UPS Batteries Technology

[normansteve]

Hello,

Can someone tell me how many types of batteries used in uninterruptible power supplies? I'm gonna powering for my critical medical equipment, as far as I know is Nickel-Cadmium, Lead-Acid, and Lithium-Ion.Which one is the best?

Thank you so much for your suggestion.

[sbagdon]

Personally, and this is just an opinion, to power critical medical equipment, the battery technology isn't the issue, the quality of the inverter/charger is. Any battery technology, when properly maintained/serviced, will last it's lifetime/lifecycle (whatever that is, for that chemistry). Presumably, if this is truly critical (life-or-death) equipment, it will have an internal battery (which on it's own will be maintained/tested), and your UPS would presumably be for if grid-power went out, and you were getting ready to start up a generator.

Yet most people will say that lithium ion will be the most expensive, yet have the best storage characteristic, energy density, and low-weight (is this equipment portable?)... lithium ion usually has 3x the energy density per unit of physical space, and 1/2 the weight (some say that makes it 6x better then sla). Yet to get a "true LiIon UPS", it's not going to be cheap... as much as a few times as the equivalent energy SLA. One advantage of SLA is the ease of finding it... and most likely, if it's a  UPS for medical equipment, it'll probably use a standard RBC pack.