Battery Discharged Alerts From Low "UPS Runtime Remaining" Values

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-07

Hello,

We have a few UPSs that have been alerting for a discharged battery. I noticed that the runtime remaing was dropping below the threashold.

I thought I would try updating the firmware to version 6.2.0 to see if it helped at all & it seems to have resolved the issue.

I noticed that with the firmware upgrade, the runtime remaining jumped from 18 min all the way to 1hour 21min.

Is the 1hr 21min an accurate runtime remaining?

Here is the UPS before the FW upgrade:

aGqhanh7L7OrteqyjRuF0w%3D%3D&Rest-Api-Key=d3Bhc3F1aWw6NjM3MzU2MWEtNzYzMC00OTc5LTkyMTAtOTJjYTU0NGEwZWFl.png

And the same UPS after the upgrade

H1SzJ4ez8pKhMjUn25Xkug%3D%3D&Rest-Api-Key=d3Bhc3F1aWw6NjM3MzU2MWEtNzYzMC00OTc5LTkyMTAtOTJjYTU0NGEwZWFl.png

About UPS

Model:	Smart-UPS 3000 XLM
Serial Number:	QS1325241645
Firmware Revision:	715.3.D
Manufacture Date:	06/20/13

BillP · ‎2021-07-07

Hi Ryan,

I reviewed this with my colleague based on what you've told us. Here is some feedback.

1.) The original battery discharged alarm I think was caused by the fact that your UPS runtime was 18 minutes and then your low battery duration setting is 23 minutes. This is a setting you'll find under Configuration->Shutdown and it is set to 23 minutes according to your configuration file. This value being higher than the actual runtime will throw a batteries discharged alarm. That setting at 23 minutes means that when you have 23 minutes left, the UPS will go into a "low battery" condition and start forcing everything attached via software commands to start turning off and then run for the 23 minutes while everything would be shutting down. Since you had 18 minutes left, it was trying to tell you "hey, you don't have much runtime left if you want this to run 23 minutes!" which would be important if you had something that did actually take longer than 18 minutes to shutdown. Do you know why this setting is 23 minutes? The default is 2 minutes and only users with specific software configurations typically need to change it. If you have no idea why it was changed after checking into it, and especially if you don't use PowerChute with the UPS, you'll probably want to bump it back down to 2 minutes.

2.) My colleague noticed you have ExternalBatteries=1 in your configuratio file - do you have an external battery pack connected to this UPS? If not, it should be set to 0 and this could very well be causing problems like the runtime being higher than normal, as it thinks you have the external battery pack present. The external battery pack would be connected via DC molex connector to the rear of the UPS and I think the part number on the pack is SUM48RMXLBP2U and it looks just like the UPS except no front panel display/buttons. You haven't mentioned a battery pack so I imagine this should be 0?

3.) Your last battery replacement date says December, 2014 - is that accurate that the batteries were placed then? The self test causing the battery capacity to drop so much is not normal and would typically indicate a bad battery. If the batteries are truly only from late 2014, then I may suggest a runtime calibration to try and get this runtime displaying properly and the UPS behaving normally as a first effort and then go from there based on all of these items I mentioned. Runtime calibration can be issued via the Network Management Card and would put the UPS on battery and discharge it down to 10-20% and let it charge back up.

Let me know if you have any questions.

See Answer In Context

BillP · ‎2021-07-07

This value is reported from the UPS itself so upgrading the UPS Network Management Card firmware shouldn't have impacted it at all. It looks like you have an SUM3000 model so the runtime chart is available here -> http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=SUM3000RMXL2U

It looks like about 18 minutes is accurate? (Maybe more like 23 minutes.) You didn't do anything like run a self test (which you could try now) or calibration or anything? You could try a self test or depending on what you can do, put the UPS on battery for a few minutes and see if it re-freshes that value. I don't understand how upgrading the Network Mgmt Card firmware would affect the UPS runtime. Though, your earlier screenshot was at 68% battery capacity.

