SUA1500 with new Battery

[BillP]

I just replaced the battery in my Smart UPS 1500 (SUA1500), now I'm getting the same calibration issues as lots of people have gotten here. The only thing I think I'm experiencing differently is that when I do the runtime calibration I'm not sure it's working properly.

I actually have 2 1500s, and when I perform it on one of them, it discharges properly, gets to ab out 15% then starts charging again and says successful.

The one I'm confused about is that when I do it on the other one (this is the one I just replaced the battery on), it goes to the battery for about 2 seconds, the battery charge light goes to 1 blinking LED and it goes back onto A/C. When I check the PowerChute software again, it says the battery is dischaged and does not show that the runtime calibration is still running (says it's unavailable -- due to battery not 100%).

Now I will admit, I've tried different things and can say that after I did the runtime calibration I did not allow the UPS to charge 100% before trying "something else."

So my question is, is the Powerchute runtime calibration actually doing something during this time and I should just let it go and wait for the UPS to get back up to 100% or is there another issue with the UPS that it's even failing the diagnostics.

The battery does last about 30-45 minutes with a 30% load on the battery which is normal, so I know it's just something with the calibration not the battery...I'm just not sure if it's actually doing what it should be (since it reacts differently than the other UPS).

Thanks for your help!

-Dan

[BillP]

Ohh I forgot to add to, that after about 2 or 3 minutes after I ran the runtime calibration, my PC did shut down too (gracefully as if it got sent the signal from the UPS). I thought the Powerchute software was supposed to block that so it wouldn't shut down?

Again, this was 2 or 3 minutes after the battery completely "discharged" and I'm guessing started charging back up.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Well it looks like after the 2nd try at the manual calibration I think it's good. What I did was hooked up 2 100w lamps, a 60w lamp and 3 80w utility lights. This made sure to give me the >30% load on the unit after 18hrs since the last charge on the battery. I drained the battery completely until it shut off, then I just plugged it in afterwards (without turning the unit on). I then got the single LED flashing as it charged. I came back about 30 minutes later to find all the lights on and the unit powered on. Again, I never turned the unit back on, it came back on by itself. I have yet to hook it up to the server to see what the powerchute says, but even with the load on it, I had 2 solid LEDs by the time I started pulling the plugged in lights off it one at a time. So I think I'm good, especially since the last time the lights flashed the entire time until it was fully charged. I'm letting it fully charge before I pull the plug and put it back on the server it's on.

Hopefully this did do it. I'm just not sure why the first time I did the manual calibration it didn't work right....!?

Oh well, hopefully I'm good now!!!

I also found out that putting distilled water into the batteries gives you good battery that lasts almost identically to any I've gotten on line (APC, ABC, or any of those)...

Now I'm collecting old batteries to keep for these two UPSes. Ha ha.