UPS Battery Replacement Question

I was cleaning out my weight room/tech storage dump and found an old, cheap Belkin UPS with a bad battery. I decided to take it apart and look at ebay to see what it would cost to replace the battery to see if it was worth the risk, and after opening it up, I realized that physically size wise, this thing used the same size battery that I'd about for a bit bigger UPS model I'd had die on me about a year ago. The problem with that one was it had really died, and the battery replacement didn't fix it. But my question is this:

The UPS I opened up today has a 12v 7 Amp battery. The one I had bought for the other UPS is 12V 8 Amp. I assume this should be fine, but just wanted to make sure that I'm not going to burn the house down.

Next task will be to desolder the alarm off this thing. Before I got better UPS's, if the power went off it would sound like a civil defense drill up in this place. I don't plan to use this for a PC if I use. Maybe it would be good for my lower power network gear.

Please make sure you have a video recorder on you while you turn it on.

Well, if it has smart battery-charging hardware, it should be fine. But this is Belkin, and Belkin has an amazing ability to screw up most anything they try to do, so I would personally dispose of that thing with extreme prejudice.

If that other battery has been sitting for a year without being charged, it's probably not in very good shape, anyway.

Malor wrote:

If that other battery has been sitting for a year without being charged, it's probably not in very good shape, anyway.

It hadn't. That other UPS sat in a not working state for months. I bought the battery this summer some time.

Disclaimer: I am not an electrician, and I'm not even really a hobby electronics person. What I know about electricity is largely constrained to computer power supplies.

From that knowledge, having a supply with a ton of amperage is fine, a device just takes what it needs. So I presume an 8A battery just lets a device 'pull harder', as it were. The voltage is a measure of how hard the battery 'pushes', and as long as the voltages match, it should be okay. Electricity, to my limited understanding, is a lot like water. Voltage is basically water pressure, and amperage is the pipe diameter. You can hook up a small pipe to a big one just fine, as long as it's designed for the pressure.

The charge circuitry in the UPS probably just puts current into the battery until it reaches a certain charge level, and during drawdown, pulls power out until it drops to a certain level, so I think it should be compatible with the larger pack.

Basically, my non-expert opinion is that it will be fine. But you may want to solicit an opinion from someone with actual expertise, as opposed to my hazy semi-knowledge.

I did a bit of other research, and some of the battery sales sites were selling higher amp batteries like this as "extra capacity". So I think what you're saying and what I suspected is right.

MannishBoy wrote:

I did a bit of other research, and some of the battery sales sites were selling higher amp batteries like this as "extra capacity". So I think what you're saying and what I suspected is right.

That is what I had a battery shop tell me when I researched it for work.