Can I use an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) for charging batteries?
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Batteries are DC.
And a UPS (normally) contains batteries.
Taking maybe somewhere between 6V and 48V DC from inside the UPS and send to the UPS inverter to convert it into AC mains voltage (so maybe 110V to 240V AC, 50 or 60 Hz) just to send to a battery charger that rectifies to DC again and then converts to maybe a fixed 5V USB output that might then go to a DC/DC that converts it to the very specific voltage the destination battery needs is a very wasteful operation. Lots of energy losses to get energy from one battery and into another.
It’s way better to just have one or more charged 12V or 24V lead-acid batteries and directly operate a DC/DC to charge whatever other battery that needs charging. One single transformation of voltage and no extra steps of going DC -> AC -> DC.
The inverter in the UPS is designed with the assumption of a quite high output load. So it would normally have huge losses at low output loads. An UPS isn’t normally intended to charge phones at 10 W for hours but instrad to maybe supply 400 W for 10 minutes.