Appreciate these UPS Reviews! Seeing the internals of many of these kinds of units is a rare occurrence. Would be great to see some discussion on UPS Management Software capabilities as well, as vendors like Eaton have removed the free tier of Intelligent Power Monitor for instance.
By the way.. for anyone looking to get a "UPS" for their home desktop, looking into these new LFP "solar generators" is more than worth a look.
They beat these UPS in price per watt, and pack huge inverters that will power everything you need, and the batteries they use are not the trash lead acid batteries that most UPS still use.
This one does use LFP, which is progress, but it's still not that great price per watt compared to those solar generators.
The HF ripple on the waveform is interesting, as I'd suspect a fairly small RF filter could smooth that right out. Are there plans to add EMI/EMC measurements to reviews in the future?
Awesome review, love seeing the waveform outputs on these UPS units. It's nice to know that they've got a solid sine wave inverter in the unit, and the faster charge time is great for areas where power outages can sometimes happen more than once a day :)
The form factor is the main problem. Had the box been less squat a larger fan and larger heatsinks could have been used. Even two large fans could have been used.
The rack form factor is far less relevant in the consumer market, outside of home audio. This appears to be a case of trying to shoehorn existing parts and knowledge into a product destined for a fundamentally different use paradigm.
These companies need to comprehend that people working at their PC need quiet in order to focus.
A larger form factor may also enable the use cheaper (less-dense) lithium batteries.
When a lithium lawnmower can be had for $500, with two batteries that charge extremely quickly, I would think the battery price could be better here.
I will say, though, that the product actually matches the company’s claims — utterly in contrast with the previous UPS you reviewed. It’s refreshing to see a product that isn’t sold on lies.
This is 100% aimed at business/IT, it'll end up in a big rackmount cabinet with the rest of the servers and switches, VoIP boxes and firewalls. Totally different market.
That’s not what the review at least strongly implied:
‘More recently, in the past few years, the company has been shyly taking steps downwards, trying to capture pieces of the enthusiast segment of the home/office PC market.
The subject of today's review, Vertiv’s Edge Lithium-Ion 1500 VA UPS, is one of the simpler and less expensive products that the company produces.‘
That's fair! I do disagree with the author on that part, though. It's possible they pitched the product that way, but Vertiv themselves describe the lineup as business/datacenter.
Whatever they intended, as a rackmount model that's had some of the more enterprisy features stripped out of it I suspect it's main end user will end up being older SMBs who have a half-rack with a few on premise servers tucked away in a corner because they can't afford to migrate to the cloud and don't want to pay for fancy management features they don't know how to use.
I commented the same thing, and man we thought EGO had high profit margins. These $1000 UPS's with the same battery capacity make the damn lawn mowers look like a steal at $500.
I thought the same thing. The maker of my electric mower sells a 60V 8.0 Ah li-ion battery and an 80V 5.0 Ah li-ion battery for $300 each. For the price, this UPS just doesn't wow me.
So batteries _might_ last 10 times as long as lead/acid ones which, if my experience with my APC is any guide, is usually about 3 years and averagely costs me anything from £40-£80. So are they really claiming a 30 year lifespan for this? And I didn't see any word about how much the replacement will cost - at today's prices, not in 30 years!
My experience with consumer based UPSs is that when they changed from true wattage output to VA things went down hill big time. The battery sizes as well as run times took a nosedive. The typical small lead-acid batteries supplied have a relatively short lifespan of 2-3 years because they are constructed more like an SLI battery than a true UPS style battery.
An older APC UPS that I purchased had sufficient charging capacity for larger batteries so I added a couple of true UPS backup style batteries that provide a significant increase in run time and battery life of 8+ years. The battery construction is different on backup style batteries for commercial use in comparison to the small batteries supplied with a typical consumer UPS.
A consumer UPS is meant to provide a few minutes to shut down the PC or have software shut down the PC. These tiny batteries are not meant for meaningful run time when the grid power goes down. A good consumer UPS however will prevent a lot of PC or other sensitive electronics damage from brown-outs and line surges. For many people that could be worth the price of admission. I have found many very technically educated PC users and small Biz owners who refuse to spend the money for a simple, small UPS yet they complain constantly about corrupt or lost data from brown-outs and power surges.
