UPS Battery Testing

Over 80% of UPS system failures are due to battery faults. At EcoPowerSupplies our standby power and UPS battery testing services can be purchased as a single service or added to a UPS Maintenance Plan. We price these testing services for Normal Working Hours, Out of Hours and Weekend/Bank Holiday work based on the number of battery blocks in the set to be tested, their geographic location and access time.

Our battery testing service used advanced testers including impedance and electrochemical analysers which test the batteries on an individual basis, using a chemical scan technology. This generates more comprehensive information than a traditional load impedance tester and allows a predictive failure time to be generated based on a wide range of battery conditions including sulphation. Regular testing (up to twice a year) is vital for critical power systems as a preventative measure and help to ensure that battery sets meet their expected working life.

EcoPowerSupplies provides an efficient and accurate battery testing service to ensure the overall integrity of your battery systems. Our reports and cloud based data provide information to track trends and provide a basis for future battery swap outs an replacements. We also provide load bank testing for commissioning and preventative maintenance services.

The EcoPowerSupplies Battery Testing Report includes the following for each battery within the string and overall battery set:

• Conductance, Impedance or Load Bank battery testing
• Temperature readings
• UPS and Standby Power System DC voltage report with graphs
• Environmental survey
• ICT WEEE survey
• Battery room health & safety report
• Security survey
• Visual system inspection
• Remote monitoring and alarm inspection
• Bypass switch inspection

As well as a full battery inspection and testing service, we also provide replacement UPS batteries and a full environmentally friendly recycling service.

There are two forms of battery testing as standard within the industry:

• Conductance Testing: provides an indication of a battery’s ability to conduct or produce energy. Regular testing and the recording of results provides an overview of the overall health of a battery block and can help plan for future replacements before the battery reaches its end of life or shows visible signs of heat damage from a rising internal resistance (swollen plastic case and white residue around the terminals. The unit of measure for conductance is Mhos or Siemens.
• Impedance Testing: measures the internal resistance within a battery. As a battery ages, the plates sulphate leading to an increased resistance and the potential heat damage within the battery itself. Measuring the internal resistance provides an indication of how near a battery is to failure.

Conductance testing measures how much energy a battery can produce and can be more applicable for new battery installations. Impedance testing measures how near a battery is to its end-of-life and is more commonly used for older batteries as impedance rises the more a battery ages. Both forms of battery testing can be used to test UPS batteries or the battery set fitted to a standby power system. What is important to note is that battery testing provides an ‘at-the-time’ snapshot and regular testing and the recording of results will show a trend for a battery block, battery string and battery set over time. For this reason EcoPowerSupplies recommends that battery testing be included within a UPS or standby power system maintenance contract as a yearly test.

New Battery and UPS Installations

The ideal time to test a new set of batteries is when a UPS installation is made. This provides a baseline for the new battery set against which subsequent battery results can be measured during an annual battery test.

Whilst the UPS installation may be new, the battery set does not always have to be. For a university client, EcoPowerSupplies upgraded a transformer-based UPS with a modular high-efficiency system but using the existing battery set which had been replaced the previous year. Testing the existing battery set gave the client the confidence that it could be used with the new modular UPS system and provided baseline data for future comparison and analysis.