On 10/25/2014 12:22 AM, Central Scrutinizer wrote:
ellanios82 wrote:
Hello List,
- recently my UPS 12 volt battery has given-up the ghost and died.
Due location it is not easy to get exact correct replacement UPS Battery.
- could someone be so kind to advise :
is it safely possible to replace dead battery with a 12 volt jelly Car Battery ?
Mine has recently died (the battery, not the UPS) and replacing it with a car battery is exeactly my intent.
They are BOTH lead-(sulphuric) acid chemistry, so are essentially interchangeable, except that the car battery has a greater capacity in Amp-hours, and also has higher peak charge and discharge rates.
I'll offer some things I learned a long time ago and haven't revisited since, so take them with a grain of salt. Car batteries used to have lead plates alloyed with antimony (I think) to allow them to stand up to vibration. But this alloying agent also resulted in low internal electrical resistance that allowed a certain amount of current to pass from from the charger, even if the battery was fully charged. This current electrolyzed the water turning it to hydrogen and oxygen, which means the water levels needed to be checked regularly. Then in the '70s the lead was alloyed with something else (calcium?) that raised the internal resistance and minimized the requirement to check the water level all the time. Remember fully sealed car batteries? But the new batteries didn't handle deep discharging as well as the older ones and their lives were drastically shortened if fully discharged. So another type of battery was developed that handled deep discharging/charging cycles. These batteries didn't have the peak current capacity as the regular auto batteries, but you didn't need that for applications like powering lights in a boat. So I would think that a UPS would want a "deep discharge" battery. I have no idea what gel cell batteries do, but I know they're used in big UPS systems. I've got one that puts out 10-KVA and is run with twelve 12-V gel cells about the same size a a motorcycle battery. They're wired in series and it always makes me VERY nervous when replacing them. Again, this is all from foggy memory. I'm sure that google points to lots of more accurate information. BTW, any marine supply store will have deep discharge batteries in lots of sizes. Regards, Lew -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org