And yet affordable LiFePO4 power stations are everywhere. Am I missing something?
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Cheap and lithium do not go together. Have you seen what happens when lithium batteries fail?
Lithium is advantageous for repetitive discharge and recharge cycles which is useless for a UPS installation with a reliable power source. The cost/capacity of lead acid wins out.
Most of your store bought UPS last a few minutes to an hour, mine that I made myself lasts 5 days at 24/7 usage, charges back up with a 375watt panel if there is sun in less than 5 hours and has a 10 year warranty on the battery that is a Life4po 120AH battery connected to a wall charger and a pure sine wave inverter so my equipment is running on even cleaner power than the grid. In a power loss I am already technically plugged into the battery, so when power returns the lithium charger starts back up or if it’s a few days without electricity my solar panel will do the work.
All for 900$
Compare what you get for 900$ from a store bought UPS, is maybe a few hours run time. But at least it fits into a rack right? Who cares if it’s rack mountable or not, I want power and durability not a plastic box with a shitty lead acid battery that will have a 1 year warranty on it.
There is an issue with using lithium battery in UPS. AFAIK all types of lithium batteries on the market now, They don’t like to be staying fully charged all the time. That’s why lead acid batteries and Ni-Cd batteries are still used for providing emergency power
Most lithium battery ate not full lith It lithium poly etc type. Most none car battery are lead calcium
I’m using a UPS that is plugged into a EcoFlow power station which uses LiFoPO4 battery
I too am looking for LifePo4 UPS recommendations.
I won’t use lead acid anymore. 40 years of experience has taught me that unless I’m prepared to replace the lead acid UPS batteries in an annual basis, having a lead acid based UPS is the same as not having one at all.
The batteries consistently have died and provide no backup time when I get my admittedly very intermittent power outages. No bueno.
The answer comes down to cost. LiFePO4 batteries have enough capacity that they can be held at 80% and still beat SLA on capacity. The problem is that LFP wins on gravimetric and volumetric energy density; two metrics that aren’t particularly important in the context of a UPS. It’s a large brick that sits on the floor.
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Simultaneous charge and supply circuits cost a fair bit to design and implement.
It’s a lot cheaper and profitable to build a basic ‘brick’ that can be sold to hundreds of thousands of 'phone users rather than a premium product for a few computer folk.
APC used to sell a consumer lithium UPS: here’s the price history. $270 for something about the capacity of the $50 lead acid equivalent. Looks discontinued now. They sell a lot of rackmounted options but they are all expensive.
I have a regular UPS for my server+NAS, and a small lithium one (pocket sized) for my low voltage things (basically all my network gear, sans POE). It was inexpensive and works fantastically. The best part was erasing 4 power brick transformers from my network closet and replacing them with just a 5V barrel cable directly to the UPS. I think it’s highest output is 12V which runs my 24-port switch (I think, maybe my router).
There’s also the fact that Lead Acid don’t catch on fire when they go bad like the Lithium based cells do.
I’m just re-using my APC Smart-UPS 750 and a pair of batteries like these. Allegedly the BMS / charging circuits in them are designed to work with charging systems that generally charge up 12v lead acid batteries. The pair of batteries I ordered have the exact same dimensions as the lead acid batteries they’re going to replace, and the same connectors in exactly the same location.
I’ve watched a number of videos on YouTube with folks that have done such conversions (using a wide array of UPS models). Even watched a video where a guy did a short circuit test (the battery he used failed miserably, but didn’t catch fire). The cable on my UPS has a built in (and replaceable) fuse, so I’m not worried about an issue with the UPS pulling far more amperage than it should be. Of course, that fuse won’t do much good if something inside the battery itself fails, but I suppose that’s what home owners insurance is for. :)
Probably in a dumpster fire somewhere