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Uninterruptible Power Supply - External Battery Testing

Batteries provide the lifeblood of most uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and power protection solutions (some are powered by flywheel energy storage devices but most contain batteries). They provide protected loads with continuous energy in the event of a mains failure, which will support loads whilst a generator or alternative power source starts up or provide enough time to gracefully shut down equipment or ride through short duration power cuts.

Often, external battery ‘strings’ or ‘sets’ (a collection of additional UPS batteries, in blocks, providing extended runtime – runtime over and above that supported by the UPS’s own internal battery) constitute a large part of an uninterruptible power supply. A whole battery string, however, is only as good as its weakest battery. It is, therefore, imperative to regularly test UPS batteries and battery strings for ‘weak links’, which should be immediately replaced – even if they have not quite fulfilled their design life, which for UPS batteries is five to ten years.

There are various methods for electrically testing UPS batteries:

• Automatic battery set testing (by the UPS itself).
• Load bank discharge testing or battery set, string and individual cell testing.
• Electro-chemical testing.

Many uninterruptible power supplies are designed to test their batteries every 24 hours and will sound an audible alarm if a battery fault or condition is detected. How it works is that the test places a load on the battery set and the discharge performance is monitored. This is a basic type of test, however, and cannot be relied upon to give detail - other than an overall indication of the state of a battery set. Battery sets usually age uniformly but individual blocks of batteries can fail earlier than others and be rendered unable to sustain a reasonable level of charge, which can bring the whole set down under load conditions.

A more accurate and reliable way to test batteries or battery sets is to use a load bank, which places a load on the set from which measurements can be taken intermittently to assess its discharge performance. But even this has its limitations. The disadvantages of load bank testing are that it reduces resilience whilst the system is being tested, which for critical applications like hospitals or financial processing is unacceptable.

For large battery sets, individual block testing is much more reliable and need not take up additional man-hours as it can be incorporated into a routine maintenance visit. It should include a visual inspection to check that battery casings are not damaged or showing signs of aging such as buckling and emission of electrolyte discharge, which can sometimes be seen around terminals and valves.

Sulphating Batteries:

Because UPS batteries employ an electro-chemical process, they can deteriorate over time (months and even years). When batteries sulphate, Lead Sulphate crystals form within their electrolyte and at plate terminals, which will reduce charging performance and prevent normal operation. They can be recovered from this state (if caught early and their degree of sulphation is not great) by being charged at a higher current for around 12 hours. But care must the taken as this process itself can generate heat. If the battery does not recover through this means, it must be immediately removed and disposed of (by a licensed engineer) and replaced.

Impedance Testing:

Impedance testing can identify battery blocks that are about the fail. As batteries age, internal resistance (restriction to the flow of ions between the positive and negative plates) increases. Impedance testing consists of applying an ac voltage, suitable for the Ah size of battery, through probes attached to the battery block terminals. Impedance (in milliohms) is measured and recorded and compared to published data from manufacturers and/or previous recordings.

Electro-Chemical Testing:

Electro-chemical testing relies on measuring the frequency response to voltage and current signals passed into the battery using probes placed on the positive and negative terminals.

Electro-chemical testing is a non-invasive method that uses the principle of Frequency Response Analysis (FRA) to compare measured data to algorithms of known battery conditions, specifically sulphate and electrolyte dry-out. This problem is the principle cause of UPS battery failure and poor performance. Although originally only available in laboratories, electro-chemical testing can now be applied to uninterruptible power supply batteries using a specially designed, portable hand-held testing unit.

As batteries are so important to an uninterruptible power supply and monitoring and testing them relatively quick and easy, care must be taken to ensure it is done with precise regularity to ensure reliability of power protection solutions. This article was compiled using information available in The Power Protection Guide – the design, installation and operation of uninterruptible power supplies (ISBN: 9 780955 442803). By Robin Koffler and Jason Yates of Riello UPS.

