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  • Cyling ups non deep cycle vrla

    Im wondering If I daily cycle a ups battery non deep cycle max DoD 10% if the battery life will be the same as the expected floatlife according to specs?

  • #2
    I do not believe a UPS battery will last long even if it only gets discharge 10%. When I lived in an area that had a very solid grid my UPS's lasted about 5 years. Where I live now we get a lot of momentary power drops and the UPS batteries have only lasted about a year. They just aren't built to handle any amount of discharges no matter how short they are.

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    • #3
      Many ups-style agm's are "high rate", designed for very high discharge rates, and not much cycling, aka the ups battery, even if you only take 10% out.

      If you want to play with a more conventional agm, that can be a fun little application. I've been running this very test, pulling anywhere from 10-20 percent from an automotive agm, driving a cheap msw inverter, and kitchen led bulb. (Basic current draw is about 1 to 1.5 amps, depending on how bright I want the environment to be)

      I'm on my 4th year with that. Basically treating it like how a starter battery is treated. Better actually.

      But there are "gotchas" to watch out for with daily cycling to make it work well:

      1) Start out with NEW battery from reputable dealer.

      2) Daily cycling calls for recharging at the higher end of CV / absorb, and also a higher float than usual. Ie, my "conventional" agm is charged to 14.6v CV, and left to absorb the rest of the time at 13.6v.

      If you don't provide enough float time at 13.6v, then with daily cycling, you'll never get that last 1% charged, and the battery will walk itself down in capacity. This is a minimum of 8 hours just for float!

      Daily cycling also means there is NO WAY you could just do a 13.8v "float charge", since that will take days to really charge to full or you'll walk the capacity down. So a simple float-charge is out of the question for daily cycling.

      Solar for daily-cycling? Best bet is to set your controller to 14.6v CV/Absorb, and ALSO make your float the same 14.6v. Or as high as your controller will let you get to 14.6v. (temp compensated of course).

      An easy to control application is to use a cheap msw dc<>ac inverter, and a common grocery-store led bulb in a lamp and let it burn. For example, a "60 watt" equivalent led bulb might actually draw 1/4th that, say 15 watts. If you want, convert that to amphours by dividing by 10 (10 instead of 12v battery takes into account the inverter loss) to get real close to what is actually being pulled at the battery. In this case, that would be about 1.5ah. Choose your hourly amount so as not to go beyond 10-20 percent of the battery capacity.

      Lot of waste going on here, with a lot of "dead lead" to just support a daily discharge of 10-20 percent or so. But it can be a goofy way to have fun that only a few battery / solar nerds like myself find interesting.

      Last edited by PNjunction; 10-24-2019, 05:24 AM.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by PNjunction View Post
        Many ups-style agm's are "high rate", designed for very high discharge rates, and not much cycling, aka the ups battery, even if you only take 10% out.

        If you want to play with a more conventional agm, that can be a fun little application. I've been running this very test, pulling anywhere from 10-20 percent from an automotive agm, driving a cheap msw inverter, and kitchen led bulb.

        ...

        Solar for daily-cycling? Best bet is to set your controller to 14.6v CV/Absorb, and ALSO make your float the same 14.6v. Or as high as your controller will let you get to 14.6v. (temp compensated of course).

        .....

        Lot of waste going on here, with a lot of "dead lead" to just support a daily discharge of 10-20 percent or so. But it can be a goofy way to have fun that only a few battery / solar nerds like myself find interesting.
        Very interesting PNJunction:
        Agm UPS not suitable for daily cycling but agm automotive can be fun for daily discharge @ 10-20% DoD.

        I thought agm automotive must have enough CCA to start (briefly) an engine while agm ups is designed for e.g. max 15 minutes (high)discharge in case of a poweroutage.

        Initially i thought I perhaps can cycle 5-10% daily with agm ups then try to charge and float the next day with solar, also awaiting a poweroutage so i have more value for my money in case i decide to use a standby-backup sistem with agm ups battery.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by GeorgeF View Post

          Very interesting PNJunction:
          Agm UPS not suitable for daily cycling but agm automotive can be fun for daily discharge @ 10-20% DoD.

          I thought agm automotive must have enough CCA to start (briefly) an engine while agm ups is designed for e.g. max 15 minutes (high)discharge in case of a poweroutage.

          Initially i thought I perhaps can cycle 5-10% daily with agm ups then try to charge and float the next day with solar, also awaiting a poweroutage so i have more value for my money in case i decide to use a standby-backup sistem with agm ups battery.
          Some of the Optima Blue, Red or Yellow batteries can be used for both an auto as well as multiple cycling. They are not really AGM but they are sealed and have a high density of plates.

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