Battery Room

A battery room is a room in a facility used to house batteries for backup or uninterruptible power systems. Battery rooms are found in telecommunication central offices, and to provide standby power to computing equipment in datacenters. Batteries provide direct current (DC) electricity, which may be used directly by some types of equipment, or which may be converted to AC by uninterruptible power supply (UPS) equipment. The batteries may provide power for minutes, hours or days depending on the electrical system design, although most commonly the batteries power the UPS during brief electric utility outages lasting only seconds.

Battery rooms were used to segregate the fumes and corrosive chemicals of wet cell batteries from the operating equipment; a separate room also allowed better control of temperature and ventilation for the batteries. In 1890 the Western Union central telegraph office in New York City had 20,000 wet cells, mostly primary zinc-copper type, in use.