This looks like it's the product twin to the Voltronic Otima II RT 1.5K UPS. With Voltronic being a self described ODM for battery and solar, it sounds like they're the ones who produced this UPS. It's obviously been customized for Vertiv, but if you wanted to go down the component and assembly rabbit hole, looks like that's your source, with Vertiv being the retailer (and who provide their own sales and support for them, obviously).
While I'm glad Anandtech is dipping its toes into the waters here, frankly your coverage also seems odd as does calling something like this a "high-end product". I run and do contracting for a number of SoHo/SMB settings with small racks, and I've spent a lot more money than this unit on UPS. I'm sure it has its niche, but at this price range I'd have a hard time in general justifying line-interactive vs double online topology. I'd also expect features like battery pack expansion and a decent network interface (with web gui, console and snmp/api options), neither of which this review mentions at all. Or take the battery modules, yes for sure LiON has a ton of advantages, will last longer etc. But what happens when it is time for replacement? 5 years is definitely not a point where a nice UPS would be replaced entirely. The online Cyberpower and APC units I've got support flat out hotswapping the batteries with no power interruption. Does this support bypass
Shoot, accidentally hit submit. Was going to finish with does this support bypass modes and all that? You could argue that we should use an ATS for that kind of thing, but at $1000+ I think it should be a base level UPS feature too.
But thanks again for reviewing these, the UPS market is ripe for some disruption and improvement and a comprehensive quality survey of what's going on would be great to see.
I’ve long wondered why we don’t see UPS systems integrated to desktop power supplies so as to cut down on extraneous AC-DC conversions. It would obviously have to be larger than an tax PSU but you just have it as a breakout the way the UPS is. Laptop batteries keep everything DC… how complex could it be to make a desktop PSU module with an input for DC battery feed….
Well, one problem that comes to mind is that your desktop running won't do you much good if your monitors go dark. lol A UPS has to power more than just the computer.
Fair enough I suppose. Although if it’s an auto-shutdown situation the monitor would be an additional unneeded load for that operation. Still better and more effective under user control though. I guess It would be more for like headless servers or something like that.
At a company based in a building with a dodgy power supply, having UPSes on the developers' desktops, so that a brief glitch meant that their monitor flickered rather than that all their state in emacs vanished, was a really good move.
I found that Apple machines mostly didn't need the UPSes; it was as if they had bigger capacitors in their power supply and could slide over a sub-second outage while our PCs from the local generic component-assembler usually couldn't.
"How long a mains-power drop-out can it tolerate" is a really awkward parameter to test for, but would be really useful to see in reviews of PSUs.
(this would be about a decade ago - the Apple comment applied both to the big dual-Xeon cheese grater Mac Pros and to the Mac mini, the desktops while I was there went from dual-core Athlon64 to quad-core and six-core Nehalem and Westmere)
""How long a mains-power drop-out can it tolerate" is a really awkward parameter to test for, but would be really useful to see in reviews of PSUs."
This is part of half-decent PSU reviews. The spec you're looking for is hold-up time. The ATX standard has a minimum requirement of 17ms, but many PSUs don't meet that.
there's monitor with DC in. My workplace use all DC tools - Prodesk 600 G4 / Elitebook 840 g3 - Monitor Samsung S24R - Router Xiaomi AX1800 - Modem - 5V charger All connected to 100A 12.8v LFP.
Interesting, is there a product name? I’ve searched quickly but the closest thing I found was just a controller card for an application like this but the battery (presumably targeting auto or marine?) would be separate
I bought 48v 100Ah SacredSun LFP, dismantle it, and get 4 pcs from there. Sell the rest (11 pcs). I charged it with 12v SMPS -> dc-dc boost to 13.34v. The monitor, modem, router, 5v charger, battery is at the end of dc-dc booster. For laptop/mini-pc that use > 17v, I boost once again to 17v.
*for the battery, if you can source it from China, get something like eve or catl. USA can buy from BattleBorn. BattleBorn LFP has BMS. So, more safe. Mine doesn't have BMS.