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-07

I ran the self test and it is now showing 46 min. It still seems a bit high to me...

I also noticed that the battery is showing that it is at 58%, but the UPS hasn't gone on battery recently. Would that be because of the self-test?

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BillP · ‎2021-07-07

Can you get me the full event.txt and data.txt files to start from this device? Or just all log files from About->Support in the web in case I need any of the others?

I would expect a self test to drop the battery capacity to something more like 85-90% at most so down to 58% is a little strange. The data log can give me a little more history on this value.

BillP · ‎2021-07-07

Hi Ryan,

Unfortunately, these logs don't help me.

The event log is spammed with "Detected an unauthorized user attempting to access the SNMP interface from ." and all other events are overrwritten. Don't know if you can resolve that or adjust SNMP permissions so we don't see that anymore. Without that, I do not know when the self test is ran and I can't see any other UPS related events that'd help me with your original question.

I also see that the data log goes back to late April but I don't see a time when the battery was not 100%. I think the logs from a few weeks ago are lost unfortunately.

Can you give me an update on status today? Is the battery charged up? What does the runtime report as?

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-07

Angela,

We have been working with our network team on the unauthorized user alerts. They use a discovery tool that attempts to gain access to each UPS to get info. We have been running into issues with figuring out a way to either remove our UPSs from their discovery pool, or give them credentials to get in.

The UPS status screen had the same readings as the one I originally sent; 1hour 21min runtime and 100% battery. I ran a self test and the battery dropped to 56% right away. It has been about 10 min since the test was complete and it is now up to 62%.

I have attached the most recent log files.

BillP · ‎2021-07-07

Hi Ryan,

I reviewed this with my colleague based on what you've told us. Here is some feedback.

1.) The original battery discharged alarm I think was caused by the fact that your UPS runtime was 18 minutes and then your low battery duration setting is 23 minutes. This is a setting you'll find under Configuration->Shutdown and it is set to 23 minutes according to your configuration file. This value being higher than the actual runtime will throw a batteries discharged alarm. That setting at 23 minutes means that when you have 23 minutes left, the UPS will go into a "low battery" condition and start forcing everything attached via software commands to start turning off and then run for the 23 minutes while everything would be shutting down. Since you had 18 minutes left, it was trying to tell you "hey, you don't have much runtime left if you want this to run 23 minutes!" which would be important if you had something that did actually take longer than 18 minutes to shutdown. Do you know why this setting is 23 minutes? The default is 2 minutes and only users with specific software configurations typically need to change it. If you have no idea why it was changed after checking into it, and especially if you don't use PowerChute with the UPS, you'll probably want to bump it back down to 2 minutes.

2.) My colleague noticed you have ExternalBatteries=1 in your configuratio file - do you have an external battery pack connected to this UPS? If not, it should be set to 0 and this could very well be causing problems like the runtime being higher than normal, as it thinks you have the external battery pack present. The external battery pack would be connected via DC molex connector to the rear of the UPS and I think the part number on the pack is SUM48RMXLBP2U and it looks just like the UPS except no front panel display/buttons. You haven't mentioned a battery pack so I imagine this should be 0?

3.) Your last battery replacement date says December, 2014 - is that accurate that the batteries were placed then? The self test causing the battery capacity to drop so much is not normal and would typically indicate a bad battery. If the batteries are truly only from late 2014, then I may suggest a runtime calibration to try and get this runtime displaying properly and the UPS behaving normally as a first effort and then go from there based on all of these items I mentioned. Runtime calibration can be issued via the Network Management Card and would put the UPS on battery and discharge it down to 10-20% and let it charge back up.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-07

Angela, great feedback!

1.) We don't actually use PowerChute, so I will drop that value down to 2 minutes.

2.) I don't believe we use external batteries at any of our sites, I'm not sure why that was ever set to 1 in our config file. Thanks for catching that. I dropped the external battery number to 0 and the the runtime is back to normal; 27min.

