New battery - first 24 hour charge without load necessary for good health?

[BillP]

I notice a lot of the rackmount UPS' battery replacement documentation insists on charging the battery for a full 24 hours prior to putting a load on it, however the documentation also states: +"The Smart-UPS will charge whether it is on or off, and will charge whether there is a load present or not. In situations where the power quality is poor, it is recommended that the unit be shutdown during this charging period. A Smart-UPS that is powered on may switch to battery operation which would prolong the time needed to fully recharge the battery."+

So my question is this: do you really need to charge the battery without a load for a full 24 hours before plugging a load onto it for proper battery health, or is that just a suggestion, sort of like fine print in case the power goes out and APC isn't held responsible?

For small business servers, often they can only afford a UPS per server and for places that are open 24/7, keeping the server(s) off for 24 hours is impossible.

Thanks in advance!

[BillP · Accepted solution]

no, it is not 100% necessary to charge the unit before using it. the problem arises when the unit isnt fully charged, say its at 50% battery charge when you turn it on - and then the power goes out. you wont receive the amount of runtime that you were looking for which may cause concern if you don't notice the fact that it isnt 100% charged. so, it is recommended to have the unit charge completely incase of an issue like that. it is certainly ok to plug in the load and turn the UPS and let it charge with the load on there like in the situation you described - where you need to have your load up 24/7. if anything, the battery will charge a little bit slower if it needs to switch to battery operation as stated above, but there wont be a noticable effect on the battery.