Anker recently announced their first UPS (as you might expect it evolved out of their “PowerHouse” line of AC backup batteries), which has a roughly similar cost to this unit, somewhat higher load support, and nearly seven times the runtime… I don’t know if 8.7 minutes of runtime is acceptable when Anker’s will do about an hour for the same cost. However, the Anker advertises a 20ms switch time, which implies a standby topology, not line interactive like this one.
I love the new coverage! I was one of the last posts (page 10) on the last review, and am reposting here for visibility . . .
Another +1 for these types of reviews, and additional suggestions:
1. What is the UPS power draw from the wall when not charging/under load (as mentioned by others).
2. What status monitoring / remote shutdown capabilities are present. In addition to running the local "Powerchute Personal Edition" type software connected via USB, are there remote shut down agents when connecting multiple devices? Are there fleet management capabilities if I have one under every desk, etc.
3. Low voltage protection (also alluded to, was another interesting question). IE: In the event of an outage, does the battery run to 0% (not grate for Lead Acid), or is there an x% cut-off to protect the battery
4. Parasitic draw when the unit is powered off. Can I keep the unit offline (ie: not in production) but with batteries internally connected without damaging the batteries? There is a natural discharge rate for lead-acid, but if there is parasitic draw even when off, those batteries could be toast when I pull the unit from the cabinet.
5. [When Applicable] Do the USB ports function when the UPS (inverter) is powered down. It's an edge case, but not always well identified in specs. In the event of a hurricane/wildfire/[insert longer-term-outage] occurs, this can be a lifesaver. This also may have some IoT applications.
To those wondering about adding more sockets . . . For those wondering what to do if you lack enough power ports on the UPS, I install passive mini extension cords.
You keep referring to a lithium ion battery, which this is not. It is a lithium iron phosphate battery. Lithium iron phosphate batteries get damaged if they discharge faster than 1C, though they can do 3C for 30 seconds. This battery is nearly 250 watt hours. To reach 1500watt, it would need to be discharged at 6C.
I will be building a generator backed ups at my house soon. Using one or more growatt 5kw inverter chargers, and a 14kwh battery pack made out of 16 280ah lifepo4 cells. In the last 4 years we have had 2 power outages that lasted more than a week.
The growatt inverter chargers are around $0.20 a watt from US resellers. The battery cells are $100 each on alibaba. I will also need a $300 Daly bms (300 Amp) for the string. As this battery pack can supply up to 14kw continuous.
If I use the battery pack at it’s maximum output with 3 growatt inverters in parallel (they can do 6 in parallel), battery cells, bms, etc, it should be around $5k, or $350/kw for an hour. Or $500/kw for a 2 hour battery.
Lithium Iron Phoshate (LiFePO4) batteries also are Li-Ion batteries. LiFePO4 is a specific chemistry, one of many that are used to create Li-Ion batteries. LiCoO2, LiFePO4, NMC, etc., all are Li-Ion batteries.
Furthermore, LiFePO4 batteries have one of the greatest discharge rates, much higher than all Lead-based batteries that are commonly used in UPS systems. Certain implementations can reach 80C discharge, which is why they are used in high-performance electric vehicles, where rapid charging/discharging is the norm. It does affect the battery's lifetime but a high discharge rate will not damage the battery as quickly as you probably imagine.
Unless I missed it, it seems weird to review UPSs and not say whether they are switching or double conversion. At $1200, if this one is switching, that would be a criminal act. I've tried a ton of switching devices over the years and none of them work. Due to a large number of trees, my neighborhood experiences a lot of one second down and up power outages. Every single one of them has crashed every single device connected to a switching UPS.
The comments about the variable-speed fan seem off base to me. Running the fan at a lower speed when running on battery power would reduce the draw on the battery and therefore increase run time, would it not? In a rackmount device, sound levels are virtually never a consideration. It's unlikely the recharging UPS would be audible over all of the 40mm fans in the 1U rack servers and switches...
I don't know why you suggest that the lithium-Ion battery here is a good reason for the high cost, because it isn't. The cost for the lithium-Ion cells that make up this battery are going to be well under $100 and even the battery with BMS system would be well under $150.
I mean this basically has the same amount of energy as 3 tool batteries of the 18 volt 5ah variety and their manufacture cost is under $25 per battery.
