Gone are the days of trusting a 15 year old standby power supply

Had an MD-80 battery charger in the shop last Thursday that looked absolutely fine on the outside, but the internal cells were reading about 10 volts instead of 24. We pulled it off the rack for a bench test and the load dropped to nothing after 20 seconds. Turns out the electrolyte had dried out over time and two of the six cells were basically dead. Swapped in a rebuilt unit from our parts shelf for $1,200 and sent the old one to the core exchange. Has anyone else seen a standby power supply fail without any warning lights or fault codes showing first?

1 comments

1 Comment

wyatt86211d ago

Check the charge profile the charger was on, if the float voltage was set even a hair high for years it'll cook the electrolyte out way faster than anyone expects. Bet your logs show it held that voltage steady right up until the cells gave out, so the warning lights never had a chance.