Their inventive management schemes and energy sources

Inside my mid-2023 teardown of a malcontent APC Again-UPS ES BE550G 550VA UPS, I wrote:

What I like about these items (and conceptually related ones from each APC and rivals) is that the batteries are user-replaceable, they usually’re standard-size and -spec. A SLA (sealed lead acid) [editor note: a correction from the original “Ni-Cd” per reader feedback] cell will sooner-or-later go kaput, whether or not it’s on account of repeated premises energy loss dependency on it or simply prolonged trickle-charging-induced storage-capability decay, however you possibly can then simply pop in a substitute battery, and it’ll be good as new.

More and more these days, nevertheless, I’m studying that this longstanding assumption of battery standardization is sadly chucking up the sponge. Take the Amazon Fundamentals ABST600 600VA UPS that I changed the BE550G with:

06.12.2024

06.11.2024

06.10.2024

I obtained it as a backup within the first place as a result of it was an Amazon Warehouse-sourced open field unit bought at a $20 low cost from the brand-new worth and ended up wanting (and dealing) like model new, too. However, though Web analysis confirmed that it was a rebranded CyberPower unit, it turned out to make use of a non-standard 12V 5Ah battery (an identical concern to at least one I’d found just a few years earlier with one other in-service CyberPower UPS under and to my proper as I sort this). I ended up discovering one, labeled as being meant for a storage door opener (imagine it or not):

however it wasn’t simple, and Amazon/CyberPower additionally don’t make substitute simple, both. There’s no user-accessible slot dedicated to the battery; as a substitute, you could take the complete UPS aside, which is presumably intentional. When the battery dies just a few years down the street, they’d want that you just purchase a brand-new UPS as a substitute (with apparent environmental and landfill impacts).

The place else do I’ve UPSs begging for substitute? Nicely, long-term readers might recall that the furnace room beneath my workplace is the house community nexus. An historical APC Again-UPS 650, the BK650MC, traditionally supplied backup energy for my QNAP TS-328 and TS-453Be NASs:

Sure, that’s a COM (serial port) for to-computer connectivity on the again panel, together with legacy POTS pass-through connectivity for surge safety functions!

I truthfully don’t understand how lengthy I’ve owned this factor, however it’s nonetheless chugging alongside (periodically fed by substitute backup batteries, in fact). Reflective of its probably geriatric standing, right here’s a two-part assessment of it from the Ars Technica web site archive, revealed in December 1999.

The opposite UPS traditionally within the furnace room, offering backup energy for my cable modem, router and important swap, was a twin of the APC Again-UPS ES BE550G that had died final 12 months:

A part of the motivation for (proactively, this time) changing it—each of them, in reality—will be discovered within the final sentence of paragraph from which the sooner quote got here:

That mentioned, finally the interior circuitry itself might fail, as appears to be the case with my system, with the UPS then destined just for dissection-then-discard.

Extra particularly, we’ve lately gone by a spate of brownouts and longer-duration blackouts right here. I don’t know if something particular is occurring with Xcel Power of late, or if it’s simply coincidence, however provided that my spouse and I each work full-time from dwelling, protecting the WAN and not less than key parts of the LAN “up” so long as doable is a giant deal. With the 550VA UPS, broadband would usually drop inside round an hour. And I used to be additionally getting uninterested in dashing downstairs (inevitably in the midst of the night time, woke up by a multi-UPS beeping refrain) to stably energy off the NASs earlier than backup energy drained, probably corrupting their multi-HDD RAID arrays on account of the following abrupt energy loss.

I assumed I’d hit pay dust (and I really did; hold studying) once I got here throughout APC’s BX1500M 1500VA UPS:

APC sells the BX1500M for $219.99 on its web site, though retailers corresponding to Amazon usually listing the UPS for round $184. And notably, Woot! lately had it for $149.99. Even higher, the retailer was providing just a few open field items for $124.87. And higher nonetheless, a one-day 10%-off promotion additional dropped the open-box worth to $112.38. I grabbed the final two. After they arrived, one in all them had one thing rattling round inside. Though it nonetheless appeared to work tremendous, I despatched it again for full refund, amongst different causes as a result of as I later realized, I solely wanted one.

All was not excellent with the BX1500M, nevertheless, not less than at first. Its substitute battery pack, the APCRBC124, positive seems to be proprietary (to not point out dear), doesn’t it?

To not fear, it seems, as this video demonstrates:

Seems the APCRBC124 is simply two standard 12V 9Ah SLA cells linked in sequence (24V end result) by a three-wire and connector-inclusive plastic bracket, together with some tape to carry the entire thing collectively. I snagged the next images from a bracket-only for-sale submit on eBay:

The setup’s fairly slick, really. You may insert the batteries-plus-harness assemblage upside-down (with the red-color sticker “up”), which doesn’t join the battery pack to the UPS, for storage. Pull it out, flip it so the green-color sticker is “up”, put it again in and also you’re good to go.

So why didn’t I find yourself needing two UPSs? Listed below are the BX1500M-displayed stats when each NASs, plus the networking gear, are all powered up:

86W of whole energy load, 9% of the full doable energy provided by the battery pack, which might solely final a bit greater than an hour on battery energy alone.

Now, let’s shut down the NASs:

15W of whole load. Solely 1% of the full doable energy provided by the battery pack. And almost 4 hours of estimated working life on battery energy alone.

Okay, so I nonetheless have to frantically run downstairs and stably energy off the NASs every time premises energy goes down, proper? Nope. Seems each NASs run QNAP-developed and -supported implementations of the Community UPS Instruments (NUT) software program suite. I’ve obtained the TS-453Be linked to the UPS by way of an APC-provided USB Kind A-to-RJ50 cable and configured because the NUT server. 5 (user-configurable) minutes after premises energy goes down and the BX1500M switches to battery backup, it indicators the TS-453Be to provoke a secure shutdown sequence. And the TS-453Be-as-NUT server then additionally then sends a command to the TS-231 NUT shopper, LAN-connected over the identical (BX1500M battery-backed) GbE swap, to stably shut itself down, too (static IP assignments for each NASs are clearly obligatory to make sure the specified end result).

From then on, solely the LAN tools is pulling (a lot lower than earlier than) energy from the UPS. Slick, huh? By the best way, each QNAP NASs alternatively assist one thing known as “auto-protection” mode, which spins down and parks the HDDs and holds the NAS in standby whereas on battery energy, auto-rebooting it when premises AC is restored. As QNAP’s documentation notes, this selection is “beneficial for enterprise and enterprise customers”…which doesn’t hold the NAS’s UI from recommending that I swap to it every time I log into the online browser-based UI. Nevertheless it’s not obligatory in my extra modest setup, and I’ll take the additional battery life incurred by the full-shutdown various. Now I simply have to arrange related USB-cabled schemes for the opposite UPS-backed computer systems in my secure, whose O/Ss both assist UPS management natively or along side a UPS vendor-supplied utility…

Questions? Different ideas? Let me know within the feedback!

—Brian Dipert is the Editor-in-Chief of the Edge AI and Imaginative and prescient Alliance, and a Senior Analyst at BDTI and Editor-in-Chief of InsideDSP, the corporate’s on-line e-newsletter.

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