BF2S Forums Superiour power.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my UPS. It has a battery that has five times the capacity of a normal UPS battery, and will deliver days of power for my laptop and modem. It also makes a loud humming noise and has a huge relay that goes KA-CLONK inside.

Is this awesome y/n?

Long version (OCforums)

I wrote:

I found my old 1998 UPS a couple of days ago, and thought I'd see if it still worked. I plugged it in, and it wouldn't even start, so I downloaded a manual, and sure enough, there needs to be power in the battery for it to even boot. So, I ripped out my ghetto battery charger (I.e 80's 14V/5A power supply) and tried to charge the battery, which, well, made it quite warm, but not much more. I realized that battery was dead.

Those small 12Ah gel-cell batteries are quite hard to get your hands on where I live, and they aren't very efficient in any way, so I thought I'd try something new, as I wouldn't cry if the UPS I got for free five years ago would die.

I went to a local car supply shop, and I was in luck. There was a sale on maintenance-free sealed lead batteries, as they had been standing for a couple of months. Those were just the batteries I was looking for, as they rarely leak acid, and the hydrogen emission that normal batteries have is more or less neutralized, as the cells can be permanently sealed.

I walked out with two battery connectors and a nice 55Ah battery for a grand total of 65€, something that would have been 135€ normally. I forgot to buy any decent cables, however, but that problem was quickly solved by slaughtering the PCI-E connectors off of an old PSU and putting them parallel, three by three. I then hooked up this:



Testing revealed that it can power my whole stereo system without even breaking a sweat, and that ain't exactly a small shelf stereo. It's two 1988 amplifiers that'll eat closer to 200W a piece on full blast. I didn't go full out, so I'd say the maximum load was around 300-350W. A video of the battery voltage can be found here.

According to calculations, this thing could power my laptop and modem for closer to 30 hours (including a 20% loss)

So, anyone else here running an awesome-UPS?

UPDATE

So, I couldn't resist getting another battery and hooking it up parallel with my other battery. They're such a bargain!



New battery installed on the test bed, cables checked, just gotta charge up the new battery a bit, and I'm fit for two hours of gaming without power. Fuck yeah!

Total power: 110Ah or 1320Wh. For a normal human being, that's about enough power to power your average gaming computer for two hours.

UPDATE

Stock battery vs new batteries:



UPDATE

Yet another upgrade has come upon my beautiful system! After a very successful advert in the local newspaper, I have here, from the local newspaper (lol), a 750W Smart-UPS from 2005 (old one from 1998 ). They had somehow managed to explode the batteries in it, how they did it is beyond me. Not that it matters, as the UPS itself is still working like new. And, well, it is new. The logs in it show that it had been plugged in for two months in 2006, and two days before I got it.

Not only is it 2-3 times as powerful as my old one, it is also 10-15% more effective, provides me with a clean sine wave output as opposed to the jagged on my old UPS, can support a hell of a lot more load, and runs on 24V, so I don't have to think of my cables burning up or my batteries equalizing (series vs parallel, if parallel, they'll charge/discharge each other during an hour or two until they're on the same voltage)

The black beauty:


Awesomeness in a box.


The left side. There used to be a black Smart Slot there, but I fucked it in favour of better cooling and more space for wiring.


Extended cooling on the transistors, made up of the heatsink from an old 7300LE. These eight transistors produce less heat than the four on my old one. Talk about difference in efficiency!


The batteries were hooked up with a nice little adapter, which makes for an awesome connector to connect the external batteries. Way more practical to just plug the batteries from the UPS rather than having to disconnect the batteries and fuck around with the cable as soon as I have to move the thing.

Last edited by Freezer7Pro (2008-11-24 04:46:57)