Best Buy is a convenient method for recycling UPSs in the US. One tip - don't remove the battery. You think you're being kind and helpful, and if that battery is left inside too long, it may swell to the point of being unremoveable without "jaws of life," but BB gave me a hard time when I tried to give the unit and the two batteries separately.
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New Battery or New UPS
- Thread starter CameraCarl
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The area where we are not trying is... harnessing the nuclear forces.
We're still stuck on the mechanical and chemical. There's easily sufficient people and literally thousands of companies trying to make a better battery.
Not sure what you're referring to. An example:
ITER Tokamak Fusion Reactor - Fusion for Energy
Not a technology suited to small companies.
Are you thinking of something else?
I wouldn't invest in companies that are trying to exploit zero point energy. (Not nuclear, but Quantum.) Or Pons-Fleischmann cold fusion.
I'm not sure what fusion technology Lyndon LaRouche's supporters were pushing back in the 80s.
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So far we know of fission and fusion. But there may be other ways to exploit the weak and/or strong nuclear forces.
Fission can probably be downsized more readily that fission. We already have the nuclear submarines that have worked very well I think. Some effort (but not much) is going into Small Modular Reactors.
Early mainframe computers were probably the size of a nuclear sub power plant. And yet now we can place that much computing power into something smaller than a phone. Who knows how small we can made a nuke?
All the techniques mentioned focus on producing heat and then using that to generate electricity. But maybe we can find a way to excite the electrons to produce electricity directly. After all, electricity is just a flow of electrons. If we can do that then we can toss the turbines and generators.
The payoff would be huge. The energy density would be orders of magnitude greater than anything we can achieve with chemistry.
Nuclear sub > nuclear car -> nuclear laptop -> nuclear phone...
Doesn’t the unit’s ability to protect against surges degrade over time? At least, that’s what I was told when I recently went looking for a new surge protector to replace one that was ten years old. Or is that just marketing blather?
wh1tby
Well-known member
Yes, they do. Most surge protectors use metal oxide varistors (MOV) which become less effective every time they absorb a spike. On this basis, unless you know that your surge protector has never absorbed a surge or spike, you are better off replacing them regularly, as often as every 3 to years depending on the quality of your supply.
More expensive UPS have better components which will last longer which is why I advocated buying a new one in the case of the OP's unit which is a basic APC unit with simulated sine wave output. The ones that produce pure sine waves have better components and can last up to 10 years. We have used such UPS in professional applications and tested them every 6 months, since the consequences were much bigger than the loss of fairly low cost consumer electronics.
New Wrycuda
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Fission has already been downsized. There’s submarines, SMRs, and Satellite power supplies.
Tokamak designs are fine for confining nuclear fusion processes, but none of them have any provision for exporting energy (not that they ever generate much).
Yep and we likely can and will downsize it further. Maybe a LOT further.
Agreed. I remain pretty skeptical about the potential for fusion but I certainly don't rule it out in the long term. Nothing very practical is gonna happen in the near term.
Back to the 1950s, eh? Or are you joking?
I believe that the reactors of nuclear subs use weapons grade U235. Just the sort of thing we need to spread widely in the civilian economy.
The Soviets flew reactors in space. Not without issues .
I've seen proposals for building small fission reactors, but there must be limits to their scalability (in the small direction). Critical mass and all that.
There are small "nuclear" power sources: RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators ). No moving parts. Commonly used on US space probes. No fission; just the decay of plutonium 238. (That's not fissile; the bomb isotope is Pu239.) I suppose they don't produce the power levels that reactors would.
SMRs have shown the same failings as their bigger brothers - too expensive, too long to deploy. Idaho was supposed to be the proving ground for this latest great nuke hope from NuScale, and it was shuttered late in 2023 after its cost ballooned from 3B to 9.3B, to produce a mere 462MW. That's actually higher than the 31B spent to build Vogtle 3/4 (2.2GW).
In contrast, a 500 MW solar farm can be built for 350-650M. Granted, you have to apply a multiplier as it only produces that 500 for 6 hour per day, but 10X? No. Won't cost a fortune to decommission either.
Presumably you meant nuclear reactor, not nuke (weapon).
If nuclear power plants had the same failure rate as subs do, no one would consider them. The Navy accepts a much higher level of risk than society does. They have to make that tradeoff to avoid the limitations of WW2 era subs.