Still thanks for the review, it will be good to see if some cheaper lithium-Ion systems come out in the next few years.
I'm dumbfounded why these Lithium UPS's cost so much when GENUINE 56V 5AH LiPo battery for my EGO 56V mower cost $200, while generics are around half that. Yes, LiFe is more exotic and costs more. Yes, Lithium UPS need a fancier charging circuit with cell balancing, and yes, these are good sine-wave emulating units, but the BOM is around $300 and they are charging over $1000. I mean, 350% profit?
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thecoolnessrune - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
Appreciate these UPS Reviews! Seeing the internals of many of these kinds of units is a rare occurrence. Would be great to see some discussion on UPS Management Software capabilities as well, as vendors like Eaton have removed the free tier of Intelligent Power Monitor for instance.Kamus - Saturday, April 30, 2022 - link
By the way.. for anyone looking to get a "UPS" for their home desktop, looking into these new LFP "solar generators" is more than worth a look.They beat these UPS in price per watt, and pack huge inverters that will power everything you need, and the batteries they use are not the trash lead acid batteries that most UPS still use.
This one does use LFP, which is progress, but it's still not that great price per watt compared to those solar generators.
myself248 - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
The HF ripple on the waveform is interesting, as I'd suspect a fairly small RF filter could smooth that right out. Are there plans to add EMI/EMC measurements to reviews in the future?Xpl1c1t - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
Given the 1500VA rating, I believe such a filter would need to be fairly large and would dissipate a lot of heat.Drkrieger01 - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
Awesome review, love seeing the waveform outputs on these UPS units. It's nice to know that they've got a solid sine wave inverter in the unit, and the faster charge time is great for areas where power outages can sometimes happen more than once a day :)Oxford Guy - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
The form factor is the main problem. Had the box been less squat a larger fan and larger heatsinks could have been used. Even two large fans could have been used.The rack form factor is far less relevant in the consumer market, outside of home audio. This appears to be a case of trying to shoehorn existing parts and knowledge into a product destined for a fundamentally different use paradigm.
These companies need to comprehend that people working at their PC need quiet in order to focus.
A larger form factor may also enable the use cheaper (less-dense) lithium batteries.
When a lithium lawnmower can be had for $500, with two batteries that charge extremely quickly, I would think the battery price could be better here.
Oxford Guy - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
I will say, though, that the product actually matches the company’s claims — utterly in contrast with the previous UPS you reviewed. It’s refreshing to see a product that isn’t sold on lies.Slash3 - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
This is 100% aimed at business/IT, it'll end up in a big rackmount cabinet with the rest of the servers and switches, VoIP boxes and firewalls. Totally different market.Oxford Guy - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
That’s not what the review at least strongly implied:‘More recently, in the past few years, the company has been shyly taking steps downwards, trying to capture pieces of the enthusiast segment of the home/office PC market.
The subject of today's review, Vertiv’s Edge Lithium-Ion 1500 VA UPS, is one of the simpler and less expensive products that the company produces.‘
Slash3 - Saturday, April 23, 2022 - link
That's fair! I do disagree with the author on that part, though. It's possible they pitched the product that way, but Vertiv themselves describe the lineup as business/datacenter.DanNeely - Monday, April 25, 2022 - link
Whatever they intended, as a rackmount model that's had some of the more enterprisy features stripped out of it I suspect it's main end user will end up being older SMBs who have a half-rack with a few on premise servers tucked away in a corner because they can't afford to migrate to the cloud and don't want to pay for fancy management features they don't know how to use.State of Affairs - Wednesday, April 27, 2022 - link
I agree. Moreover, I would think that the "enthusiast segment of the home/office PC market" would be more interested in the 120V version:https://www.vertiv.com/en-us/products-catalog/crit...
