UPS to 1.5kW Sinewave Inverter Conversion part10 - Conclusion

[@AndyShell]

I'm working on a similar unit 1400va APC. looks 100% identical. I'm going to have to watch your vids a few times over and make most of the mods you did. Amazing work. 7 years old and still relevant.

[@tbilan]

Great series! You're very knowledgeable and the detail you covered was quite extensive. Thank you. I have a few APC Smart-UPS units and you showed me a few things I'm looking forward to testing. I just wish these had a lower standby wattage. 50w of overhead loss can make quite a dent out of a smaller battery bank a hurry.

[@gumnahs]

Awesome videos !! these are very important now due to solar applications. This helps us to understand inverters and ups. Also lots of used ups are available now to be fixed and reused.

[@cwwhit001]

Are you planning on making more videos? I find you engaging and informative.

[@pgprentice]

Great vid and awesome explanation. BTW I love the purple light saber lighs at about 5:08 ish...

[@kf7tkj]

I found this very interesting just like the others. I am going to go back and open up mine and see if i can mod in some more transistors for better surge current. Also I am curious about what other project you might have in mind for this ups. Thanks for sharing these type of projects as I find them very interesting and helpful!

[@peterpurpose]

Cracking set of vids young man... so much so that I've bought a couple of smart ups' to experiment with. Thank you very much indeed.

[@lisamlisak]

Thanks for the Video... I have a few units that use a 48 Volt battery bank and I believe are 3600 Watt units... I would like to replace the Lead Acid to External Li-Po. remove the battery cavity and reseal the unit in Aluminum. you gave me some great ideas.. thanks..

[@jim575757]

Good idea to heatsink to the base. I did the exact same thing following your example. Not converting anything but just using 115Ah instead of the wimpy 18Ah. Transformer does not exceed 50C even with the cover on.

[@NovaJackson]

Thank you for this well produced video knurlgnar. It was indeed an impressive project. At this time I have only one offering for you and it involves the cooling of the transformer. I thought it would be quite easy to take a piece of heat sink and using the zinc oxide goop, attach it to the large flat surface top of the xformer for more efficient cooling. Heat sink material can easily be cut on a table saw with carbide blade. The video gave me lots of ideas as to how to better cool my own inverters since heat is the greatest enemy of any electronic equipment. Thanks once again.

[@tbilan]

Even though I have several of these sitting around I'm thinking of picking up a Morningstar SureSine. They claim a 55ma standby draw @ 300w continuous with 94% efficiency. For a challenge I wanted to try to run my backbone (router, cable modem, switch, and small NAS) all from solar panels and 300w is more than enough for these small devices. I also considered buying new devices that all 12v DC wall warts and then going straight DC but the SureSine sounds like the better option.

[@knurlgnar24]

Yes, I wish they had a lower quiescent power draw as they are quite good quality power sources otherwise. The transformers they use were designed for UPS operation, not for sustained off-grid operation.

[@cshriv]

Great series! Thanks for the knowledge!

[@AntonyCartwright]

Thanks for the series! I've watched them all. I'm going to soon start on my own version of this system. I have some different ideas for cooling. The efficiency of the unit isn't so good though. Because I have the UK version which is 240v, I'm hoping that it will be more efficient. My UK version seems to have the same board as your US one, although ofcourse, we use half of the current to get the same wattage - I guess that will mean less heat. Thanks for your videos!

[@billherzog216]

Excellent series! Very professional.

[@theoldwizard998]

The price was right on that unit, but if you can find an "extended run" model (typically with a "XL" suffix on the model number) it comes with additional fans for better cooling of the transistors and transformer !

[@theoldwizard998]

Do you have any "concerns" using the charging function of this unit of "flooded cell" batteries when the original batteries were NOT flooded cell ?

[@knurlgnar24]

Nope - as long as they are lead-calcium. Just be sure to re-fill the electrolyte in flooded cell batteries to ensure it always covers the top of the plates. These units float at 14V per battery which is a little too high for normal flooded batteries which causes them to loose water too quickly. Lead-antimony batteries will have problems but most batteries in North America today are Lead Calcium and will withstand the 14V just fine.

