Battery Backup recharge Times?

[Nick R]

Noticed this today. We've had some really high winds, 50+ that has knocked out power a few times. I get around 20 minutes of runtime on my main unit, powering my tower, 27" LED monitor, Cable Modem and router. Which is fine. But the recharge time takes forever. It drained to 70% before the power came back on, and that was over an hour ago and it's only back to 85%. I thought these would recharge faster than this?

Edit: Oh yeah, I have two APC ES-550VAs. One for my main and one for my file server.

 

[Quattro Pete]

These typically recharge very slowly. You should be able to find the full recharge times on the mfg's website. Some of them can take 12 hours.

 

[HerrStig]

They're for "occasional" failures, of a short term nature.

 

[NHGUY]

A slow recharge increases battery life.A "100amp" "quick charge" will kill any battery....

 

[Donald]

I think it recharging at a reasonable rate.

 

[spackard]

Probably 16 hours.
I have some extended run rack-mount things; if you chain 3 extended runs together I think they spec 72 hours.

The first use is a pain. The HP UPS won't turn on until it's been plugged in 24 hours. You think it's broken, come back next day, and it works. (Yeah, I didn't RTFM).

 

[KlooksKleek]

I, too, find nothing unusual with a recharge time of several hours for that type of device.

My battery backup is a very heavy brick-looking thing, a 550VA from Cyber Power. I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't a lead-acid battery in there, similar to a car battery.

 

[javacontour]

I find similar when I change batteries in storage arrays with battery backup. Some take 12+ hours to charge new batteries so the array can return to write-behind mode.

 

[Quest]

UPS typically runs on SLA battery pack(s), which, by design, is configured to fully recharge in approx 16hrs or longer, then the circuitry will change to trickle charge mode.

In your case: your observation is correct. Plse give it 1 day to recharge.

Lastly: UPS is designed for sustained brownouts (until the unit shuts down due to battery reserve exhaustion). It CANNOT, however, handles repeated brownouts due the insufficient time in-between brownouts to recharge the SLA battery packs fully.

Q.

 

[HerrStig]

You can hang a bigger battery on a UPS, outside, but you are still limited by the internal charger. I miss APC.

 

[Quest]

I have always been a big fan of the following:

APC, Tripplite, Liebert.

Not too fond of others: for I had twice Cyber-power blowing up on me.

Q.

 

[tinmanSC]

Mine took more than a day to recharge from a complete discharge a few months ago. Nothing unusual about your recharge time.

 

[JHZR2]

5-8 hours or even a bit slower is optimal for lead acid.