Samus - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
I commented the same thing, and man we thought EGO had high profit margins. These $1000 UPS's with the same battery capacity make the damn lawn mowers look like a steal at $500.Lucky Stripes 99 - Thursday, June 16, 2022 - link
I thought the same thing. The maker of my electric mower sells a 60V 8.0 Ah li-ion battery and an 80V 5.0 Ah li-ion battery for $300 each. For the price, this UPS just doesn't wow me.TrevorH - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
So batteries _might_ last 10 times as long as lead/acid ones which, if my experience with my APC is any guide, is usually about 3 years and averagely costs me anything from £40-£80. So are they really claiming a 30 year lifespan for this? And I didn't see any word about how much the replacement will cost - at today's prices, not in 30 years!Techie2 - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
My experience with consumer based UPSs is that when they changed from true wattage output to VA things went down hill big time. The battery sizes as well as run times took a nosedive. The typical small lead-acid batteries supplied have a relatively short lifespan of 2-3 years because they are constructed more like an SLI battery than a true UPS style battery.An older APC UPS that I purchased had sufficient charging capacity for larger batteries so I added a couple of true UPS backup style batteries that provide a significant increase in run time and battery life of 8+ years. The battery construction is different on backup style batteries for commercial use in comparison to the small batteries supplied with a typical consumer UPS.
A consumer UPS is meant to provide a few minutes to shut down the PC or have software shut down the PC. These tiny batteries are not meant for meaningful run time when the grid power goes down. A good consumer UPS however will prevent a lot of PC or other sensitive electronics damage from brown-outs and line surges. For many people that could be worth the price of admission. I have found many very technically educated PC users and small Biz owners who refuse to spend the money for a simple, small UPS yet they complain constantly about corrupt or lost data from brown-outs and power surges.
Slash3 - Friday, April 22, 2022 - link
This looks like it's the product twin to the Voltronic Otima II RT 1.5K UPS.With Voltronic being a self described ODM for battery and solar, it sounds like they're the ones who produced this UPS. It's obviously been customized for Vertiv, but if you wanted to go down the component and assembly rabbit hole, looks like that's your source, with Vertiv being the retailer (and who provide their own sales and support for them, obviously).
https://voltronicpower.com/en-US/Product/Detail/Ot...
zanon - Saturday, April 23, 2022 - link
While I'm glad Anandtech is dipping its toes into the waters here, frankly your coverage also seems odd as does calling something like this a "high-end product". I run and do contracting for a number of SoHo/SMB settings with small racks, and I've spent a lot more money than this unit on UPS. I'm sure it has its niche, but at this price range I'd have a hard time in general justifying line-interactive vs double online topology. I'd also expect features like battery pack expansion and a decent network interface (with web gui, console and snmp/api options), neither of which this review mentions at all. Or take the battery modules, yes for sure LiON has a ton of advantages, will last longer etc. But what happens when it is time for replacement? 5 years is definitely not a point where a nice UPS would be replaced entirely. The online Cyberpower and APC units I've got support flat out hotswapping the batteries with no power interruption. Does this support bypasszanon - Saturday, April 23, 2022 - link
Shoot, accidentally hit submit. Was going to finish with does this support bypass modes and all that? You could argue that we should use an ATS for that kind of thing, but at $1000+ I think it should be a base level UPS feature too.But thanks again for reviewing these, the UPS market is ripe for some disruption and improvement and a comprehensive quality survey of what's going on would be great to see.
Sivar - Wednesday, April 27, 2022 - link
I appreciate the points you bring up that I and others may not have thought of, especially hot swapping the battery.Hresna - Saturday, April 23, 2022 - link
I’ve long wondered why we don’t see UPS systems integrated to desktop power supplies so as to cut down on extraneous AC-DC conversions. It would obviously have to be larger than an tax PSU but you just have it as a breakout the way the UPS is. Laptop batteries keep everything DC… how complex could it be to make a desktop PSU module with an input for DC battery feed….Maltz - Saturday, April 23, 2022 - link
Well, one problem that comes to mind is that your desktop running won't do you much good if your monitors go dark. lol A UPS has to power more than just the computer.Hresna - Saturday, April 23, 2022 - link
Fair enough I suppose. Although if it’s an auto-shutdown situation the monitor would be an additional unneeded load for that operation. Still better and more effective under user control though. I guess It would be more for like headless servers or something like that.TomWomack - Saturday, April 23, 2022 - link
At a company based in a building with a dodgy power supply, having UPSes on the developers' desktops, so that a brief glitch meant that their monitor flickered rather than that all their state in emacs vanished, was a really good move.I found that Apple machines mostly didn't need the UPSes; it was as if they had bigger capacitors in their power supply and could slide over a sub-second outage while our PCs from the local generic component-assembler usually couldn't.
