other plugs should be removed and/or replaced with soldered connections, including soldering directly to the transformer's connection tabs. On my UPS the low voltage circuit contains exactly nine (9) connection points, each of which is a point of higher resistance and therefore voltage loss. Eliminating just two of these and replacing just the external feeders with 10 awg cut voltage drop by half and resulted in longer runtime and lower waste heat load. I will be replacing the rest of the wiring with 10awg this weekend. Easy to do and no reason not to.
Hey thanks much for this comment. I had originally used a y-adapter off the primary (2) batteries in my Back-UPS Pro 1000S, with 16 awg feeder lines to external batteries. After reading your comment, I'm going to upgrade those external connections to 10awg. The problem I see now is that the UPS doesn't yet recognize the new capacity, and shuts down based on time. Another comment here mentions performing self-tests and "brain dead" factory resets to get it to recognize the new capacity.
It will have a plug to connect extra battery right? Why he opened it and put some wires ?
@annestywest7488
I bought a Cyberpower cp1500pfclcda 1500va 1000w sine wave battery back-up system it has 2 9AH batteries 24v so I added 2 100AH sealed lead acid batteries 24v but it can't see that I added more AH to it and at 207w it only runs 44 minutes then shuts off but the batteries are still at 24.5v when it cuts off. Can I hack the system to change the settings? Should I just buy a power inverter to run my things on?
Nice work ,I have a very small MANHATTAN Battery backup do you thing your ideia will work with this one.its only a 5amp
Mere ups ka out put 3 se 4 impire hai kya me ups k sath 12v 10 ampire charger b laga sakta ho! 1 sath ???? Bettery ko fast charging k lea
I’m trying to charge an APC backup Battery with my inverters and they won’t charge the APC back up; any advice? The inverter converts the 12volt to 120volts to charge the battery but it won’t accept that power for some reason
Terrific video! I’ve been wanting to do this too. Perfect garage/shed project. Cute kid :)
This is a good idea. I'll do this when the original batteries crap out.
Excellent video. Subbed.
Great work, however I have doubts on that ups to charge the batteries. It may take ages, have you tasted that yet? Anything above 20A battery will take longer.
I had doubts too. It's not meant to charge stuff this big. I didn't use the UPS charger to charge them initially or after I used them during a storm overnight. I used the car battery charger for that. Thanks for watching!
Thanks for making this video, i was wondering why I was buying 5mins of backup power for $210....now i can run my gaming PC for two days..... Hooray!!!
When figuring out how much power a device is drawing is VA important or just watts?
UPS's have two ratings, but the one they publicize is that VA rating, which isn't real power. You have to dig deeper into the specs to find the wattage, which is invariably less than the VA rating. Volt Amps only equal watts for purely resistive loads, which isn't what you'd want to plug into a UPS. So, both numbers are important, and try to use devices that have published power factors close to 1, then the two numbers will be the same. Thanks for watching! I hope that helps.
Yes that helps thanks! Now I know what to focus on. Also I just got a car battery and under capacity it says 85 . I think may have been reserve minutes though and not amp hours? Is there a way to translate this to figure out amp hours? Thanks!
@@Skyyyyyy-8m Hello again! When a car battery talks about capacity, it's a reserve capacity in minutes if it's not specified as amp-hours. It's the number of minutes a 25 amp draw can safely be maintained without draining the cells too low.
I removed the internal battery and extended wires to fix a 12v 80 amp truck battery to my APS UPS. I find that there is no difference in the lasting time of the UPS when the power is not on! Do I connect an external charger to the big external battery?
Thanks for the great content 👍
You're Welcome Sergio. Glad it helped.
can i use a lifepo4 batteries with a bms on a ups?
yes, you sure can.
Most UPSs are not designed to charge LiFePo4 batteries. They need a higher voltage to charge 100%, specifically 14.8v. Unless you can tune the settings of what the UPS charges at, you will be wasting your money.
@@NoSQLKnowHow I would not say it's a waste of time, you won't get a "full charge" but you will also increase the longevity of the cells as they are not being charged and held at full.
so it's a trade off, but far from a waste of time.
