Can anyone recommend a good modern UPS? It seems like Lithium Ion would have the best power density, but perhaps lead-acid is actually better for this application? Good surge protection would also be great. It would be nice if there existed a UPS brand that is like Anker for USB cables and power adapters or Brother for printers.
The Cyberpower series sold at Costco is unironically good. No frills or cool stuff, UI from 1995 but supports USB monitoring out of the box and just… works. I was about to make the brother comparison but after reading your entire comment realize you already did it.
Just FYI, Cyberpower, at least for their consumer line, use problematic yellow glue[1] which becomes brittle over time and can become conductive, causing arcing/fire hazards[2][3]. There was also a prior HN discussion about it[4], with some similar experiences.
It can be removed[5], with some effort, though. Given its use in various electronics it wouldn't surprise me if some other UPSes use it, though have only seen discussions about Cyberpower.
Lead acid is used for most UPSes. Lithium ion is bad battery type for UPS since has lower cycles and safety, and power density doesn't matter. LiFePO4 would be perfect, with good cycles, current, and safety.
But manufacturers don't use it. Maybe they haven't redesigned after the price dropped. Or maybe cause prices is still too high. I think LiFePO4 would be most useful for rack mounts, or small UPSes that aren't possible with lead acid.
Regular Li ion has more recharge cycles than most lead acid batteries that come with UPS. Even high power density liion still usually has 4-500 recharge cycles before reaching a maximum of 80% SOC vs the original capacity. With smarter power management you can get away with much more (for example, if you don't fully cycle the battery)
Lithium in smaller UPS is mostly stuck in a marketing gap at the moment.
Generally lithium UPS win in a 10-year TCO, but SLA wins in up-front costing. Which leaves us with two issues - most consumers look at the sticker price not the TCO, and no-one wants to market their products as "Our lead acid offer only /looks/ cheap, until you see what we charge you for consumables!"
LiFePO4 can be had in the "portable solar generator" space, and some of them have enough input/output capacity to function as a usable UPS. All that they lack is comms for status and automatic shutdown.
It seems like a fairly recent shift -- heck, the whole solar generator concept is a fairly recent shift -- but maybe it's an indication that LiFePO4 devices are becoming more common in the consumer space.
Hey, thanks very much for the tip! I did some (random) searches and found, for example, this 7 pound device[1] that offers 300W output, 256Wh capacity, and 30ms failover at $180. Seems like a great little device that could serve a dual purpose as both a UPS and also a camping/project power supply if you can't have/don't want a gas generator. They claim a 10-year lifetime of the battery and 80% capacity after ~3000 cycles, which seems hard to believe, but maybe LiFePO4 is really some sort of miracle material.
No, LiFePO4 is actually pretty excellent in that way: It's long lasting, and not harmed nearly as much by charge/discharge cycles as many other types. 3,000 cycles is not an unreasonable claim, and it's a lovely chemistry in that way. (It also tends not to self-combust.)
It has other tradeoffs, though, like being physically large compared to a lead-acid battery of similar capacity (or, say, a bunch of 18650s).
And like other Lithium-based cells, longevity is maximized by never charging it to 100% and leaving it there long-term -- which, unfortunately, is probably not what Ecoflow is doing. (Ideal long-term state-of-charge is closer to somewhere between 50 and 80%.)
After having tried several brands, I like CyberPower for the combination of price/performance.
Things may have changed, the APC UPS systems I've used required you to power off to replace the batteries. the CyberPower units I've used allow for replacing the batteries hot.
I've had terrible results with Tripp Lite UPS systems - where they fail for no reason at all, and will not auto power up after a power failure.
At a very large size of 30KVA, I've used Eaton UPS systems and they have been rock solid.
In general, a UPS is just supposed to buy you time to assess the situation and shut things down gracefully. Power density doesn't come into the equation at all. It's just supposed to give you an hour to figure out what you need to do. It's all about the lifetime of the battery. I go with Cyberpower.
I put an oversized UPS with extended battery pack on my network gear (Cable modem, Router, ethernet switch and Wifi nodes) to give me almost 8 hours of runtime in a power outage. I've found, however, that the cable company's UPS only lasts around 6 hours since that's how long it takes for the internet to go out and the cable modem to lose carrier.
In the winter months (when we have most of our power outages), I pay for a pre-paid cellular SIM for backup. The cell tower(s) that serves my area must be on generator, it doesn't seem to go down even in long power outages.
That makes sense, network gear doesn't suck a lot of power. For compute though, I always have to have the conversation with clients that multiple hours of UPS backup for a server rack is crazy expensive. They are usually better off with a UPS that can take over while a generator spins up if they really need that kind of reliability. I always ask, what are the odds that your 8 hour power outage scenario isn't from something catastrophic like a flood or a fire, eg, if the power is out for that long, something is probably literally on fire and you've got bigger problems.
Are Anker cables considered good? I have a few, but recently one of my anker usb-c cables started to only go up to 15W, making me think something broke with the usb pd chip.
Anker is good. The limit for USB-C cables is normal ones go to 60W, marked ones go to 100W. The cables are passive except for the marker chip. It is the charger that does USB-PD. Do you have it plugged into regular charger that does 15W, or USB-PD charger that does more?
I guess you could have a bad cable where the CC wire has broken and can't do USB-PD.
Anker products are generally good (and they were the first to make consistently-good cables and chargers -- in the early smartphone days, everything non-OEM was junk), but things still break eventually.
Their customer service is supposed to be legendary. If you drop them a (polite) descriptive note, signed with your name and address, I'll bet you a beer that you'll have a new cable in your hands by the middle of next week.
Look for used enterprise-grade or at least higher-end office grade equipment on eBay and other surplus marketplaces, and install new batteries. Cyberpower is a good brand in my experience.
The only advantage to buying new is weight. Newer UPSes tend to be a lot lighter, but that's often because they cut corners on the magnetics and/or use expensive, hard-to-replace lithium batteries. Weight is a high priority for the manufacturer to optimize, but not for the consumer. When it comes to UPSes, old school big-iron transformers and heavy-metal batteries are the way to go IMO.
