Ex UPS lead acids

[mab]

A couple of years ago I bought some ex-UPS Yuasa endurance AGM's for my home renewable energy system for a very reasonable price. They are excellent and still going strong. I'm now looking for some more to expand the system but cannot find any advertised in the obvious places (e.g. ebay).

Have I just been unlucky in my search, or have the battery manufacturers stopped the re-sale of 'old' batteries on the pretext of environmental disposal?

Can anyone recommend a source of 2nd hand batteries? Or where I might try?

Thanks

mab

[ChrisB]

Oh , there use to be lots of folk selling ex ups units, mind you it could be that they have turned round all the replacement programs currently and thus we wont see any more until the next round.

It did seem like 12-24mths ago there was loads of em up for grabs, just checked and apart from someone selling some over priced 105ah 12v units theres nothing

You might find it will pick up later in the spring

ChrisB

[Peter Eggleston]

I too am waiting and watching for some of these to become available. I am cinfident that they will come in a big batch at some stage. One problem may be that since the scrap value of lead has rocketed it may be profitable for the recyclers to just scrap them without trying to sell the good ones.
Peter

[mab]

I'll keep looking then, although I've been looking on & off for a couple of months already - Just have to hope they come back.

Hmmm... if the price of lead is that high, I wonder what I can get for those junk batteries I've got lying around...

Thanks

mab

[ChrisB]

They will tend to turn up in batches, and big batches, to my knowledge most scrap merchants dont like Gel type lead acids so doubt its due to scrap lead prices.
I suspect its more down to when a lot of firms put in large UPS units, there was a big push in the industry some 6-7 yrs ago to install large ups units in data centres and the likes, the batteries generally should be changed after 5yrs and thus the last few years we've been seeing a lot of ex units coming up for grabs.

Next really large batch will be, I suspect, in another 3 or 4yrs time I expect

ChrisB