APC Smart UPS 2200 5U rackmount strange behaviour

[BillP]

Hi,

I'm hoping someone can help me here. I have a APC Smart UPS 2200 5U rackmount which recently has started behaving strangely. It's 5 battery status leds have started blinking together at one second intervals (on, then off all in one second) when I load it more than about 22%. Under this load, they all light together so as to indicate the batteries are fully charged. I replaced the batteries yesterday with new original APC batteries, but no change in the behaviour. The batteries I took out, also APC original, were extremely hot, in fact the whole UPS was too hot with it's fan turning on occasionally to pull the internal temperature down from about 57 degrees centigrade. With the new batteries its internal temperature has reduced to about 45 degrees, the room temperature is 22 degrees. The new batteries are not hot, however I think the cables to the first battery is a little warn, which would indicate to me that the UPS is still trying to charge the batteries 24 hours after replacing them. I started a serial console session to the UPS, at which point is switched briefly to the batteries, and the 5 battery leds stopped flashing, and only the bottom of the 5 leds was now flashing. Via the serial console, I told the UPS to do a recalibrate using the "D" character, however it responded with NO, and refused to do it. I pulled the plug and the UPS immediately indicated by repeatedly beeping twice per second that the battery charge was too low and an imminent shutdown was to happen. The load here was at 22%. I monitored the charge on my systems and was able to see that after almost two hours, the battery voltage was starting to drop enough that it would be a problem, so I plugged it in again. The battery charge 24 hours after replacing the batteries is 100%, however the UPS thinks there is only 2 minutes left on the batteries. I would like to do a recalibrate here as to me that would seem the next logical step in addressing this problem, however it seems not possible. I am using apcupsd on an old Linux installation.

Does anyone know anything that might help me here? Do I only need to get it to recalibrate, or has my UPS developed some kind of obscure defect? I will be grateful for any information.


DATE : Thu Jul 21 19:27:52 CEST 2011
HOSTNAME : midori
RELEASE : 3.10.6
VERSION : 3.10.6 (10 October 2003) suse
UPSNAME : SMART_UPS_2200INET
CABLE : Custom Cable Smart
MODEL : SMART-UPS 2200 RM
UPSMODE : Stand Alone
STARTTIME: Thu Mar 17 23:16:00 CET 2011
STATUS : ONLINE LOWBATT
LINEV : 223.6 Volts
LOADPCT : 23.4 Percent Load Capacity
BCHARGE : 100.0 Percent
TIMELEFT : 2.0 Minutes
MBATTCHG : 0 Percent
MINTIMEL : 0 Minutes
MAXTIME : 3600 Seconds
MAXLINEV : 226.2 Volts
MINLINEV : 223.6 Volts
OUTPUTV : 223.6 Volts
SENSE : Medium
DWAKE : 000 Seconds
DSHUTD : 300 Seconds
DLOWBATT : 02 Minutes
LOTRANS : 196.0 Volts
HITRANS : 253.0 Volts
RETPCT : 015.0 Percent
ITEMP : 45.9 C Internal
ALARMDEL : 5 seconds
BATTV : 54.5 Volts
LINEFREQ : 50.0 Hz
LASTXFER : Automatic or explicit self test
NUMXFERS : 12
XONBATT : Wed Jun 29 12:45:11 CEST 2011
TONBATT : 0 seconds
CUMONBATT: 65 seconds
XOFFBATT : Wed Jun 29 12:45:14 CEST 2011
LASTSTEST: Wed Jun 29 12:45:11 CEST 2011
SELFTEST : NO
STESTI : 336
STATFLAG : 0x02010048 Status Flag
DIPSW : 0x00 Dip Switch
REG1 : 0x00 Register 1
REG2 : 0x00 Register 2
REG3 : 0x00 Register 3
MANDATE : 07/18/96
SERIALNO : GS9630054844
BATTDATE : 07/18/96
NOMOUTV : 230
NOMBATTV : 48.0
EXTBATTS : 0
FIRMWARE : 82.8.I
APCMODEL : MWI
END APC : Thu Jul 21 19:28:30 CEST 2011

[BillP]

can you get us the exact model number off the white sticker on the unit? i am guessing something like SU5000RMT5U or similar.

what were you trying to do with the "D" character exactly?

the flashing battery bar graph indicates insufficient runtime. its trying to tell you that your availabile runtime is within 2 minutes of your low battery setting (which by default is 2 minutes). based on your apcupsd readout, yours is still set to two minutes. this generally happens with older batteries and sometimes we do need to reset the UPS to make sure it knows you replaced the batteries, if it does not happen automatically.

let me know that exact model of UPS and what you were trying to do with that D character so i know what happened so far and we can go from there. should not be an issue to fix this as i do not think it is more than a cosmetic issue/setting that we just need to adjust (based on what i understand so far).

[BillP]

Thanks for your reply. It's a Smart-UPS 2200RMINET.

I got the "D" command from following the apcupsd user manual, recalibration section, http://www.apcupsd.com/manual/manual.html#recalibrating-the-ups-runtime

Is this enough information for you?

[BillP · Accepted solution]

yes, thats fine. i would like you to try a different procedure but using the same port settings. i will private message you those instructions which you can get to on the top right of the screen near your profile settings. some people sometimes cant find the envelope icon 🙂