What less obvious ways are there to misuse and damage a UPS?
I've never had an uninterruptible power supply and think of buying one. What not-so-obvious things should I not do to the UPS so that it lives longer?
I don't mean some obvious abuse like dropping/exposing to direct heat/exposing to wrong voltage. I mean less obvious things like its not acceptable to leave an acid battery UPS unplugged for long time after it has been used because some chemical processes start in half-discharged batteries and render the batteries unusable. What other misuses should I know about?
Solution 1:
If you know you have wonky power (flicker flicker) adjust the sensitivity of the UPS so it doesn't trip for every little flicker. My apartment unit is next to the elevator. I killed a set of batteries in 8 months this way.
Solution 2:
The SLA (sealed lead acid) batteries in UPSes shouldn't be left in a discharged state. If they are, sulfates will build up on the plates and their capacity will be reduced. This isn't normally a problem in UPSes, since they're always plugged in and after a power outage will charge the batteries back up when the power comes on. But if you somehow decided to unplug a UPS after the batteries were drained and then left it sitting unplugged for a week, you'd probably notice the battery discharging sooner next time.
Solution 3:
Dont overload it. If it has a nice status screen to see the load on it try to keep it below about 60%
By discharging it faster will wear out the the battery faster
Heat, humidity are also bad for it.
Solution 4:
While in college I was moving some servers from one room to another. They all where on a really old UPS which apparently had less protection circuitry then current UPS equipment. I started by disconnecting all the servers from the UPS and moving those. Then without shutting down the UPS I unplugged it from the wall. Sparks started shooting out of the UPS and it literally started bouncing.
The electronics teacher had a plausible sounding explanation about why something like this would happen given the design of the UPS, but I don't remember enough details to explain it here.
So the moral of the story is this.
- When there is no load, always turn off the UPS before disconnecting the power.
Solution 5:
According to the answers to my question over here, it's a bad idea to have a power strip touch it either upstream or downstream.