@@NoSQLKnowHow how about my bms is a smart bms? i can adjust the voltage to 14.8 i will install 5pcs of 3.2v
@@paulo159 how does the BMS react when the supply voltage from the UPS to it never gets up to the charging voltage needed to charge it fully? Can it take the amps and create more volts like reverse of a solar MPPT charge controller?
Did you ever test the runtime?
Hello. Very good video. I have been thinking to do the same for my ups long time ago. The issue here is; 1) When the ups will be in battery mode, its inverter will starts to overheat. How much depends on the load that will be at the output. 2) If it works for a long time, or many hours then the mosfets is most likely to break down. The manufacturer has calculated a specific time based on the output load and the autonomy of the battery. If you go through this then it is most likely to burn the ups as well. In my opinion, if someone makes such a modification like this, to increase the amperage of the battery by almost twice and not more. For example, if it is 9Ah to go to 18, etc. This will make the inverter less likely to burn out.Again a very nice project, greetings from beautiful Greece!
One rule of thumb to avoid this issue. Always use less then half the rated load. I keep mine around 25 to 40 percent off rated wattage. Because you are correct. If you have a 1500Va rated at 900watts, and you try to fully load that at 900 watts and add batteries, yes it will fail and very quickly. But if you are staying down around 200 watts, it should, in theory handle the load just fine for an extended period.
@@bluetonight17 totally agree.
I did this mod on what I can tell exactly the same UPS. One word of wisdom to share- do not put much load on it without also doing a fan mod. Mine overheated after around an hour, shut off and never worked again. I did not place more load on it than it was rated for, but I think the assumption by their engineers is that the duty cycle will be limited due to the limited duration of the included batteries.
Did the high amperage of two car batteries in series overheat the unit????????????????????????????????
Can i use it for my gaming pc ?
I can't think of a better use for it.
Yup, go good project to work on. But if possible, try to find an inverter that runs off of 48 volts as they run more efficiently and this is one I would like to use to run my gas furnace on. My problem is trying to find true deep cycle batteries that I dont have to take out a mortgage on.
Buy used one, wherever they usually sell used batteries wherever they sell batteries especially at an independent shops
you will need a server UPS that runs on 48v
hello mike. great video but i have one slight problem. I have the same unit and have it set up the same way. I need something to last a long time to keep my coal stove running. I'm gone 10 hours a day and if the power goes out, the stove is out. so I wanted to see how long it would last on battery power. when i unplugged it from the wall it went to battery power. The time meter was at 55 minutes. after about an hour the meter went to 0 and the unit shut off. Had a volt meter on the battery;s and still showed 25.4 volts. put my battery charger on the battery's. it took only 5 minutes to bring the battery's back up to full charged. Turned unit back on and the meter said 0. So I put the original battery's back in the unit and let it charge. the next day I did the same routine to see how long it would last. It lasted about an hour, the battery meter counter went to 0 and the unit shut off.. I took the battery's out of the unit and tested with volt meter. Both battery's still were charged at 24 volts. My question is ,,,,, is that meter some kind of memory timer that will only let the unit operate for a certain amount of time and is there any way to reset it or shut it off.. Give it a try and see if this happens to yours. Any help would be a great help. Thanks Ed.
can you hook a computer straight to the batteries and bypass the ups and the computers power supply??
The batteries are dc, you're computer is ac.
@@carlosreyes6448the power goes in the computer ac and is turned to dc for the computer to work
I wondered about the possibility of doing something like this. I thought it was possible that the manufacturers might do something to prevent it., the way Canon has tried to prevent non Canon batteries from being used in their cameras. It's nice the UPS manufacturers haven't done something like that.
I also wondered about the safety of using lead acid batteries in your house. Are there any issues with hydrogen outgassing that could catch on fire?
I would say no. A battery that is low and that is charging should not do much electrolysis of the acid but when it is fully charged, all the energy goes to electrolysis. A battery that gets overcharged often will eventually need some distilled water added.
I don't know how the UPS works? Does it detect that it is fully charged and just stop trying to charge it?
As for hydrogen, I would not worry about it. As a teen, I produced lots of hydrogen. I compressed the hydrogen into a small propane tank 1.5 L. It will float up and hang around the ceiling and eventually diffuse away.
You won't be producing massive amounts of hydrogen.
