UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) - Is it a fire hazard?

[John Eucist]

I was thinking about getting a UPS for my desktop PC. Seeing euc and hoverboard fires makes me think about the possibility of UPS catching on fire. The difference with UPS is that it's "always plugged in and charging" while eucs we can charge while "attended" and store unattended. Another difference is most UPS use lead acid batteries instead of lithium batteries. Any insights or thoughts?

This is the model I'm considering:
http://www.apc.com/shop/uk/en/products/APC-Smart-UPS-1500VA-LCD-230V/P-SMT1500I

Edited May 29, 2017 by John Eucist
added link

[The Fat Unicyclist]

Good UPS have fairly sophisticated management, and as you mentioned less volatile batteries... I have been using them for several years, without any concerns whatsoever. 

[John Eucist]

2 minutes ago, The Fat Unicyclist said:

Good UPS have fairly sophisticated management, and as you mentioned less volatile batteries... I have been using them for several years, without any concerns whatsoever. 

I just edited in the link to the UPS model I'm considering (to the original post) but here is is again:

http://www.apc.com/shop/uk/en/products/APC-Smart-UPS-1500VA-LCD-230V/P-SMT1500I

Is lead acid less volatile? I didn't know for sure.

[duaner]

Q. Is UPS a fire hazard?  A. No, UPSs are not a fire hazard.

[esaj]

5 hours ago, John Eucist said:

Is lead acid less volatile? I didn't know for sure.

As far as I know, lead acid isn't very volatile. Seen car batteries ignite often? Most of them are lead acid. Maybe if you short it with a wrench or something...   The downside is that they're large and heavy vs. their voltage and capacity, but can give out very high current for a while (cranking a car to start can draw something like up to 400-500A for some seconds if it doesn't start right away) and the large batteries still have relatively large capacity (something like 60Ah / about 720Wh at 12V nominal for a typical car battery).

Never had an UPS, so don't know that much about those.

[The Fat Unicyclist]

APC make good kit - that's the brand I use. 

[Chriull]

"Battery type

Maintenance-free sealed Lead-Acid battery with suspended electrolyte : leakproof"

should be quite safe. And APC is imho a quite well known and serious producer of ups's. They are not known for bad design or bad quality controlls like some hocerboard or euc manufacturers.

but shit can happen - if you google 'ups apc fire hazard' there are some reports. One i read was a blown capacitor - imho this could happen with about any electronic 'power' device.

some got very hot batteries, which normally should be detected by the ups selftest - but anyway the battery should be changed before it looses too much capacity (?the first sign if aging?) or the ups can no longer provide its indented service anyhow. 

.... just googled - recommended lifetime for apc ups batteries is 3 to 5 yesrs, maybe i should replace mine ...

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

I have an APC 1500 smart UPS, but the batteries don't seem to last very long in it. I think after 3-4 years I had to buy new ones. Now they've died too so I shut the whole thing off as it beeps annoyingly.  

I've also got several Cyperpower 1000 AVR UPS's which are supposed to level out the voltages peaks and dips with a close enough to sine wave output.  They seem to be lasting better than the big named brand so go figure.  I buy the replacement batteries for my APC online as you can find them pretty cheap.  I think they are similar to motorcycle, ATV or snowmobile batteries.

If you want to protect your computer and electronics I highly recommend the AVR auto voltage regulating type.  Keep in mind some fancier PC power supplies require pure sine wave voltage so you might need to get a UPS that supports that.  My cheapo systems don't need it.  Also never plug a laserjet printer into a UPS as it draws a ton of current.

Edited May 31, 2017 by Hunka Hunka Burning Love

[Dingfelder]

I've used them for at least 20 years or so.  It's much cheaper to have one of them blown by a power surge than to lose an expensive TV or precious computer etc.  I have two in my bedroom, one for each of those things on opposite sides of the room.

I did have one melt down on me years ago.  Quite literally melt, with burnt smoking plastic and such. Luckily it wasn't on the carpeting or it would have ruined it. It was a very expensive one that I felt justified in spending on since we had power surges regularly.  

Another time, i had another expensive but not quite so expensive one connected to my computer monitor in the same apartment, same computer system connected to it.  On that one, a surge got through and my computer monitor actually caught fire.  That UPS was ruined too.  It was getting crazy expensive very quickly to use UPS's ... but on the other hand I lost a monitor and some UPS's and not my much more valuable computer (with all its info).  Within about a month I found myself on my third expensive UPS.