"How long a mains-power drop-out can it tolerate" is a really awkward parameter to test for, but would be really useful to see in reviews of PSUs.
TomWomack - Saturday, April 23, 2022 - link
(this would be about a decade ago - the Apple comment applied both to the big dual-Xeon cheese grater Mac Pros and to the Mac mini, the desktops while I was there went from dual-core Athlon64 to quad-core and six-core Nehalem and Westmere)Gigaplex - Sunday, April 24, 2022 - link
""How long a mains-power drop-out can it tolerate" is a really awkward parameter to test for, but would be really useful to see in reviews of PSUs."This is part of half-decent PSU reviews. The spec you're looking for is hold-up time. The ATX standard has a minimum requirement of 17ms, but many PSUs don't meet that.
t.s - Monday, April 25, 2022 - link
there's monitor with DC in. My workplace use all DC tools- Prodesk 600 G4 / Elitebook 840 g3
- Monitor Samsung S24R
- Router Xiaomi AX1800
- Modem
- 5V charger
All connected to 100A 12.8v LFP.
Hresna - Wednesday, April 27, 2022 - link
Interesting, is there a product name? I’ve searched quickly but the closest thing I found was just a controller card for an application like this but the battery (presumably targeting auto or marine?) would be separatet.s - Wednesday, April 27, 2022 - link
I bought 48v 100Ah SacredSun LFP, dismantle it, and get 4 pcs from there. Sell the rest (11 pcs).I charged it with 12v SMPS -> dc-dc boost to 13.34v. The monitor, modem, router, 5v charger, battery is at the end of dc-dc booster. For laptop/mini-pc that use > 17v, I boost once again to 17v.
*for the battery, if you can source it from China, get something like eve or catl. USA can buy from BattleBorn. BattleBorn LFP has BMS. So, more safe. Mine doesn't have BMS.
Guspaz - Sunday, April 24, 2022 - link
Anker recently announced their first UPS (as you might expect it evolved out of their “PowerHouse” line of AC backup batteries), which has a roughly similar cost to this unit, somewhat higher load support, and nearly seven times the runtime… I don’t know if 8.7 minutes of runtime is acceptable when Anker’s will do about an hour for the same cost. However, the Anker advertises a 20ms switch time, which implies a standby topology, not line interactive like this one.JFish222 - Sunday, April 24, 2022 - link
Hi @RyanSmith and @E. FylladitakisI love the new coverage!
I was one of the last posts (page 10) on the last review, and am reposting here for visibility . . .
Another +1 for these types of reviews, and additional suggestions:
1. What is the UPS power draw from the wall when not charging/under load (as mentioned by others).
2. What status monitoring / remote shutdown capabilities are present.
In addition to running the local "Powerchute Personal Edition" type software connected via USB, are there remote shut down agents when connecting multiple devices? Are there fleet management capabilities if I have one under every desk, etc.
3. Low voltage protection (also alluded to, was another interesting question). IE: In the event of an outage, does the battery run to 0% (not grate for Lead Acid), or is there an x% cut-off to protect the battery
4. Parasitic draw when the unit is powered off.
Can I keep the unit offline (ie: not in production) but with batteries internally connected without damaging the batteries? There is a natural discharge rate for lead-acid, but if there is parasitic draw even when off, those batteries could be toast when I pull the unit from the cabinet.
5. [When Applicable] Do the USB ports function when the UPS (inverter) is powered down.
It's an edge case, but not always well identified in specs. In the event of a hurricane/wildfire/[insert longer-term-outage] occurs, this can be a lifesaver. This also may have some IoT applications.
To those wondering about adding more sockets . . .
For those wondering what to do if you lack enough power ports on the UPS, I install passive mini extension cords.
The "squid" style ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075ZRB14L) and 12" mini-extension (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09TC7ZPCJ/) are my go-to's. To address potential criticism of this approach, I always use grounded, passive cords and keep the loads in line with the UPS specs. We work with what we've got!
