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Need a new battery for my UPS

13Gigatons

13Gigatons

Diamond Member
I see batteries as low $40 and wonder if anybody has had good luck with these?

They also have the OEM battery for $57 (tax included), but it actually has worst reviews then the third party battery. Maybe the quality is slipping or they are refurbish.

Choices:
1. Mighty Max
2. OEM (APC)
3. Duracell Ultra
 
Most UPS don't take a special battery, at most just have unique wiring harness connector that you might need to reuse.

Your RBC32 is just two, ~ 7Ah batteries stacked head to head. You can get two of those for about $20 each on Amazon, maybe a little cheaper at Costco. Just make sure they have a compatible terminal size.

Then again the APC two battery ready to plug in "cartridge" w/harness is only $52 on Amazon, so we're only talking $12 difference. https://www.amazon.com/APC-Replacement-Battery-Cartridge-RBC32/dp/B00094OX2S

Most major brands have decent quality, but you don't want old stock that sat around in a depleted state.
 
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Lead acid gel cells are fairly standard. APC and other UPS companies charges an arm and a leg for them but if you take the sticker off, it will be a generic battery that you can probably find locally at an electrical distributor. Because they are heavy they tend to cost a lot to ship too so it's often cheaper to buy locally. Check at an alarm store, or electrical distributor or similar type of store. If you bring the old one they can probably get you an exact match and even recycle the old one for you.
 
i had a nice tower APC full sine wave tower UPS and just replaced the batteries with SLAs from interstate or whoever. only junked it because the electronics went bad and it would think 120V AC was out of spec, so was constantly compensating.
 
Yeah, the only name-brand batteries I buy are for server racks (due to the cost of the original unit & liability).

Everything else, whatever has good ratings online or whatever I can find for cheap locally.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Lead acid gel cells are fairly standard. APC and other UPS companies charges an arm and a leg for them but if you take the sticker off, it will be a generic battery that you can probably find locally at an electrical distributor. Because they are heavy they tend to cost a lot to ship too so it's often cheaper to buy locally. Check at an alarm store, or electrical distributor or similar type of store. If you bring the old one they can probably get you an exact match and even recycle the old one for you.
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What I find silly is, lots of times, you can get a whole new UPS for not much more than the cost of replacement batteries. Places like Officemax/Depot/Bestbuy have these things on clearance all the time, and I just pop out those batteries, and use them on my higher end UPS.

If I don't find any UPS on clearance, then I usually end up with generic batteries, I get the special for the month from wherever I find to be reasonably priced.

I do have quite of few old batteries that aren't completely dead, but not enough to not hold a sustained charge. I was thinking about getting a battery reconditioner / charger that can do desulfating and see if I can bring them back to life.
 
Some of the higher end UPSes that have fans will also take flooded acid batteries (you want it to have fans as it will also run longer), just double check what the float voltage is with a multimeter so it does not overcharge them. This is probably hard coded so not sure if you can change it. That was originally my plan for my server room but I ended up just buying an inverter-charger which is designed for that purpose.
 
I ordered the Mighty Max battery. It arrived on time and well packed. It's charging up right now. Will test it out in a while.
 
I just picked up a lead acid Duracel (1 year warranty) for my UPS at BatteriesPlus for less than $40. If you order online, there is a coupon for 10% off, then you can pick it up in store. Plus they will recycle the old lead acid battery, so don’t forget to bring it with you. You can also bring in your UPS and they will replace the battery for you at no additional charge.
 
13Gigatons said:
It's the same excide battery that I removed. It lasted for years but Amazon also charges tax which brings it up to $57.
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Pick your poison. You either pay local tax or shipping. If you really want the best bang for the buck then look into whether your UPS can handle larger capacity batteries (and you want that ghetto hack to have larger batteries sitting next to it and extend the power cables) since you can get a higher capacity to dollar ratio the larger you go, up to a point at least.

On that note if you find some clearance vehicle jumpstarter power packs you can get good capacity:dollar out of some of those, but all these deviations from just buying the intended battery have some sort of concession to be made to arrive at the benefits. Suppose you spend 2 hours on this and save $10, depends on what your free time is worth...
 
Cepak said:
I just picked up a lead acid Duracel (1 year warranty) for my UPS at BatteriesPlus for less than $40. If you order online, there is a coupon for 10% off, then you can pick it up in store. Plus they will recycle the old lead acid battery, so don’t forget to bring it with you. You can also bring in your UPS and they will replace the battery for you at no additional charge.
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I was looking at those but I needed two batteries so that doubles the price to $80 plus tax (and I have to drive there).
 
