Replacement Batteries for UPS?

[terracore]

I was probably shopping for a different model or something but I never had a problem with an eBay seller. They just put the battery in a flat-rate box and charged me that rate.

[1voyager1]

Not sure what's going on with eBay vendors. I've only been making purchases from overseas vendors [China, HK, Thailand, etc] through them lately. The U.S. vendors seem to have been loosing their desire to make sales, and have very little interest in making sales to AK or HI. It's like many start up businesses. They begin lean and hungry and have very good deals. Then, after a while they get fat and complacent, thinking they have a corner on the business. Amazon has become my primary source for most purchases because of their low shipping costs, and I don't use Prime. I also find direct contact with some vendors that have no association with either organization can be a source of good deals. With a little extra searching I can often beat what is on eBay or Amazon, even after adding the shipping.

[1voyager1]

The replacement battery arrived yesterday by Priority Mail One Rate Box.
Pulled the old dead one out and put the new one in.
It was low on charge, but charged up in a few hours and is working very nicely with the APC software.
Good solution for the problem at a reasonable price.

[ericlp]

http://www.dansdata.com/diyups.htm

I know a few things about UPS's... Not all are created equal. And no, you shouldn't just buy a high capacity battery, since most are only designed to charge up "X" type spec battery.

If in doubt, roll your own! Plus side, you could use this equipment to possibly, charge batteries for a solar system. As not all chargers are created equal?

[kalakoa]

An off-grid solar system is basically "just" an on-line UPS with its batteries charged from a non-grid power source.

As such, most of the necessary components cross over to this application, and many of them are available locally; the "off-grid store" in Kurtistown had some nice pure-sine invertes last time I looked.

The other way around is: retrofit the PC with a native DC power supply, such as the picoPSU from minibox -- suitable for most PC applications that DON'T include one of those huge gaming-type video cards.

http://www.mini-box.com/picoPSU-160-XT

The "wide input" versions have a large enough input power range that they can safely be run directly from the battery bank of a PV system without any problems...

[terracore]

Our power went out about a dozen times yesterday, usually less than 15 minutes each time. I thought about plugging my TV into the computer's UPS but instead decided to plug the TV into a 2500 watt inverter connected to a deep cycle marine battery from Costco. Then I had that hooked up to a regular 12 amp battery charger connected to the Helco line. And I watched the TV like that most of the evening. I was thinking at the time that I was basically using a UPS system on steroids. I have the battery and inverter in a rolling tote. The intended configuration is that I can hook it up to my two 100 watt solar panels to charge the battery, but its nice to have this alternative use as well. Before I got the solar panels I used this "UPS" to give me a break from the generator noise after Iselle. I was able to run a full-size fridge off it for several hours, as well as run lights. Eventually I bought one of these:

http://pduwhips.com/products/1999-5-15p-...apter.aspx

WARNING! POTENTIALLY NOT RECOMMENDED DANGEROUS OFF LABEL USE! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! And I'm able to feed the power directly into the house through the generator plug that leads to our electrical panel (yes, we have the backfeeding lockout system in place etc). As expected with this cord the inverter only outputs on one leg and that what is fed into the house (this isn't a magic cord), so only half the circuits work. Fortunately my fridge, ceiling fan, lights etc are on the powered leg so it meets our needs well.