APC SMT1500 UPS fails to power devices after power cut, bad battery?

[Bert]

I bought an APC UPS from a local seller. Seller claimed that UPS is 2 years old but when I checked the timestamp on the UPS, it says 8 years old. Initially, all signals from the UPS looks good on the steady state, it even says it passed the self-test. It gives several hours of runtime for battery as an estimate and no errors for bad battery.

Unfortunately, UPS simply does not power up the devices when power is cut. I have tried many configuration and settings but my guess is that it is bad battery because battery lasts only 15 minutes under 80 watt load but I am not sure because seller claims that he tested the unit and it worked perfectly fine and the problem is that I don't use the powerchute software. I think he is telling the truth and he also offered me to fully refund the money and I have no prior experience with UPS's so I wanted to double check with experts here. I have spent several hours yesterday to read and learn about UPS behavior and everything indicates bad battery.

I actually made a small video to show how UPS behaves when power is cut. It seems like UPS simply goes black and come back in a state where power is cut from devices:

The movie is taken when UPS is under 70-80 watt load from LED lights. As you can see, when I unplug the UPS light goes off, UPS gets into shutdown mode. I can manually turn on the battery power after cancelling the shutdown. It would be to good to hear from experts if this is simply a bad battery issue.

Seller offered to take it back but I need an UPS so I am happy to keep it if problems will go away after battery is replaced.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

I would get my $ back and buy new one with a warranty. Makes no sense to buy used and put all your kit and data at risk just to save a few buck$

 

[Bert]

This is for home usage. There is no risk of losing important data. I just want to keep my internet and File Server up and running during intermittent power failures. We get these one second power interruptions during wind storms for some reason and then I have to restart my file server and Pdu looses it's state etc.

The cost is less than half of the new price after replacing the batteries so there is a lot of saving for me.

 

[NablaSquaredG]

Yeah that looks like a dead battery, it shouldn't drop right to 62%.

You should run a calibration once you've replaced the batteries.

Keep in mind that APC UPSes tend to fry the batteries by overcharging them...

 

[Bert]

Yeah that looks like a dead battery, it shouldn't drop right to 62%.

You should run a calibration once you've replaced the batteries.

Keep in mind that APC UPSes tend to fry the batteries by overcharging them...

What does fry mean here? Will it kill the battery or will it cause fire? I definitely don't want fire hazard in my house

 

[NablaSquaredG]

No, but it will massively reduce the lifespan of the batteries

See here

Adjusting the voltage on an APC SMT1500RMI2U to improve battery life

or here

APC UPS 3000 overcharging my battery

I have a couple of APC 3000 UPSs that are key to my off-grid infrastructure. These units operate on 2individual 24v batteries - each one plugs in to the unitby itself to provide 48v. I use 2 x7s7p 18650 batteries that I made. One of the units, which has a pretty constant load of 1000w (all...

secondlifestorage.com

 

[Bert]

Oh darn, this is so much tweaking for my taste; I have a few other projects going on, tweaking UPSs will not be in the short list. A

Btw, this is exactly what happens with me, during self test, UPS shuts down without completing the test and fails to report the issue and everything looks great even with the battery being weak. I went with APC because I read this is the enterprise quality but this is unacceptable flaw from a high quality system. I cannot believe it cannot even detect battery failures.

Initially I thought, as a noob, I am missing something but it is amazing a brand name like APC and with their top line product cannot do a proper job here. What other brand or model do we recommend here? SMT1500 looks like a good model and again I have a very limited use case, I don't even need a runtime longer than 1minute but it has to support 800 watt load.

Costco has this for a fraction of cost: https://www.costco.com/cyberpower-1...-greenpower-technology.product.100277321.html

and with Costco I can ensure return if it fails in the first few months.

If they are all "bad" products, should I go with the Cyberpower one?

 

[NablaSquaredG]

If they are all "bad" products, should I go with the Cyberpower one?

I personally prefer the Eaton products, like the 9PX

I recommend against the Cyperpower one, as it only has "Simulated Sine Wave" output (-> Stepped Sine wave) which may cause issues with SMPS, especially high efficiency ones found in servers.

 

[Bert]

Bought a new APC battery and replaced the old one. UPS works as expected now. It looks like UPS is not able to detect faulty battery and seller told me he tested UPS right before delivering it to me and battery was only two-three years old. I am going to stick to this unit due to the low cost and hope that this time battery will hold longer.

 

[penrhos]

Those APC 1500's kill the batteries every 3 years or so.Mines on it's 3rd set.

You'll need to factor in replacing them before then for your running costs.

 

[Bert]

Ok thanks. I was not sure if this was a battery issue or if the unit is broken. It looks like the issue is clearly the battery.

I am not sure if there is an alternative ups which can keep the batteries longer. Most car batteries also die in 5 years so this is kind of expected. II larned here charging volt is hhigher for apc.fEaton is rrecommended but they are quite expensive. d

 

[penrhos]

Eaton's are pretty good - we're getting 3-5 years out of a set of batteries (depending on how warm the units get).

I did consider modding my APC to reduce the charging voltage, but 1) I got it for free, 2) I can get the batteries for it at trade prices, 3) I don't want to risk opening it up and poking around inside more than I have to.

I cleaned it out, replaced the fan and checked all the capacitors for signs of leakage/Venting before I splashed out on new batteries, and that's all the poking around I want to do inside one of these.

I could have had 2 x 4200Va APC's but they had 32A commando plugs fitted and are rated at more Amps than my wall sockets can supply, so they ended up going for recycling. Plus they're 3U tall so would fill a lot of my HomeLab rack.

 

[tinfoil3d]

Does this only apply to 1500 series?.. I also have 1500 on its third year now. It did hold up pretty well this year but probably looking at battery EOL soon. Mine is not rackmount type but a regular one.

 

[Rand__]

I never had these issues either - or at least I never identified the few issues I had as such

 

[edge]

I always had to get a new battery for my 1500's after 3.5 years. With APC, I get two battery replacements and by the time I get to needing a third they are getting wonky and need to be trashed. I think the caps that hold up the line during the transition from line to battery just wear out.

 

[tinfoil3d]

Time to buy a new one for my 1500 soon then. It's been running for 900 days now...

 

[penrhos]

Just make sure you run regular self-tests to check if the batteries are OK and you'll be fine. Once you start to see a significant drop in runtime it's time to replace them.

As for the Capacitors - we have multiple UPS's across site from 1Kva all the way up to 450KVa 3-phase - we replace all our UPS's on a 10 Year cycle. We used to run them longer but two of our UPS servicing companies put in such stupidly high costs to maintain them > 10 years due to the Capacitors needing replacing etc that we skip them once they reach year 11.

FYI we had a Socomec 60KVA UPS and to replace the Capacitors, Fans and Batteries in it and maintain it for year 11 was almost double the cost of buying a brand new UPS so even with the disruption & installation costs we were still quids in and the new one was smaller and more efficient.

As for using old UPS's at home - check how old they are, if they look rough then they probably haven't been cared for and avoid them, if they look like new and they're < 10 years old then you should be OK with a new set of batteries. If you're electrically competent remove the batteries, open it up and inspect all the capacitors for venting, leaking, bulging and regulators & resistors for signs of burning - if it all checks out OK your good.

Only someone who knows how to discharge large capacitors safely and has the right equipment & knowledge should attempt the re-cap a UPS - they can kill you if you're not careful (either by electrocution or fire if you get it wrong).