[@KentHenry8]

@@knurlgnar24 as you mentioned in one of the previous videos, you can adjust a whole host of settings on the unit and this includes the gain value on the battery voltage sense -- you can adjust the float voltage this way. Some of the older units effectively need a recalibration anyway so I've done that to fix a unit that is overcharging and destroying the original spec SLA batteries.

[@johnconrad5487]

Very Thorough. Thanks for taking so much trouble making the video

[@mbennett972]

Watched the whole series and enjoyed it. Will the newer APC 1500 BG or XS-1500 support a capacity upgrade like the older unit? I’m guessing the answer is no.

[@Cruezz]

Is there a possibility to use it without wall power at all or changing some settings to not charge the batteries if your batteries are charged via solar?

[@yorgle11]

That was an impressive project. It's so tempting to try this. I have 2 idle SmartUPS units sitting around, and I could use a decent sinewave inverter for the long power outages we sometimes get. The cost of buying one isn't realistic for me. It really bums me out that these units require 24V. That would prevent it running from a car's alternator, which really would undermine how I'd want to use it.

[@knurlgnar24]

I agree that it is unfortunate it requires 24V to operate. It makes it less useful.

[@NiHaoMike64]

One solution to getting enough power for testing is to plug one of the PSUs right into the output! You will have to bootstrap it somehow (a little 12V battery will do) but then half the test power will come right from the output of the unit under test.

[@knurlgnar24]

Wow, that's a very creative solution! I'd like to shake your hand good sir. I would have never thought of that.

[@chrisferrell6159]

You've helped me alot.

[@davidmichalowski2719]

good work-easy to understand-i can do this- thank you !

[@MichaelMSchofield]

I have 10 t0 15 of these units (SUA1500RM2U) and wanted to try and convert to a inverter for use in a car. I could change my car battery over to a more UPS friendly battery but I would be dealing with 12 volts instead of 24 volts (not to mention car alternator competing to charge the battery)... do you know of a way to convert these units over to run off of a lower battery input voltage? Thanks for the great tutorial by the way!

[@MichaelMSchofield]

Michael Schofield I just red your comment to yorgle11 about 24v be unfortunate... guess that probably answers my question.

[@Steve25g]

+Michael Schofield you could put in a 2nd alternator, at 24/48V, and another battery circuit, saving start issues ;)

what was it before you converted this device? (in watts)

[@knurlgnar24]

980W I believe. But it was only capable of that wattage for a few minutes before it overheated.

***** oh i see and i have a small trust ups (non smart) and i want to change the battery to a 12v car battery (its not deep cycle but all i could afford at the time) it is a 200 ah as the ups only works while being plugged in i think it will be better than leavin the small dead battery in there any suggestions or ideas for that? i am hoping it will be ok :)

[@daaudiome]

@@knurlgnar24 Have you tried adding 2 ferrite toroids in parallel to bring down the idle current. I've seen this work, and will apply it to my ups which is giving me 1.5a of idle current draining my batteries. Most of old ups / inverters are quite inefficient to me. Whilest newer inverters or solar MPPT are higher in efficiency but they all work mainly the same according to their schematics.

[@mewantbrains]

I have a question I have never seen one of these as a 12V unit Is it possible using software or otherwise to make it work on 12V instead of 24V

[@DMAN22yeah]

+mewantbrains no

[@mewantbrains]

Well that sucks

[@eumesmo-kd1tr]

i just can say thank very much, impressive videos :-)

[@mobilesigngeek1693]

Awesome!

[@jamest.5001]

anyone know if it would be possible to parallel 2,3or 4 + of the APC 1000va ups or even the 1500's ? has anyone tried it? or thought about it?

[@Michele_Montesi]

you can do that, but you have to make some modification to each unit to work on sync with all the others. If they work out of sync you might get very inconsistent voltages. For just 2 unit the voltage will oscillate between 0 and 240v for 2x 120v ups. Double it for 2x 240v ups, so between 0 and 480v. The oscillation in voltage will be continuos for all the operation time. It's easy to understand that it will lead to appliance failure, and probably all the ups failure.

[@woocashewski]

thanks :)