The nastier product is ozone. Most of the product is oxygen but in one test I did, I smelled ozone. There is some official documentation about this.
when power goes out, can the APC heat sinks keep up if several devices draw power for an extended period? my understanding is they're solid heat sinks that don't radiate heat, so once they get hot they can catch fire if enough further time elapses
I tried to do this but my ups got an error of f06, please help
The issue I see with this is that if the power goes out usually the node that supplies internet to your home goes out too since most of them aren't on battery backups. I have a 6 kilowatt Eaton 9PX 6K at home with 2 EBM's on it. There are 75 12 volt 5 Ah batteries in that sucker which can run my normal load of 1200 watts for about 4.5 hours. The issue is that our node isn't backed up at the ISP level so if the power goes out the internet goes with it regardless of what I can do in the home.
tether your smartphone data or use as hotspot
@@atesone76 dude even the data would go off, he said it, the nodes dont have backup batteries to work on after a blackout and if they do, they wouldnt run for long. in my area the max is 1 hour
Interesting, I would have never thought the charge circuit and battery monitor circuit would be up to the task, but I guess it probably doesn't take more current to charge, just takes longer.
I came across this when looking for solutions why a new set of batteries are fully charging, but the same model ups as yours doesn't see that they're charged,
you have to leave it overnight, and it's "dead" after leaving on with no load for a half hour or so, but the batteries are still considered "full" according to my meter.
The only difference from the old batteries and these is a slightly higher amp rating. A load test er on the batteries say they're good as well.
I'd be more interested in running a forced air gas furnace for a couple days to keep the house warm during a power bkackout.
Would there be any output capacity differences between the wet cell batteries vs. the SLA battery types??
These will not even come close to running a furnace, get a real back up system = to a Tesla wall etc.
@@mac11380 a gas furnace? Yeah they will.
Very good. Thank you.
two questions: the first is about running your electronics off a modified sine Wave inverter and second, have you increased the cooling or current carrying capacity ie swap out the MOSFETs etc? These units have a pretty short duty cycle unless the board can be populated with transistors to add capacity. many of these units all have the same circuit boards, just increased capacity with changes to the output stage.
I tried this with a Cyberpower 1350VA that I originally purchased from Costco. I installed two 12V 36 amp hour batteries to replace the original batteries but ran into problems with using the usb connection that allows your computer to tell if the UPS is about to run out of power so it can initiate the shutdown process on the PC. My use case is pretty unique, so it's the key thing causing problems I know. I am using the UPS to protect my 36 bay super micro server that I run unraid on. I adjusted it (but may have done it wrong) to begin shutdown is there is less than 10% of remaining power in the UPS battery. If the power goes out, the server immediately begins powering off, but with the UPS having two thirty-six amp hour batteries it should be able to hold the server up for about 8 to 10 minutes or so. It has a single 1200W Super quiet power supply module. Is there any way to get the monitoring circuit in the unit to recognize that larger capacity batteries are installed?
if you're using NUT to monitor the UPS then it might be possible to power the server off based on the voltage of the batteries rather than what the UPS thinks the capacity is. just read the manual
unRaid has a setting under UPS "Time on battery before shutdown " That may work for you.
He did it right but remember folks, many UPS units aren't 24 v. like his, some have only one battery inside, that unit is a 12v unit. You will have to run the power cables in parallel if your unit had only one battery.
i did this in 1995 in the Virgin Islands. two car batteries. . ran tv and stereo for weeks. got from offices old UPS systems whose batteries did not hold enough charge,.. new car batteries did it all. actually older boat batteries.
nice idea sir❤️❤️👍
So can we make some forever battery's...using that same set up but running the battery through a quincer instead of a doubler while funneling back into it self with an outlet to power lets say a fridge think about it...it should go smoothly and before any power outages you could help alot of people if you build a simple blue print to follow....just a thought
So the basic idea is putting an additional battery in parallel to the original (UPS), right ?
Hey! Well, to keep the capacities balanced, the original batteries are replaced with the larger ones.
Can I replace my UPS battery with a lithium battery 100ah for more capacity? I have a 600 watts UPS in which I have my computer, 2 monitors and the router plug in. Can I use that type of battery ( lithium battery 100ah and can it be charge by the UPS) Thank you for your time and assistance!
