Elk charging a ginormous battery?

[AceCannon]

I've got 3 UPS's harvested from a retiring cellphone station, along with their huge batteries (12v DC, 163AH, 120 lbs each). I am wondering if I should use the battery(ies) with the UPS's or if I should actually connect them directly to the Elk M1G and abandon the UPS. I can't think of a reason the Elk charger can't charge these huge batteries, but what do I know?

 

[Digger]

I've got 3 UPS's harvested from a retiring cellphone station, along with their huge batteries (12v DC, 163AH, 120 lbs each). I am wondering if I should use the battery(ies) with the UPS's or if I should actually connect them directly to the Elk M1G and abandon the UPS. I can't think of a reason the Elk charger can't charge these huge batteries, but what do I know?

The ELK M1 was designed to charge a max 18 aH battery according to the manual. In the case of larger batteries than that it may never fully charge the battery as teh charge current is somewhere around 700 ma if I remember correctly.

You can use a seperate charger to charge the battery and connect it to your ELK. Be careful of short circuit current on a battery like that. You could probably weld with it (a 7 aH battery has a short circuit current of nearly 100 A)

 

[gatchel]

I'd see if you wanted to sell one of those monsters but I couldn't afford to ship it...

 

[AceCannon]

The ELK M1 was designed to charge a max 18 aH battery according to the manual. In the case of larger batteries than that it may never fully charge the battery as teh charge current is somewhere around 700 ma if I remember correctly.

You can use a seperate charger to charge the battery and connect it to your ELK. Be careful of short circuit current on a battery like that. You could probably weld with it (a 7 aH battery has a short circuit current of nearly 100 A)

OK I will just use the batteries to supply the UPS.

So the next question: if it is plugged into a UPS, how do I make the Elk aware of the AC power status?

 

[felixrosbergen]

No relay contacts on the back of it?

 

[WayneW]

So the next question: if it is plugged into a UPS, how do I make the Elk aware of the AC power status?

Basically, a relay with the coil associated with the AC line and the relay NO contacts connected to a zone configured as type 16 (non-alarm) or type 32 (power supervisory). Type 16 would be for rules use only. I assume that type 32 would give you trouble alerts to the monitoring station, which you may or may not want.

You can either use a 110VAC relay if you are comfortable with high voltage wiring. Or you can use a relay with the coil voltage matching a spare wall wart transformer you have.

 

[AceCannon]

Basically, a relay with the coil associated with the AC line and the relay NO contacts connected to a zone configured as type 16 (non-alarm) or type 32 (power supervisory). Type 16 would be for rules use only. I assume that type 32 would give you trouble alerts to the monitoring station, which you may or may not want.

You can either use a 110VAC relay if you are comfortable with high voltage wiring. Or you can use a relay with the coil voltage matching a spare wall wart transformer you have.

Interesting didn't know about zone definition 32. My UPS's have NO and NC alarm relay terminals, so that will prob work great.

Power Supervisory 24 hr - For supervising an external power supply which provides alarm/trouble contacts. Wire
the power supply contacts to open the zone in a Low Battery event and short the zone in an AC Failure event.

This description makes it sound as of open and shorted are both abnormal conditions. How can that be? There is no mention of resistors for this zone type.

So if a zone type 32 is created, will that supersede what the Elk does natively regarding its main power input?

 

[Digger]

Basically, a relay with the coil associated with the AC line and the relay NO contacts connected to a zone configured as type 16 (non-alarm) or type 32 (power supervisory). Type 16 would be for rules use only. I assume that type 32 would give you trouble alerts to the monitoring station, which you may or may not want.

You can either use a 110VAC relay if you are comfortable with high voltage wiring. Or you can use a relay with the coil voltage matching a spare wall wart transformer you have.

Interesting didn't know about zone definition 32. My UPS's have NO and NC alarm relay terminals, so that will prob work great.

Power Supervisory 24 hr - For supervising an external power supply which provides alarm/trouble contacts. Wire
the power supply contacts to open the zone in a Low Battery event and short the zone in an AC Failure event.

This description makes it sound as of open and shorted are both abnormal conditions. How can that be? There is no mention of resistors for this zone type.

So if a zone type 32 is created, will that supersede what the Elk does natively regarding its main power input?

Use a regular 2200 ohm resistor. Wire low batery relay through the N/C contacts in series with the EOL Resistor and the AC Fail Relay through the N/O contactsin parallel with the resistor.

You get two functions from one zone which not every other mfg does for this type of zone.

It does NOT supercede the panel ac fail or low battery. Technically any aux power supply used on a residential fire system should be monitored like this.

 

[WayneW]

So if a zone type 32 is created, will that supersede what the Elk does natively regarding its main power input?

It does NOT supercede the panel ac fail or low battery. Technically any aux power supply used on a residential fire system should be monitored like this.

Digger, are you sure? Maybe we are talking different contexts, and I admit I haven't tested this explicitly yet (on the to-do list). The reason I am suspicious is from a NextAlarm perspective, Elk appears to only have one trouble status. So, once I had one thing go into trouble and notify NextAlarm, I didn't get notified when the second thing went into trouble. I did get the restoral notification when all was well again. My goal is to get full monitoring for the outputs of a couple UPSes and aux power supplies, but I suspect I will have to do it with rules? I have my zones as type 16 in the Elk and as "system trouble" in the NextAlarm setup. Maybe I should try type 32 myself I want the notifications sent from Elk via CID to NextAlarm as I have redundancy there, but email is a single point of failure.