Home Networking

198 readers

1 users here now

A community to help people learn, install, set up or troubleshoot their home network equipment and solutions.

Rules

Please stay on topic.
Please use the search function to look for keywords related to what you want to ask before posting since most common issues have been answered.
No Ads. This community is for support and discussion. Ads and self promotion are not welcome here.
No product reviews or announcements. If you have a question about a product, be specific about what you want to know.
Be civil. Don't be a jerk. Not being a jerk is surprisingly easy.
No URL shorteners. URL shorteners tend to hide the real use of a link. For this reason, please use normal links, even if they're long.
No affiliate links.
No gatekeeping. With profession shall come professionalism. Extend help without judging others for their ignorance. The same goes for downvoting of comments or posts for "stupid questions" or not being as knowledgeable as others.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Where are all the cheap lithium UPS products? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

And yet affordable LiFePO4 power stations are everywhere. Am I missing something?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Lead acid is very cheap, electrically very easy to charge, safe and actually very recyclable.

That said, yes LiFePO4 is really coming down in price. In telecom DC power systems, I've been using 48V packs in some situations because the cost difference between lead acid and lithium is only about 20-30% more.

The big benefit of lithium is the weight and amount of cycles you can get out of them. The longer service life is also a factor, but they're most useful in situations where you are cycling a lot (EVs, solar power systems) but UPSes aren't really taking advantage of that unless you live in a particularly bad area for power, the UPS's poor quality charging will likely damage the battery more than the cycling. It's also nice that lead acid is so common that you can often just walk into most battery / auto parts stores with the cell and they'll have something that will fit.

EDIT: I forgot to mention! There are some cheap 12V lithium UPSes out there for powering things like modems and WiFi routers. These are often a lot smaller than traditional UPSes, but since they're keeping everything on DC power can mean you still have a decent amount of runtime.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I had one of these that was pretty nifty — you could pull the battery and take it with you as a power pack. Unfortunately like many cheap lithium implementations, running the battery all the way out came with a chance that it would refuse to charge again. Not ideal for a UPS...