Ultimately, energy produced is based on how much fission is going on. That requires an inherent space. It's not like the shrinking of ICs, or the lowering of voltage (and thus heat). The SMRs so far suggest the usual inefficiency as size shrinks.
I don't think there is any shortage of physics postdocs trying to find new methods for cold fusion, or energy from nothing. If they do someday figure out fusion, then hydrogen fuel becomes a reliable replacement of most of the battery in a car. It wouldn't matter that it takes 3x more energy than just charging a lithium battery.
Right. I checked Best Buy's recycling page beforehand and saw that they require the battery or batteries to be left inside the UPS. When I got to Best Buy the only question the customer service person who assisted me had was "Is the battery still inside?".
Chris Noble
Veteran Member
You are thinking of passive surge protection (the type that is included in power strips). Those divert the spikes into a Metal Oxide Varistor that degrades over time.
By the way, the best place for passive surge protection is in your electric panel ("whole house surge protection"). Vastly superior to power strips: handles way more spike power, as it enters your house --- not after it has traveled around all the wiring in your walls and into all your unprotected appliances. Very easy to retrofit into an existing panel.
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Yes, but a lot of those costs are driven by an insane regulatory framework which seriously needs overhauling.
It's a pretty large multiplier when you factor in the cost of the batteries or gas peaker to provide power when the sun sets together with the transmission lines, other infrastructure and management.
And maintaining frequency stability is tough without lots of rotating machines as they learned in Spain/Portugal a few months ago.
I think that we will eventually find a way to harness the nuclear forces to achieve massively greater energy density. I'm not a nuclear scientist and don't know how. Nobody does at this point but we'll see.
Energy density has ruled in the past and it will in the future and for that reason wind and solar will turn out to be short term solutions pending future developments. Energy density is the reason fossil fuels became our primary energy source. Ultimately, the winner will be energy dense and clean.
Eric Carlson
Veteran Member
I buy good inexpensive batteries from Amazon. But I do have several UPS's that still don't work with even new batteries.
I'm thinking of getting some small LiFePO4 power stations with UPS capability, instead of continuing to rely on ancient Lead Acid battery technology. They should be good for 10+ years without having to replace batteries. Though they are not yet as cheap as an UPS (Though UPSs have gotten more expensive recently, so it could reach equilibrium before long).
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- Eric, http://www.invisiblerobot.com/
I'm thinking of getting some small LiFePO4 power stations with UPS capability, instead of continuing to rely on ancient Lead Acid battery technology. They should be good for 10+ years without having to replace batteries. Though they are not yet as cheap as an UPS (Though UPSs have gotten more expensive recently, so it could reach equilibrium before long).
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- Eric, http://www.invisiblerobot.com/
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wh1tby
Well-known member
Consumer level UPS still use MOVs for surge protection. The voltage regulation circuits in the UPS take care of incoming voltage variations within a specified ranges and over hundreds of milliseconds and with the pure sine wave devices, they often ensure the frequency stays constant too. Surge protection takes care of very short term transient voltage spikes which the voltage regulation circuits cannot handle. Hence these circuits can wear out over time. I used to design power supplies for very sensitive computer systems used for sensitive data transaction processing as part of my early training in systems engineering.
Sean Nelson
Forum Pro
If consumer surge suppressors have a limited lifetime, wouldn't it make sense to perform that function using a cheap device like a power strip that can be easily replaced every so often rather than rely on it being done by an expensive UPS system? You could replace the power strip when you replace the UPS battery and you'd be golden, no?
Chris Noble
Veteran Member
Lithium batteries are light and compact, so good for portable gear. But expensive to make and hard/expensive to recycle.
Lead Acid is heavy and more voluminous, so better for stationary gear. But also cheap to make and easy/cheap to recycle many times over.
What's better depends on the application.
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Chris Noble
Veteran Member
Better to install a "whole-house surge protector" in your electric panel.
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New Wrycuda
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Yes, I am a believer, and have surge protectors on all AC outlets, except for those that only run reading lights or motorised recliners. Since household appliances have gained digital controllers, it’s now necessary to protect heavy-duty gear such as washing machines that were previously OK.
Some power boards are rather trashy inside. When setting up a new system, I usually supplied a new power board rather than relying on whatever was available at the site.
It’s worth pointing out that SPDs come in various capacities. All my computer gear is protected by a high-end unit, while other stuff runs off protected power boards or individual devices.
Surge Protection capacities
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