Both UPS's were connected to the same computers and components, and the computer and all peripherals besides a monitor came out undamaged through both incidents.

At one old workplace, we had constant brown-outs too.  That's supposedly the leading cause of computer damage, rather than upward spikes.  We used them everywhere with no problems.

Overall I'd say that there's no guarantee they'll work, more or less no matter how much you spend on them.  But they are good insurance to have.  whether they fail or not or catch fire themselves or not, they still perform a valuable service.  I'd much rather lose a couple/few hundred bucks on a dead UPS than what it's protecting.  And I've never had one spontaneous catch fire or even smell funny 

I also find the ability of some of them to deliver quite a few minutes of power, even if you lose power completely, to be extremely useful.  That gives you time to shut down without facing file corruption or getting your equipment damaged.  

I'd also advise to get a unit that has the right kind of outlet.  You'll want one that doesn't put the outlets too close together, because still live in the age of the wall wart power supply.  And that you make sure it has as many outlets with the right kind of protection as you need.  If you need power to keep three things going when the power cuts out but only two of your outlets are powered and the rest are just surge-protected, well, you're in trouble.  

Re APC ... I've used a number of them and they seem fine to me. I would avoid the cheap ones with minimal protection, though.  If anything goes wrong, it can go wrong BIG ... and it's nice to be well-protected when that happens.  

[John Eucist]

5 hours ago, Dingfelder said:

It's much cheaper to have one of them blown by a power surge than to lose an expensive TV or precious computer etc.

Wouldn't just a "surge protector" be good enough for that instead of a UPS (with surge protection)?
 

5 hours ago, Dingfelder said:

I have two in my bedroom, one for each of those things on opposite sides of the room.

So I guess the noise (if any) from the fan or whatever hum it might make isn't loud enough to bother you? 

5 hours ago, Dingfelder said:

I did have one melt down on me years ago.  Quite literally melt, with burnt smoking plastic and such.
<snip>
And I've never had one spontaneous catch fire or even smell funny 

Seems those two statements from you contradict each other. Or did you mean the incident where your monitor caught fire? But wow I've never heard such extreme things happening. Is it your power company's fault or what?
 

5 hours ago, Dingfelder said:

whether they fail or not or catch fire themselves or not, they still perform a valuable service.  I'd much rather lose a couple/few hundred bucks on a dead UPS than what it's protecting.

Well I'm more worried about the entire house (in my case, apartment) burning down (which destroys everything including possibly lives) if it happens when I'm not at home.

[John Eucist]

Found this reddit link. No reports of "house burnt down" but with incidents where fire or smoke was contained.
 

 

Edited May 30, 2017 by John Eucist

[Chriull]

29 minutes ago, John Eucist said:

Wouldn't just a "surge protector" be good enough for that instead of a UPS (with surge protection)?

For the surge protected outlets of the UPS this could be quite the same - don't know if your linked UPS has different outlets, mine has surge protected and battery backed up outlets.

"Normal" surge protection happens by "filtering devices" which absorb the energy of incoming spikes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surge_protector) - they have some maximum energy of a spike which can be suppressed within some response time. For your linked UPS that's 

• Surge energy rating
  459Joules
• Filtering
  Full time multi-pole noise filtering : 0.3% IEEE surge let-through : zero clamping response time : meets UL 1449

Every spike "energy" above this rating comes through to your attached devices and could potentially damage them and/or your surge protector.

For the battery backed up outlets one should/could imho have a "perfect" surge protection - the incoming AC voltage is transformed to charge the battery and then there is the sine wave converter to generate again the AC output voltage (from the battery and/or the "charge circuit"). So there is no reasonable way for any spike to come through to your devices. Any spike occuring at the input could just damage the input part of the UPS, but not your attached devices.

Theoretically the UPS also could/should have the possibility to cut off from the input line once a spike gets to "much" to be absorbed by the "surge protection" and still supply the devices after it and by this also protect itself - there is no need to absorp the real nasty spikes. But i never really dug into how UPS's are designed in detail.

29 minutes ago, John Eucist said:

So I guess the noise (if any) from the fan or whatever hum it might make isn't loud enough to bother you? 

Your linked UPS has a "Audible noise at 1 meter from surface of unit: 45.0dBA" which is quite hearable in quiet surroundings! 

From a german table:

30 db(a): whispering

40 db(A): threshold for "concentration disorders"

45 db(A): silent room

50 db(A): gentle radio-music, twittering of birds

29 minutes ago, John Eucist said:

Well I'm more worried about the entire house (in my case, apartment) burning down (which destroys everything including possibly lives) if it happens when I'm not at home.

