Do you need 5 hours of battery backup for daily load shedding but your battery isn’t lasting that long anymore – why?
Standby Systems has the ultimate cyclic solution that will last for many years
There are two problems associated with 4-hour blackouts on a daily basis:
- Your batteries don’t have enough time to charge.
The battery must be at 100% charge within 20 hours of the first 4 hour discharge. This means the UPS must have a bigger than normal beefy rectifier and the battery able to take big recharge currents. Most/ almost all UPS/Inverter solutions don’t come close to what is needed by the battery after a discharge.
This is something that is always overlooked by UPS companies on the small end of the market. They generally don’t have the technical skills to understand and calculate the proper required current and, truthfully, a lot of them just don’t care. For them it’s all about the lowest price and making the sale.
- The battery must be able to cycle.
This means that the cyclic life must be much larger than 7000 discharges of 30% capacity. Depth of discharge (DOD) is the amount of capacity your battery gives off at each power failure.
A normal lead acid UPS battery, used in everyday life, sized for occasional power failures, will not, does not, and cannot support a cyclic load unless the DOD is very small (around 10%) and then it will only last 1 to 2 years if you lucky and need replacement at a hefty cost.
These normal lead acid UPS batteries, cannot accept huge recharge currents and are limited to a maximum of 20% of the AH capacity at the best of times while on a recharge, which is very often not enough.
This fact is ignored by many small UPS or inverter systems sales companies. A normal lead acid UPS battery can only do around 300 to 900 discharges and then it is finished. Must be replaced at huge cost.
The Consumer is the victim
If you look at websites where people moan about batteries, it is always the same thing, “The battery cost me so much money and didn’t even last a year” OR “My battery backup has failed after 3 days of blackouts” or “when I got my backup battery it worked and gave me 4 hours backup, now I’m only getting 30 minutes if I’m lucky”
The complaints are endless and go on and on.
The truth is that the battery didn’t do anything wrong. The company, who sold it to the user, pushed the price to get the sale, no matter what. There are several high-volume, small UPS/inverter sales companies that have the attitude :“once you’ve sold the unit, move onto the next victim, who cares if it’s not engineered properly”; there are lots of victims out there. That is honestly the attitude many have.
Environmental time bomb
Then people have thought they are very clever and opted for Lithium based battery technologies either Li Ion or LiFePHO4. Yes they cycle well daily and can recharge at 40% of AH.
This means they will recharge within 20 hours, but they are not recyclable in Africa and instead, must be returned to a facility overseas at huge cost at end of life. This is an environmental time bomb; some people just don’t care, and most are simply ignorant of this fact.
Standby Systems is working on a solution
Our way of doing business is that we are in it for the long haul and not just to make a quick buck at the expense of unhappy consumers.
We have had thousands of requests begging us for a reliable solution and after many years of resisting (it is not our core market and we were not able to source a proper technical solution we were happy with), we now after rigid testing have an affordable, reliable, properly engineered Industrial grade UPS/inverter with battery backup solution with a long service life under a rolling blackout use scenario for home-office; every 20 hours for 4 hour discharge in excess of 8 years’ life that is not affected as severely by heat like other lead acid products and doesn’t need an electronic control circuit to prevent it from catching fire like Lithium based products.
As always, affordability and cost, drive the consumer in the direction of the cheap option, that doesn’t last when rolling blackouts start – but by then it’s too late, money was wasted.
We as Standby Systems have for several months been testing a hardy, easy to use, reliable and lasting battery, home-office UPS/inverter solution. We are very much impressed with performance, build, layout, recharge capability and cost.
This is not the cheapest solution, nor overly expensive, but for what you get for your money they are definitely the best long lasting solution to rolling blackouts.
There are several challenges for a corporate to issue such systems to their staff to work from home:
- Affordability
The UPS/Inverter systems are available in 300 or 500 watt units. The idea is not for someone to run their whole house but rather a desktop/laptop, desk lamp, WiFi router, small scanner/printer, TV and decoder. Cost is all relative, but cost versus technical ability it is very good value for money that will cater everyday rolling blackouts of 4 hours.
- Battery selection
We have teamed up the hardy inverters with a 100AH lead carbon battery backup solution at reasonable cost and at half the cost of lithium based product with over 1000 more cycles than lithium at 30% depth of discharge and 25% more power than a 3600 W/H lithium product.
- Battery backup every 20 hours
The battery has been sized from 4 hours (with an additional 1 hour spare capacity) at 500 watts every day and will do this at 30% depth of discharge for >7000 cycles. The Industrial grade UPS/Inverter can deliver massive rehrge currents that are needed to achieve this.
- Battery design life and compliance
The battery is one of the few products on the market that is Eurobatt compliant; built by robots, ensuring the best quality and delivery times and has a long life design-life in excess of 15 years under float.
Based on the data and our testing thus far, we have rated the battery on a cyclic application to last 8 years as we are being very cautious. Due to the cell design it is far hardier, resulting in longer service life than a normal lead acid battery (tested in room temperatures up to 30 deg. C.)
- Asset security
Another problem is asset security, a plug and play UPS can easily be moved around, used for wrong purposes, abused or even “lost”. The unit we are proposing is a hard-wired unit and hence becomes a fixed immovable asset with a COC on installation.
- Cost
At this moment in time we are looking at a complete system cost which is approximately only 40% of the cost of an equivalent lithium and inverter charger combination which of around > R30 000.00 ex VAT.
Our aim here is to offer an affordable system that is reliable, and gives good cycling life that is technically right and environmentally friendly.