Smart UPS 1400 Battery Charging LED's flashing

[Anonymous user]

Smart UPS 1400 Battery Charging LED's flashing

[BillP]

Hello,

Your UPS needs to run a runtime calibration with the new batteries installed. It still "thinks" your old batteries are inside which were in much worse condition. The flashing LEDs indicate that with your current load, the estimated run time would be less than 2 minutes (or 5, depending on EEPROM settings for low battery signal value).

You can do a manual runtime calibration by applying 35-55% resistive load on the UPS (make sure that the load is steady, eg. light bulbs, the point is that the drawn wattage should not fluctuate.) then let the UPS run on battery until it turns off due to battery exhaustion. After that, let the unit recharge the batteries and then the problem should be gone.

Most of the time this solves the issue, but units old as this often have their battery constant value drifted from normal inside the EEPROM. To correct this, you need a APC 940-0024C serial cable and a terminal program. You can read more about this on the internet, search for apcupsd and network ups tools. There is even a russian program which sets this constant automatically for you, I believe it is called APCFix.

If you are familiar with soldering and have some general electronics skills, you could replace the electrolytic capacitors in the unit, if it has not been refurbished already. It might work OK for now, but dried electrolytic caps will eventually kill the UPS in the long run. If you do not want to fiddle around with it, it might be worth to take it to a local repair center where they refurbish the unit for you. This is a well made, time proven UPS design.

Please note that I am not an official APC employee, I just shared my personal experience in hopes that it will be useful to you. Good luck with your unit.

[BillP]

By the way, the electrolytic caps thing is not related to your issue in any way, it is just something worth to do given the age of your unit.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

You can also contact your local tech support team and request a calibration key (Part # 940-0260). This will allow you to tell the UPS it has new batteries without having to perform a manual runtime calibration.