Smart UPS 8000XLI - Intermittent faults on self test

[BillP]

Hi,

We have a couple of SURT8000XLIs. They are set (as by default) to run a self test every 7 days.

Sometimes, perhaps every 3 weeks, they report any of the following faults, with no consistency. Sometimes they then run the self-test a few minutes later and pass. Sometimes they don't, and I run one manually in the morning which passes.

0x012A (A battery charger faults exists), almost immediately followed by 0x012B (A battery charger fault no longer exists)

0x0106 (Refused a self-test, UPS is overloaded) - This makes no sense; the UPS reporting this is at 65% capacity and has been for months. I have reviewed the datalog, and this was definitely the load when the error was reported.

Any ideas please?

Each unit runs FW 477.15.W and is managed by an AP9619: hardware A10, App v3.7.2 & AOS v3.7.3.

Thanks

Rob

[BillP]

How old is the UPS itself? If you give me the first six characters of the serial number, I can tell.

Also, are the batteries original? You can receive "Refused a self test, UPS is overloaded) if the batteries are bad and overload the inverter (versus the load capacity of your UPS being overloaded).

These units have a positive and negative side of the battery charger. Sometimes when there is an issue with half, you could see this type of behavior..

[BillP]

NS0618xxxxxx and NS0617xxxxxx. They have listed manufacture dates of 2006.

The first one has had batteries replaced with new in the last few months. The other one has old batteries, but I'm unsure on exact age - they still held enough charge to be useful when tested recently.

Only the one with the old batteries is reporting that specific fault looking back, so that sounds like a very plausible reason - thanks.

What about the charger fault?

Thanks

Rob

[BillP]

Thanks for the information. I have a test below you could try to narrow this down to a real faulty charger or some type of erroneous message.

Can you do the following?

1.) Shut down the load, turn off UPS and disconnect load from UPS. Also, disconnect external battery packs (if present)

2.) Turn on the UPS and wait until the self test is completed

3.) While the UPS is running in online operation, disconnect all internal batteries

If the UPS turns off, the charger is faulty.

The charger has two halves, one charges on the positive end, the other one charges on the negative end. If only one half of the charger is broken, 2 / 4 battery strings should show low voltages and if both halves of the charger are broken, all battery strings should show a lower voltage.

If the UPS keeps on running the charger is working fine.

If you cannot do the above test, check the battery capacity and battery voltages. If measuring with a voltmeter each string of batteries should measure approx. 96 - 100 VDC. In the Network Management Card, the battery voltages should be ~ 218VDC for SURT8000 units.

[BillP]

Both of these run our production environment, so turning off would be nice to avoid if possible.

However, we inadvertently ran this test recently when replacing the batteries in one of the devices; it stayed on when they were removed.

NMC reports 218.1V; do I need to take a manual reading from each pack?

Thanks

Rob

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi Rob,

No, I don't think so. I believe this is a cosmetic issue, perhaps the cause of something on the UPS firmware (versus NMC firmware). The charger appears to be fine based on your testing and the voltage.

We have a few options since the UPS is not firmware upgradeable itself. You could consider disabling or adjusting the notification frequency on these battery charger events and then ignore them or ultimately and probably the worst case option, think about replacements. I am assuming you won't want to do that so we may have to go with option 1 and adjust or disable the notifications on those events. Maybe they can stay in the log and disable other forms of notification or you can eliminate them from the log altogether but I usually don't like to do that personally.

Let me know your thoughts based on the fact this appears to be cosmetic only.

[Adam.Doyle.79]

Bill, I see this is an old forum but I am having the EXACT same issue on 2 out of 3 Smart-UPS RT 10000 RM XL that have had the batteries replaced a little over a year ago. These units are old but are functioning great minus the errors we continually receive when it does a self-test once a week. When it does the self-test we receive UPS: A battery charger fault exists. followed by UPS: Refused a self-test; UPS is overloaded. and then we get a UPS: A battery charger fault no longer exists and until I run another manual self-test (which 100% of the time clears the fault) it continually sends the emails until the manual test is performed. These are older units (Manufactured in 2012) so we are aware they need to be replaced but are trying to get another year out of them if possible. Are you aware of any known glitches like the ones we are experiencing? Is there a solution? Thanks in advance!