To ensure the integrity of any Uninterruptible Power Supply, Telecommunications 48V system or generator, the lead acid batteries must be checked and maintained.

Surprisingly what ever the cost of your Power Protection system, whether it is a stand alone UPS System or Standby Diesel Generators the most common single point of failure are the batteries.

High resistance, leakage or open circuits will cause batteries to fail; no longer providing the expected autonomy or, in the case of a generator the inability to start. The Result - loss of the site load. Then suddenly you require a 24-7 emergency call out engineer.

Uninterruptible power supplies may have internal batteries or housed in separate battery cabinets. Each battery has a recommended design life, usually 5 years or 10 years, although these are optimistic as they dont take into account high usage of the UPS Battery system caused by intermittent spikes, brown outs or voltage fluctuations which are absorbed by the batteries to protect your mission critical sensitive systems.

Even though the battery may have an operating life expectancy stated by the manufacturer of typically up to ten years, if it is not checked on a regular basis it can and will fail. In a string of 32 blocs all it takes is one battery to become high impedance and the complete string will be useless as the load will be unable to draw the current it requires and as a result the load will be lost and your critical load will fall over. The old batteries can be removed and new batteries supplied.

The most obvious signs of Battery leakage due to failure within the sealed lead acid battery causing the casing to split can be visible. Other issues of high impedance and open circuit are not obvious and require regular checks.

There are a number of different types of battery construction but they can be loosely divided into to two common types-wet cells and valve regulated lead acid (VRLA) batteries( often referred to as just sealed lead acid batteries).

Wet cell battery maintenance can be more time consuming, as the trade off against increased life expectancy is the higher cost of maintenance due to the necessity of taking specific gravity readings and topping up the cell. A visual check of wet cell batteries needs to be undertaken on a more regular basis as any noticeable drop in electrolyte level must be swiftly rectified.