3.) After correcting the external battery number, I tried a self-test again. The battery percentage dropped to about 69%. I'm not sure if the battery replacement date is correct. It might be an old battery. Do you think the battery is still good until it fails a self-test?

Thanks for the help!

BillP · ‎2021-07-07

Hi Ryan,

Glad to help!

I would keep an eye on the battery but yes, I'd start to worry when it fails an actual self test which will happen at the 14 day interval. Is there any way you can check to see if this replace battery date was legit? I'd hate to say keep an eye on it, and because it is older (or if you had a really warm/not ideal environment) and it fails catostraphically without warning you, where what you're seeing now was the hint.

If it is a new battery, I'd do what I said, if it is older than 3 years you find out, then I'd take it as a hint as we need a new battery soon and better to be proactive than waiting for it to fail.

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-07

Sounds good, thanks!

One more quick question, back to the access violation alerts we were talking about earlier. Is there a way to just prevent those alerts from going into the logs? The team that we are working with on our end doesn't seem to have this issue as a high priority, as we have been working on a resolution for months now. It make it really hard to see what is going on when there actually is an issue.

Terry_Kennedy_apc · ‎2021-07-07

If this is a genuine APC RBC battery pack, I would expect a white sticker on it somewhere with an APC serial number (which encodes the date). It will normally be in the format XXYYNNNNNNNN, where XX is 2 alphabetic characters, YY is the year of manufacturer, and NNNNNNNN is the serial number. You could check to see if the year is reasonably consistent with the battery change date you see.

If it was a 3rd-party "just the batteries" battery replacement, you'll have to look for battery manufacturer date coding. That varies by the battery manufacturer - for CSB, I've seen it on the yellow caution label and is of the form YYMMDDXX. Another form I've seen manufacturers use is to hot-stamp the code into the battery plastic, in the form YYMDDXX, where the single M is a letter from A to L for January to December, respectively. Any stickers that look like supermarket "price gun" stickers are inventory / warranty stickers from the seller and not indicative of when the battery was actually made.

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-07

Angela,

I have another question that about the Low Battery Duration setting that was refernced in the statement below:

On 5/20/2015 10:49 AM, Angela said:
1.) The original battery discharged alarm I think was caused by the fact that your UPS runtime was 18 minutes and then your low battery duration setting is 23 minutes. This is a setting you'll find under Configuration->Shutdown and it is set to 23 minutes according to your configuration file. This value being higher than the actual runtime will throw a batteries discharged alarm. That setting at 23 minutes means that when you have 23 minutes left, the UPS will go into a "low battery" condition and start forcing everything attached via software commands to start turning off and then run for the 23 minutes while everything would be shutting down. Since you had 18 minutes left, it was trying to tell you "hey, you don't have much runtime left if you want this to run 23 minutes!" which would be important if you had something that did actually take longer than 18 minutes to shutdown. Do you know why this setting is 23 minutes? The default is 2 minutes and only users with specific software configurations typically need to change it. If you have no idea why it was changed after checking into it, and especially if you don't use PowerChute with the UPS, you'll probably want to bump it back down to 2 minutes.

Say our battery completely drains. Will the output power turn on instantly when the utility power is restored, or will it wait to get above the amount of time set on the low battery duration setting?

BillP · ‎2021-07-07

Hi Ryan,

Yes, by design, when AC power returns to a UPS due to a low/depleted battery shutdown, the UPS will come back on. There are settings though that can change/modify how this works though.

1.) If you're using PowerChute Network Shutdown and you have a PowerChute client tell the UPS to turn off. There is a setting in the management card that if this happens and PowerChute tells the UPS to turn off, you can have the UPS come back when AC returns (the default) or turn off and stay off (until you manually turn/command the UPS back on).

2.) If you set any minimum return runtime/battery capacity or return delay settings. You can tell most UPSs to not turn back on until it has charged up and has a certain amount of runtime or battery capacity. This is good to set if you have frequent issues maybe and don't want the UPS to try and start and then turn off again if power goes away and brings the load down. All UPSs typically have a return delay too that you can set or apply which would delay the UPS from turning on once power has returned.

