Battery replacement after only 3 years even if all seems good?

[vik-t]

We bought a new APC SMART-UPS 1500VA in January 2022, it was delivered to the customer in February 2022.

Last week, not even 3 years later, we're receiving an automated notification that the battery needs to be replaced - which costs more than a third of the original purchase price of the UPS.

According to the product dashboard, the battery charge is at 100%. On that same dashboard, there is a field called "Replace by" and it says "February 20, 2025".

Still, when running a test it says "The UPS battery and internal components used to operate the device in battery mode are in good working order."

I'm honestly confused, though I admit right away that I don't have much experience with UPSs in general.

Why does the UPS claim that it's time to replace the battery when diagnostics says all is in order? Is the expected lifetime of a UPS battery really only 3 years? As a side note, I'm pretty certain that power outages have been extremely rare, if any at all.

At the end of the day, I guess I'm asking if there really is a necessity to proceed with the replacement or do I wait until some other diagnostics show that there might be an issue?

[Teken]

The service life of the battery is 3-5 years which is based on usage, temperature, and environmental conditions. 

The UPS has an internal counter which you see displays an estimate of when you should replace the battery cartridge.

If your business follows any sort of compliance or must meet specific standards such as ISO / cUL requirements.

The battery cartridge is replaced on a schedule time frame. Doing so insures expected operations and runtime based on a given load. 

As relates to should you replace the battery cartridge that’s up to you and how important back up power is to you! 

Can you afford to have a server rack go offline when there is a grid down / lights out event?!?

As a matter of standards your site should be testing and validating the power delivery system every month / year. 

Otherwise how else will you ever know if the critical systems will operate as expected?

Questions Ask . . . 👍

[vik-t]

Thanks for answering. 

The UPS is in a large, open rack with only two mid-range 2U-Servers, a switch and a router that it would supply power to in case of an outage. There is 2U space between the UPS and other devices. There are no adjacent racks. The room is large and never gets hot. Plus, I don't think there ever has been a power outage so that the battery had to take over. 

If these are not ideal conditions for the UPS and its battery, then I don't know what is. 

We don't have to meet specific standards but obviously I don't want the servers to be without power in case of a failure, otherwise what's the point of having a UPS at all. 

I'm trying to understand how impaired I'd be if I didn't act. If the UPS, when new, was supposed to give these devices power for 20 minutes, will they now be getting 15 minutes instead? I could live with that and would probably wait with exchanging the battery. But if it's going to be only 1 minute now, then obviously I'd prefer to change the battery to get the full 20 minutes again. (All numbers hypothetical)

Is there any way to find this out (without actually doing a live test by unplugging the power)?

[Teken · Accepted solution]

As noted up above the counter is an estimate and is just a recommendation to place an order for a new APC RBC.

You could realistically based on your personal experience just let the system declare another battery replace / expired message and just wait.

The options are to buy a APC branded RBC or rebuild the cartridge yourself and save a lot of finances using quality cells.

As it relates to how to test and validate the operational runtime. The only true test is to manually initiate a grid down / lights out test. ☝️

You’ll simply take a stop watch and monitor the UPS LCD. Remove AC Mains from the wall and track how long the system operates for.

In your example of new cartridge was 20 minutes and old was 15 that’s good runtime vs 1 minute.

This is what the live test will confirm / validate for you. It will also affirm if the shut down sequence are working and programmed correctly.

If there’s a fault or unexpected behaviour at least you know now and can move forward to identify root cause and implement a break fix / end solve.

As of this writing you don’t know the current state of the battery health and its capacity. To be more precise the APC Self Test is is not very accurate and by the time the system declares a failed test the battery cartridge is long past due! 🤦‍♂️

Lastly, part of the monthly inspection is to review the exterior of the UPS. Along with the most critical aspect which is to disconnect the battery cartridge from the system while running to validate the hot swap operates as expected (IF) supported.

Along with the visually inspecting the internal cells are not showing any signs of damage and failure such as bulging, warping, cracks, leaks, noise such as hissing.

All cables and terminals must be inspected for corrosion and secure connection to each post.

Questions Ask . . . 👍

[MorneMeintjes]

Good morning. The only way to test the batteries is to do a load test. Batteries can last up to 5 years. But 5 years for me is the max. After 5 years batteries swell and are difficult to take out of the UPS. If your server has dual supply and supplied from different sources you can do the load test without fear of loosing the load. But the backup time will be inaccuracy as the load will be shared by the 2 power supplies. If you have an ATS (automatic transfer switch) you will get the best result doing a battery test. make sure the load is on the ups and not the secondary supply, remove the power to the UPS and see how long the battery last. When the batteries give out the load will be transfer to the secondary load. This will give you an indication of the battery backup time. However it does not assist in how long the batteries will last. for best result replace between 3.5 and 4 years.