Excellent Video Mike. I know nothing about UPS devices but I had to purchase one recently for back up power on a home CCTV system.
It was a good used one, apparently, but I have yet to get my head around how it functions etc.
I suspect the batteries will need replacing as the old owner reckons he's had it for around 4 years or so, so that would tell me that the battery life cycle is almost due.
It's an APC C1500 model, the one with the LCD display.
Not sure what Ah sized batteries it contains, but I'd love to upgrade them if possible. Hopefully I can find the same physical sized batteries but with a higher output.
I'll have to do more research on this.
Thanks for the video. It's opened my mind about battery expansion.
*GET THE OLD BATT.. OUT !! **#FAST** ..*
*JUST BEFORE THEY ARE ..."DEAD" THEY CAN "WILL" GO REAL **#BAD** ...*
*GET "HOT" ... AND MELT **#INSIDE** YOUR **#UPS** ......*
*JUST SO YOU KNOW ....... OK MISTER*
I'm looking into doing a similar project as this but I'm not very familiar with battery specs... Here's my question, the APC uses a 12 volt battery. How is the APC compatible with 24 volts? It seems like the 24 volts would not work with the APC inverter. Could the APC over or under charge the 24 volt battery?
Hey David. I haven't come across a 12v UPS yet, but I'd bet some of the smaller ones do run off 12v because they're rather small. In that case, you wouldn't connect the batteries in series like I did. You could do a parallel setup and get Ludicrous run-time. I haven't had any trouble with the UPS keeping the batteries charged so far. Now, of course the charging circuit is low amperage, but it's like a trickle charger/maintainer with batteries of this size. If I do draw them down a lot, I'll disconnect them and put them on an auto charger. Just make sure you match the voltage and you'll be good. Disclaimer: Of course, you shouldn't officially do this. Thanks for watching.
@@MikesInventions Maybe I didn't give you the correct information. I have two CyberPower battery backups that I bought on Amazon (CP1000PFCLCD PFC and CP1350PFCLCD PFC). Theoretically, can you tell me which is better- 12v or 24v setup)?
I want the battery backup modification to power my network equipment (UniFi router, 24 port POE switch, and NAS) and maybe a TV.
@@davidwitte6439 So, since you're planning to add external batteries, it matters a lot less about the capacity. I'd consider the ports and plugs instead and make sure it had what you needed. So, if you get the 12v system, you only need 1 battery, and adding capacity means adding 1 battery in parallel, or 2, or 6, so it'd be a cheaper initial setup and easier upgrade. If you go with the 24v system, you need to add 2 batteries every time you want to add capacity. With 24v, you get to use smaller wires, but this thing isn't flying, so cost and weight savings there is a non-issue. I'd go with the 12v system.
I use an APC Back-Ups Pro 700 in a similar application. The 700 is 12V.
Thanks for the video,
I was wondering, how safe is it to run a UPS for much longer than they are designed for?
Don't they get very, very hot eventually as they are no fans?
Hey! I don't know. I've never had an issue with it so far. I'll let you know if it explodes or goes POOF!
It's a little more than that. I don't know if a UPS can start a house fire, working beyond its rated time.. I also wrestled with the same problem. They DO have marine and other inverters that are meant to run continuously. If you had a relay that could switch from the UPS to the continuous inverter you might have something there. But again we have a problem with the relay AND the continuous inverter. Is the continuous inverter UL approved for homes?? And if you make your own relay circuit, you would have to get it UL approved. I don't know if house fire insurance would accept these things as a cause of fire. ..Maybe I'm paranoid. But insurance companies as a whole are getting real slick about insuring things.
You could easily just put some fans in it.
Cut away part of the battery compartment, since you aren't using it anyway, and install some PC case fans. Maybe cut some slots on the other side so it has a place to expel air.
My APC UPS that looks a lot like the one in the video has a built-in cooling fan that runs continuously when on battery power. It annoys me because I only run a modem and a couple of routers off of it and the fan is probably using more power than they are! But, I think it will keep its cool when running these off of larger batteries. I just need convince myself that it's ok to charge the bigger batteries. It sounds like it is.
I've been running a similar setup in an off-grid application for over 2 years with no issues so far. My UPS is rated for 450W nominal, and it's typically pulling around 30-100W. It's been running almost 24-7 for most of that time.
