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Is Your Battery Back-Up System Ready?
| We at Titan Power understand how important power protection is to maintaining and preserving your company's critical operations uptime.
Considering the Monsoon Season officially begins June 15 and ends September 30, power outages due to the upcoming storms are just around the corner. As a service provider, we recommend reviewing your UPS batteries and consider replacements if they are nearing their life expectancy of 3 to 5 years and/or consider additional strings for true Uninterrupted Power.
Below are several points to think about regarding your batteries and battery performance now and for future reliability:
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Do You Have Multiple Strings of Batteries?
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Given the fact that batteries are unreliable, multiple strings of batteries in parallel are recommended to ensure reliable battery backup during a power outage.
A single string of batteries in a UPS are similar to links in a chain, if one battery in a single string fails the rest of the batteries in the string are useless.
Having parallel strings of batteries in series will ensure that the UPS will perform properly during a power outage even if one battery in one string fails.
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How Much Battery Run Time Will You Need?
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How much time is needed to shut down all equipment in the event of an extended power outage? Once determined, this will be the amount of time the UPS will require in battery run time. Depending on the UPS and battery size, this may require two or more strings of batteries.
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What Kind of Environment Are Your Batteries In?
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Ensuring that the environment for the batteries meets the battery manufacturer's specification is critical. Three factors will cause batteries to fail prematurely, these are:
Temperature: Batteries require the optimum temperature of 77 degrees. Every degree over 77 decreases the battery life by shortening the batteries life expectancy.
Usage: The more power outages the UPS encounters the shorter the life of the battery.
Example: Look at the battery like a loaf of bread. The loaf of bread has only so many slices. Every time a slice of bread is removed the loaf gets smaller. It is the same with batteries; every time the batteries are used, the capacity and the ability of the battery to store energy decreases (the loaf gets smaller).
Age: The age of batteries are determined by the numerical age (months or years) but also by the above two factors (temperature and usage). To determine the battery age (whether it can perform to manufacturer's spec.) we will rely on all three factors combined. Average life expectancy of UPS batteries is 3-5 years. |
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Are Your Batteries On A Maintenance Program?
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Battery Maintenance is required semiannually, at a minimum, to ensure that the UPS and its batteries are operating properly. Batteries are unreliable and one or more will fail during the life expectancy of three to five years. If the batteries are tested and fall bellow manufactures specification they should be replaced to ensure proper operation and so the UPS can provide the Uninterruptible Power.
In summary, VLRA (Valve Regulated) UPS batteries are unreliable and multiple strings in parallel are needed to ensure that the UPS can provide true Uninterruptible Power. It is important to consider this information when determining the need for battery replacements and adding additional battery strings. |
