Smart-UPS (1400) Battery Replacement and Power issues [basically resolved]

[Anonymous user]

Hi.

Thought I would post this to the APC community just in case it was helpful to anyone else (since I didn't have much luck researching this myself).  This situation involved an older Smart-UPS 1400, but I figured it was possible that it may apply to other models as well.  I've provided details, but highlighted the basic steps/events involved in this case.

I work for a small business.  Recently, the Smart-UPS 1400 supplying power to our office server began giving an alarm beep and the light indicating that the battery needed replacing was lit.  As the office tech, I informed others of this issue and, after some delay, ordered a replacement battery (it may or may not be relevant that neither the current battery nor the replacement I ordered were OEM).

I read the battery replacement instructions and watched a tutorial video.  Battery replacement seemed straight-forward.  What I read indicated that the battery was hot-swappable, so, when the replacement arrived, I popped the front cover off, unbolted the plate that holds the battery in place, disconnected the old battery, connected the new battery and negotiated its insertion back into the case (the short, stiff cables that connect the battery combined with the exposed circuit board along the roof of the case are a bad combination for this).

Unfortunately, while the case fan kicked on when I connected the new battery (possibly indicating it was attempting to charge?), the 'replace battery' lamp did not go out.  I gave it some time.  The alarm, which had been sounding every X hours for 30 seconds or so since the old battery died, continued to sound at those intervals.  A day or so passed.  After a little more reading, I found that this condition was (may be?) cleared when the UPS passes a self-test.  The unit is said to do a self test every 2 weeks, when powered on, or when the 'on/test' button on the front is pushed. Pressing the 'test' button produced absolutely no perceptible effect, so I decided that, despite the fact that this device supposedly supported hot-swapping batteries, I might just have to power it off - so I did.

And then the unit would not power back on.  The on/test button had no effect.  Pressing the overload reset button had no effect.  Unplugging it and plugging it back in produced a beep (and the green 'sensitivity' lamp on the back of the ups was lit), but the unit still would not power on.  Disconnecting the battery would not allow it to power on (perhaps by design); reconnecting the battery produced no variant result. 

I couldn't find much in terms of help online, but it was suggested that if the battery was just completely dead, some UPS devices would not power on.  I tried disconnecting/reconnecting the battery another time or two.  It was brand new and (I thought) it had been charging for more than 24 hours.  At this point, it basically looked to me like the new battery was a dud or, more likely, UPS itself was simply dead.  On a whim I decided I would reconnect the old battery to see if it behaved any differently - after all, the UPS was still on with the old battery.  The unit powered up, failed its self-test, and told me the battery needed replacing.  Yes, thank you, I knew that.

So maybe the new battery was just a dud?  I turned the unit off, unplugged it, disconnected the old battery and reconnected the new one, and held my breath.  The unit powered on, passed its self-test, and indicated that the new battery was nearly depleted (so apparently it hadn't been charging?) but otherwise everything looked good.

That was this morning (about 3.5 hours ago).  The unit now seems to functioning normally and indicates the battery is (near) fully charged.

So, I don't know if the batteries for this model really aren't hot-swappable, if there was some sort of memory/capacitor issue which made the UPS think the old battery was still connected when I hot-swapped it, if this was some kind of fluke or what - I don't really have an explanation.  The issue, however, appears to be resolved.  I'll come back to report if further issues develop.

~PS

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Thanks for sharing your experience with the community. The batteries in your UPS are designed to be hot swappable to clarify but one thing I thought of was that perhaps at the particular time you tried to turn the UPS on with new batteries that there was an input power problem?

If you had any Network Management Card logs or PowerChute Business Edition lots, we could also review those if you're still interested in trying to find a potential root cause on what happened.