Hope that helps.

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-07

Ok, thanks. We do not use PowerChute, so I don't believe the first part would apply to us. Although, we do have the PowerChute On-Battery Shutdown Behavior set to Restart when power is restored.

I didn't see a setting on this particular UPS for a min return runtime/battery, but from our logs it looks like it waited a while to turn the output power on. Here are our logs and the UPS info. Let me know what you think.

UPS :

Model:	Smart-UPS 3000 XLM
Serial Number:	QS1112130897
Firmware Revision:	715.3.D
Manufacture Date:	03/08/11

Hardware Factory

Model Number:	AP9618
Serial Number:	BA0942005869
Hardware Revision:	A10
Manufacture Date:	10/14/2009
MAC Address:	00 C0 B7 4E C4 A0
Management Uptime:	0 Days 16 Hours 10 Minutes

Application Module

Name:	sumx
Version:	v3.5.8
Date:	11/05/2008
Time:	15:08:57

APC OS (AOS)

Name:	aos
Version:	v3.6.1
Date:	08/13/2008
Time:	18:49:49

Logs:

06/08/2015 18:06:28 UPS: A discharged battery condition no longer exists.
06/08/2015 18:06:25 UPS: The battery power is too low to support the load; if power fails, the UPS will be shut down immediately.
06/08/2015 18:06:21 UPS: A discharged battery condition no longer exists.
06/08/2015 18:06:12 UPS: The battery power is too low to support the load; if power fails, the UPS will be shut down immediately.
06/08/2015 18:06:08 UPS: A discharged battery condition no longer exists.
06/08/2015 18:06:00 UPS: The battery power is too low to support the load; if power fails, the UPS will be shut down immediately.
06/08/2015 18:05:56 UPS: A discharged battery condition no longer exists.
06/08/2015 18:03:39 UPS: The battery power is too low to support the load; if power fails, the UPS will be shut down immediately.
06/08/2015 18:03:35 UPS: A discharged battery condition no longer exists.
06/08/2015 18:03:30 UPS: The battery power is too low to support the load; if power fails, the UPS will be shut down immediately.
06/08/2015 18:02:56 UPS: A discharged battery condition no longer exists.
06/08/2015 16:57:57 UPS: The battery power is too low to support the load; if power fails, the UPS will be shut down immediately.
06/08/2015 16:57:54 UPS: The power for the outlet group 3, Outlet Group, is now turned on due to UPS turn on.
06/08/2015 16:57:54 UPS: The power for the outlet group 2, Outlet Group, is now turned on due to UPS turn on.
06/08/2015 16:57:54 UPS: The power for the outlet group 1, Outlet Group, is now turned on due to UPS turn on.
06/08/2015 16:57:54 UPS: On battery power in response to an input power problem.
06/08/2015 16:57:53 UPS: The output power is now turned on.
06/08/2015 15:54:06 Environment: Restored the local network management interface-to-integrated Environmental Monitor Input T Sensor (Int Sensor at Int Sensor Loc) communication.
06/08/2015 15:53:05 UPS: The output power is turned off due to a low battery.
06/08/2015 15:53:03 UPS: Restored the local network management interface-to-UPS communication.
06/08/2015 15:52:38 System: Network service started. System IP is 10.198.6.70 from manually configured settings.
06/08/2015 15:52:38 System: Warmstart.
06/08/2015 15:42:21 UPS: The power for the outlet group 3, Outlet Group, is now turned off due to UPS turn off.
06/08/2015 15:42:21 UPS: The power for the outlet group 2, Outlet Group, is now turned off due to UPS turn off.
06/08/2015 15:42:21 UPS: The power for the outlet group 1, Outlet Group, is now turned off due to UPS turn off.
06/08/2015 15:42:20 UPS: The output power is turned off due to a low battery.
06/08/2015 15:42:16 UPS: A low battery condition no longer exists.
06/08/2015 15:13:29 UPS: The battery power is too low to continue to support the load; the UPS will shut down if input power does not return to normal soon.
06/08/2015 15:13:19 UPS: On battery power in response to an input power problem.
06/08/2015 14:01:26 UPS: Passed a self-test.
06/08/2015 14:01:10 UPS: Started a self-test.

