SMART-UPS RT 8000 - How to find out which battery is bad.

[BillP]

We have a SMART-UPS RT 8000 (SURT8000RMXLT6U) that is showing a bad battery. Is there a way to find out exactly which module needs to be replaced ?

I cannot find anythin from the web interface.

Thanks.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Do you have external battery packs? This UPS itself contains (2) RBC44 batteries and each RBC44 comes with two modules/strings. If the UPS reports a replace battery alarm, then you'd need to replace (2) RBC44. If you have external battery packs, or want to just replace the specific string, we would not really support opening the modules to identify open cells, etc though I think people with in depth battery knowledge sometimes do that with the UPSs and proceed at their own risk. The UPS itself cannot detect this type of failure though and would just be able to tell you that the batteries need to be replaced. Assuming the batteries are older though, the recommendation is to replace all of them since they are the same age. Replacing some older with some newer would damage the newer batteries and is not recommended, though I understand it may be realistic due to cost sometimes.

Long story short, assuming this UPS/batteries, no matter how many are anywhere from 2-5 years and it makes sense that they are now in need of replacing (versus being a brand new install where batteries should not be failing), you'd want to replace all batteries in the system since they are all used equally and look like one giant DC battery bus to the UPS.

I hope that helps.