With the increasing application of outdoor base stations, UPS battery failures in harsh application environments have gradually become prominent, such as in South Asia such as Pakistan and India, which not only cause economic losses to operators but also damage their customer satisfaction. Research institutions have conducted extensive research on the extensive damage of batteries in harsh application environments, gaining a deeper understanding of the application scenarios of UPS batteries, and investigating and analyzing the causes of battery failures.

With the continuous development of technology, the performance of UPS batteries is getting better, the average time between failures is getting longer, and the reliability of the entire machine is getting higher. It is particularly important to maintain the consumable batteries in UPS.

Due to the current imperfect charging mechanism of the domestic DC system and the existence of voltage drift in practice, UPS batteries are in a floating state for a long time. If the floating voltage deviates from the normal range, it will cause overcharging or undercharging of the battery. Long term overcharging or undercharging has a significant impact on the performance of the battery.

According to the current investigation of battery usage, thermal runaway is one of the main reasons for battery failure. Thermal runaway refers to the cumulative enhancement of charging current and battery temperature during constant voltage charging, gradually damaging the battery. The direct consequence of thermal runaway is the bulging and leakage of the battery casing, a decrease in battery capacity, and in severe cases, the deformation of the electrode plate, ultimately leading to failure.

Temperature has a significant impact on the natural aging process of batteries. For every 5 degrees Celsius increase in temperature, the battery life decreases by 10%. Therefore, the design of UPS should keep the battery as warm as possible. All online and backup/online hybrid UPS generate more heat than backup or online interactive UPS during operation, which is also an important reason for the relatively long battery replacement cycle of backup or online interactive UPS.

The operating humidity of the battery should be between 5% and 95%. Excessive environmental humidity can cause condensation on the surface of the battery, which can lead to short circuits, low PF humidity, and the generation of static electricity. Excessive dust can also easily cause short circuits in lead-acid batteries and block safety valves.

The key to the problem is not the battery itself, but the outdoor battery cabinet did not consider providing high-temperature protection for the battery. To fundamentally solve the problem, it is necessary to provide a comprehensive solution for the application of UPS power batteries in harsh outdoor environments.

There are multiple options for heat dissipation in outdoor cabinets. Which heat dissipation method is suitable for outdoor battery cabinets? This starts with the product characteristics of UPS batteries. For lead-acid batteries in communication DC power systems, users are most concerned about their service life. The main factors affecting the service life of lead-acid batteries are environmental temperature and power grid conditions.

The service life of UPS batteries is closely related to environmental temperature. The higher the ambient temperature, the shorter the service life of the battery. When the ambient temperature is 25 degrees higher than the required temperature for battery design life, every 10 degrees increase in temperature will shorten the service life by half.

The discharge frequency and depth of UPS batteries directly affect their service life. The more discharge times and depth, the shorter the service life of the battery. That is to say, frequent power outages in the power grid will reduce the service life of batteries.

For outdoor base stations, operators are usually unable to improve the power grid conditions or the cost of improving the power grid conditions is too high and unbearable. Therefore, starting from reducing the working environment temperature of UPS batteries, we can improve their service life.

The traditional heat dissipation method for outdoor cabinets is direct fan ventilation or heat exchanger, but neither of these methods can make the temperature inside the cabinet lower than the ambient temperature outside the cabinet. For the application scenarios of UPS batteries in high-temperature areas, it is necessary to actively dissipate heat to make the temperature inside the outdoor battery cabinet lower than the ambient temperature outside the cabinet. Some manufacturers have broken through conventions and innovated by incorporating refrigeration components into outdoor battery cabinets.

The power changes of the communication main equipment and the DC power supply both generate heat during the operation of the equipment, while the battery is different. According to the electrochemical mechanism of UPS battery charging and discharging, the battery does not generate heat during discharge. During normal charging (although charging), there is basically no heating. The heating capacity of the battery during normal use can be ignored. Therefore, there is no heat source inside the outdoor UPS battery cabinet, and the required cooling capacity is small. According to calculations, usually, the cooling capacity of the outdoor battery cabinet is only 200W-400W.