The insurance should cover most/all cases, smoke detectors give you a chance.

Important Data/photos/documents should not be stored (only) in an apartment. 

The UPS could lessen the risk of your devices catching fire/getting destroyed by surges, "protect" the data integrity in case of brown outs but on the other hand increase the risk by just having another device which could fail ...

 

[Jag_Rip]

Just keep in mind, a UPS is not the same as a laptop battery. Its main reasons of existence are the aforementioned surge protection and they give your system critical time to shut down its OS in a controlled manner if there is a power outage. We are speaking of a few minutes of power usually, not more. A lot of people think they could game on during a blackout for a few hours and attach monitors, printers and all sorts of other Periphery onto it. Get a Laptop in that case.

If the power grid in your area is generally stable, then you'll use the surge protection only in case of a thunderstorm and probably never ever really need a UPS.

What are you running on your Desktop that you consider getting a UPS? Do you run Applications that use large Databases that keep their current data inside the PCs Ram?

[Dingfelder]

1 hour ago, John Eucist said:

1.  Wouldn't just a "surge protector" be good enough for that instead of a UPS (with surge protection)?

2.  So I guess the noise (if any) from the fan or whatever hum it might make isn't loud enough to bother you? 

3.  Seems those two statements from you contradict each other. Or did you mean the incident where your monitor caught fire? But wow I've never heard such extreme things happening. Is it your power company's fault or what?
 

4.  Well I'm more worried about the entire house (in my case, apartment) burning down (which destroys everything including possibly lives) if it happens when I'm not at home.

1.  First sentence refers to a desktop PC being used with a UPS.  Considering how useful it is to have time to close down applications and switch off your computer in case of a blackout, a UPS would be much more valuable than a surge protector alone.  

2.  I can't recall ever hearing noise from my UPS's.

3.  That was confusing.  I meant when not under load.  Stuff was plugged in, I should say, but nothing was turned on.  Under those circumstances, never a problem.

4.  If a surge could cause a fire in a UPS, it could probably do it in whatever was plugged directly into a wall, too.  Perhaps similar to how my monitor caught fire even when plugged into a UPS.  

[Chriull]

1 hour ago, John Eucist said:

Wouldn't just a "surge protector" be good enough for that instead of a UPS (with surge protection)?

 

6 minutes ago, Dingfelder said:

1.  First sentence refers to a desktop PC being used with a UPS.  Considering how useful it is to have time to close down applications and switch off your computer in case of a blackout, a UPS would be much more valuable than a surge protector alone.  

+1!

If one is not only having the computer turned on while one is in front of it, the used OS should also be able to shutdown itself, once the UPS signals a blackout! (And give you a notice to save your open documents within some 30 secs before shutdown occurs)

So my UPS is for my NAS which runs 24/7 - i never got the idea to get an UPS for my desktop computer...

Also as @Jag_Rip mentioned - do you really need an UPS for a desktop computer? With a blackout one normally just loose not saved data - a total file system corruption is quite rare and should be encountered first by backups and just as additional security with an UPS.

Also a 1500VA UPS sounds quite much? I did not find the capacity at the specifications, but that number normally means that the ups can support this 1500VA for some 5-10 minutes (time to shutdown)? And this is really only needed for the computer itself (maybe also the router, some external harddisk, etc) and not for the peripherals like monitor, printer, etc...  For the peripherals surge protection should be sufficient, if needed at all - depends on the "cleanness" of your local power grid.

[dmethvin]

UPS batteries are safe. They don't have the thermal runaway or over/undercharge bad behavior of Lithium Ion. The batteries do tend to lose their ability to hold a charge after somewhere between 3 and 6 years. Sometimes they will swell and crack with age, particularly if they are not cycled, but there's no flame or liquid spilled when that happens. I am just replacing the batteries today on an old APC UPS after 8 years but I know they failed earlier because we had a power failure and it didn't switch over at all. 

[Vik's]

On ‎29‎.‎05‎.‎2017 at 8:05 PM, John Eucist said:

I was thinking about getting a UPS for my desktop PC. Seeing euc and hoverboard fires makes me think about the possibility of UPS catching on fire. The difference with UPS is that it's "always plugged in and charging" while eucs we can charge while "attended" and store unattended. Another difference is most UPS use lead acid batteries instead of lithium batteries. Any insights or thoughts?

