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[jelv]

[Moderator note: This post and those that follow have been split-off from Weaver's "Placement of NTU and related FTTP gubbins" topic.]

I have a APC Back-UPS CS 350 that just has my modem, NAS box and cordless phone base station. It runs for way longer than 15-30 minutes.

I recently bought a replacement battery for it - £18.99 - I don't consider that expensive.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I have a APC Back-UPS CS 350 that just has my modem, NAS box and cordless phone base station. It runs for way longer than 15-30 minutes.

I recently bought a replacement battery for it - £18.99 - I don't consider that expensive.

That's strange as the official runtime graph suggests it should only do around 30 minutes on a 50W load.

Also look at the rating, its a 116A/h battery so if it was outputting only 12V it could run for most of a day at 50W.

Its also highly recommended to use a true sine wave unit on modern PSUs as modified sine waves can interfere with the power factor correction.

[craigski]

I was curious when you said 116Ah, and price was quoted as £18.99 (a lot of battery for that price!).

I just checked spec in detail ,the UPS states 116 power-volt-hours, so assume Wh, the battery says 7Ah.

[Chrysalis]

I have never had a UPS unit I purchased run even close to advertised run time, maybe I am unlucky on defective/aged batteries I dont know.

Personally I think mobile is enough for emergencies in populated areas, if a populated area does not have indoor coverage then there should be a legal prod towards mobile providers to get that sorted.  That leaves areas like properties in the middle of nowhere, which I guess BBU would be a need.  I have a cheap UPS in my living room, it advertises 45 minutes run time for 10w load, which probably means in reality 10-15 minutes.

EE are finally doing some mast work after lots of prodding as their 5G coverage is outdoor only for me where I live under 1 mile from the city centre.  Its an issue unless the phone is rooted to force it to 4G as it keeps jumping from 4G to 5G and back indoors causes loss of connectivity.

[Alex Atkin UK]

I was curious when you said 116Ah, and price was quoted as £18.99 (a lot of battery for that price!).

I just checked spec in detail ,the UPS states 116 power-volt-hours, so assume Wh, the battery says 7Ah.

Darn spec sheets, I obviously missed that.  It did puzzle me that the difference seemed a lot bigger than it should be.

Personally I think mobile is enough for emergencies in populated areas

My mum wouldn't even know how to connect to WiFi, never mind how to turn on tethering on her phone, nor the cost of doing so.  So everything has to be automated and work should I not be around to fix it.  Granted not an issue during the pandemic as I never leave the house.

But as the router is run off a normal UPS due to having a 12v 5A PSU, the run time would be rather short anyway.  Thus why I'd rather like a beefier 12v UPS, although then there's the darn switch that HAS to run off a normal UPS so its not an easy problem to solve with my setup.

[craigski]

Confusing, this UPS thread is now being discussed in two places, I will continue here 

What about a Eaton 3S mini, will do 12v and 19v, replaces the PSU for the device:

https://www.eaton.com/content/dam/eaton/products/backup-power-ups-surge-it-power-distribution/backup-power-ups/eaton-3s-mini-emea/eaton-pqed-dpq-3s-mini-datasheet-low-en-us.pdf.pdf

[g3uiss]

That looks a great unit. I have commissioned Eaton AC UPS's on many occasions and found the devices great.

Do you know cost ?

[craigski]

https://www.box.co.uk/3SM36B-Eaton-3S-Mini-UPS_3934648.html

~£40

Video review at bottom.

[Weaver]

Very nice, could be a rather larger battery than my powerinspired unit?

[Alex Atkin UK]

For reference, the ones I were talking about before https://amzn.to/3Gr885J and I also stumbled onto this which is quite interesting.

Honestly the huge problem for me is disposing of used batteries, the nearest recycling center is a bus journey away and is not designed for foot traffic at all.

[craigski]

After a bit of research I decided on one of these:

https://www.apc.com/shop/uk/en/products/APC-Back-UPS-850VA-230V-USB-Type-C-and-A-charging-ports-8-BS-1363-outlets-2-surge-/P-BE850G2-UK

The power draw when batteries are fully charged in between 2-3W, as there is a relay inside that connects power in to power out, so there is minimal efficiency issues when there is power (just the standby charging @ 2-3W). If power fails, the UPS will provide the mains power on battery, and with a light load will be very inefficient. Hopefully this will not happen too often, so I'm assuming my overhead using this UPS is 3W, which works out at less than £5 per year using 100% renewable energy from my supplier.

It has a couple of USB sockets that are also on UPS, so could be useful for anyone who has a pi etc?

HTH!

[Alex Atkin UK]

I avoided those kind of units as they're all stepped-wave rather than pure sine wave and I'd read that can be bad for any PSU that has power factor correction, which is most modern switching PSUs.

Then again I'd read good reports about CyberPower UPS and the one I have on my gaming PC the USB ports stopped working and the power LED failed.  The one on the NAS threw a fit when the power went out under high-load as it couldn't handle the sudden load change.  To be fair, I never intended to get it near peak load and I moved the PC off it that pushed it.  But its still bad that it "should" have handled the load but immediately triggered overload and shut down.

Also the weird thing is at high load it says "low battery" (over USB, on the unit itself it says nothing is wrong) but at low load it says its fine, when it shouldn't have a difference as its in power save mode that doesn't use the battery.

[craigski]

I avoided those kind of units as they're all stepped-wave rather than pure sine wave and I'd read that can be bad for any PSU that has power factor correction, which is most modern switching PSUs.

According to website, its designed for "Battery Backup & Surge Protector for Electronics and Computers", so I'm assuming will have been tested with modern PSUs. Also has a 'Equipment Protection Policy' up to £50k for equipment plugged in that gets damaged, subject to T&C. APC is reputable brand. Based on all of that, I feel confident enough it wont damage devices plugged in.

[Weaver]

Because of concerns about the quality of waveform output, I’ve put the output of my UPS through two different mains filters, one Tacima, one Belkin (~£40 ! ) before the input to the three modems. I’m thinking about using those powerinspired Lion small UPSes (the new H model) with each of the modems, but that’s going to cost me ~£150 so I’ll have to save up. (Telly died before xmas so Janet shelled out  sizeable amount of cash in January sales, so no spending atm.)

[Alex Atkin UK]

According to website, its designed for "Battery Backup & Surge Protector for Electronics and Computers", so I'm assuming will have been tested with modern PSUs. Also has a 'Equipment Protection Policy' up to £50k for equipment plugged in that gets damaged, subject to T&C. APC is reputable brand. Based on all of that, I feel confident enough it wont damage devices plugged in.

Its a tricky one, I read around and lots of people said APC is overpriced junk but obviously that proves nothing.  But there are constantly lots of "reputable" brands that suck, they get a positive reputation then ride it all the way to the bank while cutting costs (thinking Duracell as one off the top of my head).