BillP · ‎2021-07-07

Hi Ryan,

Yes, I see about an hour delay. Can you send me the full event.txt, data.txt and config.ini logs from this AP9618/UPS? I'll see if I can find anything in there that explains the delay. Do you have any details on what occurred? Like a site power outage you know only last a few minutes? Just so I can compare what you can share to what's in the log files.

(If you need the log download instructions, they are here -> http://www.apc.com/support/index?page=content&country=ITB〈=en&locale=en_US&id=FA156131 )

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-07

Angela,

I have attached the requested files. The only information I have is that the network was down for about an hour. I'm not sure if there was a power issue at the site, or if it was just an issue with this UPS.

Let me know if you need any more info.

NOTE: The event logs are cluttered with access violations. The events on the UPS to take note of are from 14:01 to 18:06 on 6/8/15, all of which were in my previous post.

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-07

It makes a lot more sense when you compare the event and data logs! I'll be sure to do that next time.

I believe the UPS turned back on automatically, but am not 100% sure.

The only part of the logs I am still not understanding ist the few events between 15:52 and 15:54. I made a few notes on the logs pasted below. They threw me off a bit because it looks like the UPS started back up, but still had the output power turned off. Can you make any sense of it? Possibly the UPS truning back on for a brief moment?

06/08/2015 16:57:54 UPS: On battery power in response to an input power problem. 0x0109 -- Still shows on battery? --
06/08/2015 16:57:53 UPS: The output power is now turned on. 0x0113 -- Outage End --
06/08/2015 15:54:06 Environment: Restored the local network management interface-to-integrated Environmental Monitor Input T Sensor (Int Sensor at Int Sensor Loc) communication. 0x0344
06/08/2015 15:53:05 UPS: The output power is turned off due to a low battery. 0x0114 -- UPS seeing that the output is turned off? --
06/08/2015 15:53:03 UPS: Restored the local network management interface-to-UPS communication. 0x0101
06/08/2015 15:52:38 System: Network service started. System IP is 10.198.6.70 from manually configured settings. 0x0007
06/08/2015 15:52:38 System: Warmstart. 0x0002 -- UPS starting up again? --

BillP · ‎2021-07-07

Hi Ryan,

Take a look here to understand what System: Warmstart means in detail (it refers to the network interface of the management card, not the UPS)-> http://www.apc.com/support/index?page=content&country=ITB〈=en&locale=en_US&id=FA156063 . The rest of the events pertain to the UPS itself as they start with UPS: and not System. Anything System related as you probably understand now pertains to the Network Management Card. As the article also states, we renamed this event in NMC2 devices as to avoid confusion like this.

Is your network switch that goes to the AP9618 connected to the UPS? I bet it is and the watchdog timer explained in the article kicked in because you had no network connectivity and the AP9618 itself tried to reboot in case the problem was with it (versus the network switch).

06/08/2015 15:52:38 System: Warmstart. 0x0002
06/08/2015 15:42:21 UPS: The power for the outlet group 3, Outlet Group, is now turned off due to UPS turn off. 0x0135

Between the two above events is about 10 minutes so that'd make complete sense if the AP9618 did not see any network activity for about the 10 minute time period.

Hope that helps clarify!

Anonymous user · ‎2021-07-07

Yes, the switch is powered by this UPS.

Thanks for all of the great information!

Battery Discharged Alerts From Low &quot;UPS Runtime Remaining&quot; Values

Battery Discharged Alerts From Low "UPS Runtime Remaining" Values

Battery Discharged Alerts From Low "UPS Runtime Remaining" Values