13Gigatons said:
I was looking at those but I needed two batteries so that doubles the price to $80 plus tax (and I have to drive there).
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My UPS originally came with a 12V 7ah battery. I was able to go with the 12V 9ah battery instead. $41.99 - $4.19 (10% discount) + tax. Yeah, I had to go pick it up, but it was a 5 minute drive. You either pay local sales tax or shipping, so the price comes out to about the same. Plus I took 3 dead lead acid batteries with me for recycling, and I no longer have to deal with them.
 
Cepak said:
I just picked up a lead acid Duracel (1 year warranty) for my UPS at BatteriesPlus for less than $40. If you order online, there is a coupon for 10% off, then you can pick it up in store. Plus they will recycle the old lead acid battery, so don’t forget to bring it with you. You can also bring in your UPS and they will replace the battery for you at no additional charge.
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That store is pretty expensive IMO, almost double of what other places charge, not as bad as Interstate Batteries though.
I got 2 9Ah batteries for $40 + $10 shipping from Atbatt, year before that was from Zbatteries for $35 +$5 shipping (they had a promo going on for shipping).
Looking today, they got a great deal on a 9Ah for $9. https://atbatt.com/12v-9ah-sealed-lead-acid-battery-f1-terminal/ This is F1 terminal only though, betting it is old stock since warranty is 30 days. The next one up is https://atbatt.com/12v-9ah-sealed-lead-acid-battery-f1-terminal/ which is $16 for 1 year warranty or $20 for 2 years...
 
I have needed to swap batteries on my APC UPS ... it usually works fine with batteries from Amazon ... Last time though, even with a new battery direct from APC, the unit was not happy, beeping about not charging. So that pile of crap went to junkyard. Kept the battery since it was new. Bought a new unit from Staples while it was on sale.
 
I have a pretty silly amount of UPS units for a home -- somewhere around eight -- and I've just bought the cheaper batteries off Amazon. I haven't had any problems.
 
Truth be told, there are only a few battery plants these days, with most being in China.
They just change the labels on them, but the batteries are pretty much all the same.
 
I use these guy:

https://www.amazon.com/Genuine-KEYK...&qid=1517003789&sr=1-7&keywords=keyko+12v+9ah


I assume its made in Japan.
But i got real tired of the chinese brand ones because they dont seem to last, or they lie about the ah raiting on the battery.

I have had really good luck with my first keyko set, that i decided to only buy those from now on.
Infact the first set i have bought have lasted 2 yrs+ so im quite satisfied with it.
 
aigomorla said:
I use these guy:
https://www.amazon.com/Genuine-KEYK...&qid=1517003789&sr=1-7&keywords=keyko+12v+9ah
I assume its made in Japan.
But i got real tired of the chinese brand ones because they dont seem to last, or they lie about the ah raiting on the battery.
I have had really good luck with my first keyko set, that i decided to only buy those from now on.
Infact the first set i have bought have lasted 2 yrs+ so im quite satisfied with it.
Click to expand...

I should have bought these. Just another $4....sigh.
 
Elixer said:
That store is pretty expensive IMO, almost double of what other places charge, not as bad as Interstate Batteries though.
I got 2 9Ah batteries for $40 + $10 shipping from Atbatt, year before that was from Zbatteries for $35 +$5 shipping (they had a promo going on for shipping).
Looking today, they got a great deal on a 9Ah for $9. https://atbatt.com/12v-9ah-sealed-lead-acid-battery-f1-terminal/ This is F1 terminal only though, betting it is old stock since warranty is 30 days. The next one up is https://atbatt.com/12v-9ah-sealed-lead-acid-battery-f1-terminal/ which is $16 for 1 year warranty or $20 for 2 years...
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wow, great price. Looks like $44 shipped for 2 batteries (AP-1290F2) vs. $65 for a genuine RBC33. Is it easy to re-use the existing connector?
 
manly said:
wow, great price. Looks like $44 shipped for 2 batteries (AP-1290F2) vs. $65 for a genuine RBC33. Is it easy to re-use the existing connector?
Click to expand...
No issues here, you use the same harness and you are good to go.
The only hiccup is you have to make darn sure that the terminals are the correct size, so, I would remove the old ones, and measure them just to be safe.
 
Elixer said:
No issues here, you use the same harness and you are good to go.
The only hiccup is you have to make darn sure that the terminals are the correct size, so, I would remove the old ones, and measure them just to be safe.
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Most large APC models have F2 Terminals. The smaller VA models may have F1 terminals but some of those are also F2. Truthfully wish they would just use the F2 across their entire model line.

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13Gigatons said:
Most large APC models have F2 Terminals. The smaller VA models may have F1 terminals but some of those are also F2. Truthfully wish they would just use the F2 across their entire model line.

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Click to expand...
Yeah, I agree. I don't know why they bother with F1 at all. F1 is slightly thinner, and narrower than F2, and I just don't see a valid reason to have them around anymore.
 
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