SMT1500 Will not run on AC power - drains battery instead. Help?

[BillP]

Hello everyone,

I just purchased the SMT1500 unit and had it shipped to a client about 3hrs away from my location. My client plugged it in, charged the battery to 100%, plugged the server into it last night and left for the day. They came in this morning and the server was off, the battery at 0%. Client put the server back on the old UPS, plugged the new SMT1500 into an outlet to charge it back up, and called me to let me know what happened. I suggested plugging a printer into the unit and to monitor it. They called back within 10 minutes and told me the battery charge level was slowly dropping.

Can someone tell me why this unit won't run off of AC power when it's connected to an AC outlet? Any help would be much appreciated.

[BillP]

does the UPS have any software attached or a network management card? can you have the user check the front LCD of the UPS to see what the UPS thinks its getting for input voltage and frequency? can they plug something directly into the outlet? is it possible the breaker tripped that supplies power to this outlet?

[BillP]

Thanks for the reply,

At the present point, the UPS is not supplying power to a device since it doesn't run off AC power, so there isn't any way to monitor it via the GUI. I've installed several of these at different clients but never had this issue before. I had my client check the input voltage (113.68) and frequency (60.25).

They have this unit plugged into the same AC outlet as another SMT1500 that supplies power to another server. I asked them to plug the problematic SMT1500 into another wall outlet (on another wall) and plug a printer into it again to monitor whether or not maybe the 113.68 voltage was an issue. The unit that is running fine states that it is getting 114 volts though, so I'm not sure if that is going to make much difference. The breaker for the AC outlet is fine since the other unit is working with no problems on the same outlet.

They should be calling me back within 30 minutes to update me. In the mean time, I've read up on the manual and it states the very problem I'm having on page 12 in the Troubleshooting section:

The UPS is operating on battery, while connected to input utility power.
The input circuit breaker has tripped. Reduce the load on the UPS. Disconnect nonessential equipment and reset the circuit breaker.

There is very high, very low, or distorted input line voltage.
Move the UPS to a different outlet on a different circuit. Test the input voltage with the utility voltage display. If acceptable to the connected equipment, reduce the UPS sensitivity.

Question: Where is the circuit breaker and how do you reset it? It doesn't say in the manual..

Thanks again for you help.
-Sean

[BillP]

a unit of this size does not have its own input circuit breaker but if it did, it'd have one right near where the input plug goes into the unit - bottom right hand corner i think. generally anything over 20A has a breaker and this is a 15A UPS.

i agree that i don't think 115v would cause an issue so that is why i also asked about what type of frequency it had. another thing i remembered on these UPSs is that they have a logs menu on the front LCD that allow you to see what the last transfer to battery was. that might help too if you can have them check that. i checked on an SMX unit that I have but I don't have an SMT to check but i think it is the same. It will say something "last Xfer cause: self test" - it should show the last 10 events. to get to this menu, we need to make sure we are viewing the advanced menu though. i think that is under configuration menu - where you can adjust between standard/advanced.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

I wonder why the manual would state it has a circuit breaker then.. I did get a response back from them and as I figured, changing which AC outlet it was plugged into did not solve the problem. The battery ran down again when the printer was plugged into it. I'll have to check with them on Monday to see if we can get into the logs. So far, it's not looking good. I appreciate the feedback though. I'll update Monday once I've had a chance to talk with them.