E.Fyll - Monday, April 25, 2022 - link
Thanks for your feedback J. I will be adding most, if not all, of these tests in future reviews.mikegrok - Sunday, April 24, 2022 - link
You keep referring to a lithium ion battery, which this is not. It is a lithium iron phosphate battery. Lithium iron phosphate batteries get damaged if they discharge faster than 1C, though they can do 3C for 30 seconds. This battery is nearly 250 watt hours. To reach 1500watt, it would need to be discharged at 6C.I will be building a generator backed ups at my house soon. Using one or more growatt 5kw inverter chargers, and a 14kwh battery pack made out of 16 280ah lifepo4 cells. In the last 4 years we have had 2 power outages that lasted more than a week.
mikegrok - Sunday, April 24, 2022 - link
The growatt inverter chargers are around $0.20 a watt from US resellers. The battery cells are $100 each on alibaba. I will also need a $300 Daly bms (300 Amp) for the string. As this battery pack can supply up to 14kw continuous.If I use the battery pack at it’s maximum output with 3 growatt inverters in parallel (they can do 6 in parallel), battery cells, bms, etc, it should be around $5k, or $350/kw for an hour. Or $500/kw for a 2 hour battery.
Jp7188 - Sunday, May 8, 2022 - link
Thanks for sharing. I always learn a lot from reading the comments.E.Fyll - Monday, April 25, 2022 - link
Lithium Iron Phoshate (LiFePO4) batteries also are Li-Ion batteries.LiFePO4 is a specific chemistry, one of many that are used to create Li-Ion batteries. LiCoO2, LiFePO4, NMC, etc., all are Li-Ion batteries.
Furthermore, LiFePO4 batteries have one of the greatest discharge rates, much higher than all Lead-based batteries that are commonly used in UPS systems. Certain implementations can reach 80C discharge, which is why they are used in high-performance electric vehicles, where rapid charging/discharging is the norm. It does affect the battery's lifetime but a high discharge rate will not damage the battery as quickly as you probably imagine.
t.s - Wednesday, April 27, 2022 - link
I think the more accurate is: Lithium battery. Can be read at: https://dragonflyenergy.com/types-of-lithium-batte...pjcamp - Tuesday, April 26, 2022 - link
Unless I missed it, it seems weird to review UPSs and not say whether they are switching or double conversion. At $1200, if this one is switching, that would be a criminal act. I've tried a ton of switching devices over the years and none of them work. Due to a large number of trees, my neighborhood experiences a lot of one second down and up power outages. Every single one of them has crashed every single device connected to a switching UPS.Tunnah - Wednesday, April 27, 2022 - link
If you're like me and don't understand all this sine wave stuff or just want to know what it means better, I found this extremely helpful:https://nerdtechy.com/ups-need-pure-sine-wave
macwhiz - Thursday, April 28, 2022 - link
The comments about the variable-speed fan seem off base to me. Running the fan at a lower speed when running on battery power would reduce the draw on the battery and therefore increase run time, would it not? In a rackmount device, sound levels are virtually never a consideration. It's unlikely the recharging UPS would be audible over all of the 40mm fans in the 1U rack servers and switches...SirDragonClaw - Sunday, May 1, 2022 - link
I don't know why you suggest that the lithium-Ion battery here is a good reason for the high cost, because it isn't. The cost for the lithium-Ion cells that make up this battery are going to be well under $100 and even the battery with BMS system would be well under $150.I mean this basically has the same amount of energy as 3 tool batteries of the 18 volt 5ah variety and their manufacture cost is under $25 per battery.
Still thanks for the review, it will be good to see if some cheaper lithium-Ion systems come out in the next few years.
Samus - Monday, May 2, 2022 - link
I'm dumbfounded why these Lithium UPS's cost so much when GENUINE 56V 5AH LiPo battery for my EGO 56V mower cost $200, while generics are around half that. Yes, LiFe is more exotic and costs more. Yes, Lithium UPS need a fancier charging circuit with cell balancing, and yes, these are good sine-wave emulating units, but the BOM is around $300 and they are charging over $1000. I mean, 350% profit?