Input Frequency and Voltage Alerts

[pdixon]

My company has Distilleries in rural locations, and we have power that is apparently not very stable. We have at least 20+ APC UPS's at each site, as well as 300+ in offices around the world. We see constant alerts for input voltage and frequency issues. The power does fluctuate a little, but not to the point is has caused issues with anything other than the UPS's. Our electricians say that everything is within the acceptable range. We had to disable email alerts and forward the alerts to a log server, and get daily reports. We were getting so many email alerts a day our email provider accused of a denial of service attack. We selected APC UPS's because we wanted a reliable backup for power loss. I was under the impression that a UPS's job was to take fluctuation voltage and maintain consistent voltage. The alerts we se below are listed below as well as the alerts from two UPS's from a daily report. The number at the end of the alert summary are the number or alerts in the past 24 hours.

UPS: Bypass not in range low voltage.
UPS: Bypass not in range either frequency or voltage.
UPS: Bypass not in range distorted waveform.

UPS-WRD-Distillery-1 UPS: Bypass not in range either frequency or voltage. 410
UPS-WRD-Distillery-1 UPS: An input voltage or frequency problem no longer prevents switching to bypass mode. 410
UPS-WRD-Scalehouse-1 UPS: Bypass not in range either frequency or voltage. 629
UPS-WRD-Scalehouse-1 UPS: An input voltage or frequency problem no longer prevents switching to bypass mode. 629

Finally my question, is there a way to adjust the voltage\frequency range to prevent these alerts. I have tried to adjust the Power Setting Configuration on the UPS with no luck. We acknowledge that the fluctuation may affect bypass mode, but all of the alerts cause serious alerts to be missed because of all of the noise. Any ideas?

[Teken]

Since you have provided no specific information as to the actual APC UPS Model. My reply will be over generalized to cover as many possibilities as to a solution vs band aid.

The limited information you provided indicates the system is operating as designed. Because the system sees dirty power whether voltage variation, frequency drift, THD.

I have yet to meet any electrician worth their salt when asked to validate the input power is considered *Clean*! 🤦‍♂️

Your electrician has simply recited the exact same answer as the other 99999999 so called professionals before him. 🤢

If he actually did his job it would have taken no less than a week to come back to you with recorded factual data. Dollars to donuts he took a cheap meter and stuck it into an outlet and measured and said good?!? 🤣

Ask him to provide you the data from his Fluke Power Quality Meter. The short & long term measurements are taken at the service entrance, service panel, and target location of the end devices.

Regardless, in larger enterprise systems you have the ability select power quality and transfer voltage. Both of these settings determine if and when the system will use the AVR circuit vs the inverter battery mode.

If the system is defined to use battery only mode this of course impacts the battery service life. Thus, long term costs for battery replacements! ☝️

Your first step is to determine if all the attached loads are fine to accept *Dirty Power*. If so adjust the system to the widest margin from normal to low.

Adjust the input transfer voltage for both upper / lower to the highest setting. Doing so means the system will be forced to accept higher / lower input voltages.

Higher end models will allow you to adjust the allowable frequency drift. Lastly, none of the settings noted up above will negate the system from acting if and when there is a surge event or fast transient.

Questions Ask . . . 

[pdixon]

Forgive me for my lack of detail, and thank you for your response. The UPS in my example is a Smart-UPS SRT 1500, and is used to power Cisco network equipment. I agree with your statement regarding electricians, but they acknowledge voltage fluctuation. If it were one or two having that issue then I would suspect a local issue, but this is happening to all of the newer APC models (Smart-UPS SRT 1500).  Our older UPS's (APC Smart UPS 1500 and Liebert GXT4) were in the process of replacing have never had alerts for power issues or failed to provide power when needed. I know that the 1500 series is a small UPS with fewer configuration options, and I am not having widespread issues with 300+ UPS's. The location in my example is a bourbon distillery 10 miles away from the nearest four lane road and is surrounded by horse farms. It is a beautiful place but the power will fluctuate and have the occasional outage. The UPS's seen to be the only devices that seem to have issues with the power. I attached a sensor graph of the voltage for the past 30 days. 

My goal is to reduce the amount of alerts, and wanted to ask my peers for recommendations. I 

[Teken]

As stated the system is operating as expected in the default state. You may change both the sensitivity (Power Quality) and transfer voltage on the system to accept the *Dirty Power* if you wish.

So long as you have validated all the connected loads are fine with being fed this power. The vast majority of enterprise hardware are wide input voltage and dual frequency.

As such they have no problem receiving less than ideal input voltage. Again, you must test and validate if your connected loads are fine receiving the same.

Another method is to simply define the email alert to a longer threshold or just turn it off completely. Which obviously negates even being made aware of the problem.

You can use one or both methods to address the issue at hand. As stated the UPS is operating as expected and protecting your connected loads and informing you of the same. 

Lastly, my statement about the electrician wasn’t a stab at the fellow. So much as this is the reality of people in this field / industry. We have millions of sites and all of our electricians and engineers are top shelf.

But, all of them have been trained to actually use their brain and purpose built tools to provide facts / data. Not an easy out answer of *This is within range / margins* of the POCO! 🤦‍♂️

That kind of reply comes from the lazy, unskilled, and untrained so called professional regardless of the field! 👎

This is why people who train and work in Power Management exists. They understand all the steps and procedures and use certified equipment to test, monitor, and record the power quality. They take that factual data and present the same to the powers that be.

The outcome depends upon the environment, circumstances, and the persons / companies level of concern.

Ultimately, you have a double conversion pure sine wave UPS in place because it provides stable power. As your supply is less than reliable or clean so there’s nothing more to do besides the recommendation outlined above. 🤟

Questions Ask . . . 👍