This is the model I'm considering:
http://www.apc.com/shop/uk/en/products/APC-Smart-UPS-1500VA-LCD-230V/P-SMT1500I

I would say - go for it! I've been using UPS on all of my PC's, FC modem and AP's for a few years. APC and Cyberpower. Never had a problem with them other than changing the batteries (usual moped or motorcycle batteries can be used in most of them.)

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

15 hours ago, Chriull said:

Also a 1500VA UPS sounds quite much? I did not find the capacity at the specifications, but that number normally means that the ups can support this 1500VA for some 5-10 minutes (time to shutdown)? And this is really only needed for the computer itself (maybe also the router, some external harddisk, etc) and not for the peripherals like monitor, printer, etc...  For the peripherals surge protection should be sufficient, if needed at all - depends on the "cleanness" of your local power grid.

I got my 1500 on sale as they usually are pretty expensive.  I used to have three computers and two monitors connected to it, and it would run a good 20-30 minutes without a hiccup during a power failure.  I moved my server off to it's own CyberPower UPS so I need to get some new batteries for it.  Here's a photo of it:

For one PC a basic unit is fine, but be sure to check if replacement batteries are easy to get for it.  The fancier ones do have USB connectors and software which you can install on your PC so if the UPS detects a power issue the PC will shut down gracefully in time.

[Dingfelder]

Pretty sexy looking for a UPS!

[The Fat Unicyclist]

23 minutes ago, Dingfelder said:

Pretty sexy looking for a UPS!

Stop that - right now!

Don't you know how easily  @Hunka Hunka Burning Love gets aroused? 

[Vik's]

3 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

I got my 1500 on sale as they usually are pretty expensive.  I used to have three computers and two monitors connected to it, and it would run a good 20-30 minutes without a hiccup during a power failure.  I moved my server off to it's own CyberPower UPS so I need to get some new batteries for it.  Here's a photo of it:

For one PC a basic unit is fine, but be sure to check if replacement batteries are easy to get for it.  The fancier ones do have USB connectors and software which you can install on your PC so if the UPS detects a power issue the PC will shut down gracefully in time.

Most of them got USB now. And yes, it's a bless really - taking down both NAS and PC's gracefully after set timelimit and gives you peace of mind when you're not home.

[Hunka Hunka Burning Love]

14 hours ago, The Fat Unicyclist said:

Stop that - right now!

Don't you know how easily  @Hunka Hunka Burning Love gets aroused? 

I'ma humpin' my UPS right this instant!    Trying to start that baby up!   Beep beep beep take that "replace battery" indicator!

Sadly the UPS batteries are kaput.  The user is willing, but the UPS is unable.  I think I might need an UPS for my UPS.  

Edited May 31, 2017 by Hunka Hunka Burning Love

[esaj]

2 hours ago, Hunka Hunka Burning Love said:

I'ma humpin' my UPS right this instant!    Trying to start that baby up!   Beep beep beep take that "replace battery" indicator!

Sadly the UPS batteries are kaput.  The user is willing, but the UPS is unable.  I think I might need an UPS for my UPS.  

Just put two UPSs backupping each other -> Infinite power! 

Or just the old fashioned way:

 

[Philip W]

I deal with computers all my life, and I don't really see the point of UPS, even in a server. For most of the small business, a sudden power-off with the server won't do much damage to the hardware, and today's database software can easily recover to the point of failure with no ill-effects. UPS is either for mission critical tasks, or for the old days when servers went crazy after a sudden shutdown. For consumers they are basically useless. Most of our important data now is in the cloud. A shut-down or even burn-down of the computer won't affect much of the data. So why we still buying the extremely toxic super heavy lead-acid battery? It will go down in 4-5 years anyway.

And finally, yeah, UPS is definitely a fire hazard. Battery itself might be OK, but the circuitry is a different story. Take a look at their big capacitors and think about what will happen if those capacitors pop and burn?

Edited June 7, 2017 by Philip W

[reddo]

I was Googling UPS fire risk because we just had a power outage and one of our UPS devices did catch fire causing a significant amount of smoke. I managed to power off the device and have since pulled the emergency battery connector on the back. It was an APC Smart-UPS C1500 - very similar to the one in the article above. Not only did the battery catch fire but we also had some fluid leakage from the bottom of the unit. It is unclear at this stage as to whether or not it was sulphuric acid.

Thankfully we we were in the office and able to react quickly. The consequences were we not in could have been catestrophic.

We have many other battery backup units and the rest all behaved well saving all of our equipment from damage. The unit which burnt was one of two attached to a dual power supply server so that server also survived the outage.