With an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), you have made a significant investment in power protection for your operations, so it doesn’t make sense to risk that investment on batteries that may not work when needed most.
UPS batteries are built to provide several years of service, operating reliably even through repeated charging and occasional use while supporting critical loads. But like any battery, they have a defined lifecycle. The key challenge is to know when your batteries are nearing the end of their life expectancy and to be able to replace them before you get into a situation — such as a complete power outage — where they fail to protect the load.
In addition to keeping an eye on battery health, a management program should enable oversight of the UPS itself. As a small UPS gets older, usually after being in service for more than five years, it may be more cost-efficient to consider a total replacement of the unit as opposed to just making another battery replacement.
This white paper from Vertiv highlights the critical role of the battery within single-phase UPS systems and discuss the options for ensuring power and business continuity, especially as IT networks increase in size and complexity and/or become more dispersed.