About the Author

Robin Koffler is the General Manager for Riello UPS Ltd the UK subsidiary of Riello UPS (RPS S.p.A) a leading European manufacturer of Uninterruptible Power Supplies and a co-author of The Power Protection Guide(ISBN 978-0-9554428-0-3)- available from Amazon.com

How To Improve Your Blackberry's Battery Runtime

7 Tips Maximizing Dell Laptop Battery Life

Condition the battery When you purchase your Dell Inspiron Laptop Batteries, charge the Dell battery to 100 percent, discharge it completely, and then fully charge it to 100 percent again to help the battery computer dell laptop remember exactly how much electrical charge it can hold. From then on, you’ll never need to completely discharge the battery again, but always make sure when charging it that you let it reach 100 percent. DeHoop told us to "remember to plug in the AC adapter (or dock/port replicator) whenever you get a chance. Most notebooks will recharge quickly." Salinas had another tip for your batteries: "Keep them cool. Exposure to high temperatures can be a battery’s worst enemy," he said.

Decrease hard drive activity To minimize the frequency with which your hard disk has to spin up to access data, Salinas recommended defragmenting your hard drive regularly. This optimizes the placement of data on the drive so that it can be found more quickly. You can find the Disk Degfragmenter in the Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools menu. Beyond that, he advised optimizing Windows’ paging file, which is an area of the hard drive that serves as virtual memory whenever your RAM is full. To change it, go to the Control Panel and click through System/Advanced/Performance Settings/Advanced/Virtual Memory Change and set both the initial and maximum paging file size to 1.5 times the capacity of the installed memory.

Disable startup items Startup items load into memory every time Windows boots up, which causes other open applications to spill over into virtual memory and adds to the CPU load. You can disable the startup options by opening the associated programs and going to the Options or Preferences menu. You can also remove them from the Start/Programs/Startup folder or by clicking Start/Run, entering C:\MSCONFIG, and clicking OK. Select the Startup tab and clear the checkbox beside any unnecessary background items, like qttask (QuickTime).

Don’t use any external devices. USB and PC-Cards (aka PC-MCIA) use your battery to function, even when you aren’t using them! Have an EVDO card or maybe a USB mouse? Remove them if you can. Even a memory card reader in your PC-MCIA slot uses power just by being in there. The effect varies based on the type of device, but even a few minutes here and there (as you’ll see) add up significantly.

Power down the display "You can often yield up to ten minutes of battery life per level of brightness lowered," said Salinas. DeHoop added that lowering the brightness "may give you as much as an extra hour of runtime." In addition, lowering the screen resolution and color depth decreases the workload on the GPU, thus extending the battery runtime. You can change these by going to Start/Settings/Control Panel/Display and clicking the Settings tab. Disabling extra features like ClearType fonts and fade effects will cut down on the CPU’s power consumption. You can find these in the Control Panel under System/Advanced/Performance Settings/Visual Effects.

Single-task, not multi-task. The more you are doing at the same time with your PC, the more memory and CPU usage increases. Both of which directly use up battery. Close any applications you aren’t using, even the small ones. When doing some experimentation, I found it more efficient to run a single application at a time, then close it and open a new one when ready to move on. While your hard drive uses the battery too, if you are doing anything ‘productive’ you are probably hitting the drive on a regular (even if infrequent) basis anyway.

Turn off unused devices Both of our gurus mentioned disabling unused devices. Many new notebooks provide a hard-wired On/Off switch for the Wi-Fi radio for this reason. Beyond that, you should go to the Control Panel, select System/Hardware/Device Manager, and disable the Ethernet adapter, infrared transceiver, and Bluetooth radio (if your notebook has one). It was designed for mobile devices, but having Bluetooth enabled actually consumes quite a bit of power.

Keep it cool. You can take a page out of the extreme gamer’s handbooks, and have your system perform more optimally by keeping it cool. Make sure your air vents (inflow and outflow) aren’t blocked by anything, which often occurs by poorly positioning your notebook on your lap (which is known to have some other side-effects too, by the way). Heavy CPU and memory use all contribute to heat as well, hence my comment on multi-tasking above.

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