I have a solar charge controller and AC battery charger which keep it topped off, so it doesn't rely much on the internal charging circuit.
The experiment went well enough that I set up a 2nd UPS the same way in another spot about 6 months ago.
look at the wall wart for your router... probably 12vdc output. You can just connect router direct to batt/delete the wall wart and save the loss through the inverter. Use the inverter for the T.V.
Nothing to control discharge though.
I hate to say it, but these things are made to run the duration of the batteries that are in there. I have done this exact test about 4 times now with 4 different UPS and they will all run fine for small things well under the rated max power output.
However if you do run enough enough to start heating up components inside the unit, the heat will not be stopped by that fan they added. it will overheat and burn your place to the ground.
Most units are passively cooled, and basically begin heating the the moment they switch to UPS. At the rated power there will be no issue because the UPS will shut down before the heat builds beyond what is expected with the factory battery. but if you extend the run time with these huge batteries they will keep going even when they are smoking and on fire.
It's well known, and I have seen it on my end more than once. You are safer with a power inverter that has a backup feature. they are built to run for long periods.
If that is not affordable, you could modify that UPS to make it "safer" by adding more fans, better (NOISY) airflow. just keep in mind, if a fire starts in this thing, the fans will help fan the flames and spread the fire quicker.
May have been mentioned by someone else earlier, but two major items to keep in mind when increasing the runtime of ANY UPS unit...
ITEM 1 - "FLOAT CHARGE" CAN BE WAY TOO HIGH FOR DIFFERENT BATTERIES
The "float charge" voltage ("standby" voltage the UPS keeps on the battery(ies) at all times when they are not being discharged or charged (just sitting there in standby)) can vary by a significant amount depending on the battery type used. The vital information here is that the float charge for one type of recharageable battery (e.g. an arbitrary typical SLA battery) can be a LOT different than the float charge for a different type of rechargeable battery (e.g. a marine-type Deep Cycle battery). It can even vary from one type or model of SLA battery to another type or model depending on manufacturing.
From what I've observed, many models of UPS units typically provide a float charge voltage that is too high...even for the originally supplied batteries. What this can mean is that the batteries may not last as long (edit to add: 'as they should last') because the float charge being too high will, over time degrade the batteries faster than if the float charge was set at the right voltage for the batteries being used. Example, instead of supplying a specified float charge of 13.5V to 13.8V for a given SLA battery, the UPS may be supplying a float charge of 14.5 to 14.8V. I have measured such high float charge levels on various UPS units.
A suspicious person might conclude that UPS manufacturers intentionally use fractionally higher float charge values to cause early life battery failures in order to increase their replacement battery sales.
*_A float charge higher than the specified value for a given battery WILL take months to years off the battery life of that battery, depending on just how high the float charge voltage is above the level specified for the batteries_*
I recommend batteryuniversity.com for more information on "float charge" and how it can damage batteries to cause significantly earlier battery failure.
(edit to add: 'I have no personal or financial interest in anything associated with batteryuniversity.com' )
ITEM 2 - UPS OVERHEATING DUE TO LONGER RUNTIMES
Some UPS units are designed in a way that they are LIMITED in how long they provide backup power due to overheating issues. If they run too long (e.g. users replace original batteries with MUCH higher Ah capacity batteries) then an UPS can overheat and possibly cause catastrophic damage to itself and/or attached devices due to uncontrolled output voltages caused by damaged control circuitry.
When I've added higher capacity Ah batteries for longer runtime, I always make sure that the UPS unit will not overheat due to the longer runtime. This may be a simple matter of not keeping the UPS in a closed storage area, or adding more ventilation to the storage area, or even adding more ventilation to the UPS case. I have also installed a fan in two units (one CyberPower and one APC) as they started reaching dangerously high sustained temperatures when they ran for longer than about 20 minutes. (edit to add: 'Running at sustained high temperatures is not good for ANY electronic equipment and at the least can cause early equipment failure. In particular, very high sustained temperatures (even higher internal ambient temps) can cause electrolytic capacitors to vent and cause failures with unpredictable results.')
*_One should not always assume the UPS's self-protection for overheating will always work and provide a controlled shutdown, or that a given UPS even has such protection built into it_*