Smartups 1500 says battery not connected

[Anonymous user]

My Smartups 1500 says the battery is not connected but it is.  Do I need a new battery?

[BillP]

are you using a network management card or powerchute business edition? either of those should allow you to view the current battery voltage value or a data log with the battery voltage values leading up to this issue.

generally, this situation does require a new battery if the battery in the UPS is older (like more than 3-5) years old. the battery's DC voltage may be so low, the UPS can't detect it any more and says there is no battery connected.

i'd be concerned and not necessarily get a battery right away if the battery is not that old because then it could be a UPS problem. that's why I suggest checking the voltage. alternatively, you can also do it with a voltmeter manually.

[Anonymous user]

no i am not using, if i plug all that in will i be able to see?  I could power cycle the thing but then i have to turn a bunch of things off.  Will bring in the volt meter tomorrow

[BillP]

oh ok - so you were just getting an LED indication of this issue on the UPS front panel? installing PowerChute software or a Network Management Card cannot show us any historical data unfortunately. I'd just measure the battery voltage with a voltmeter. I don't think a power cycle will help but it might be worth a try as a last resort.

You can disconnect the battery terminals with the UPS on if you want. No matter if there is an issue or not though, if there is a power blip during this 1-2 minutes you are measuring, the UPS would turn off. Sounds like though the battery is not being very helpful anyway while it is throwing this alarm.

So, just start with the voltmeter to see how much VDC we are getting.

Do you know how old the battery is? if it is original, we can tell by the age of the UPS which is signified from the first several characters of your UPS serial number i.e. JS0451 would indicate a UPS from the 51st week of 2004.

[Anonymous user]

Well my thing is super smart and it has a screen that tells me to “connect battery” so I checked connection, unplugged and plugged and still says it  The battery is warm, so I think its getting a charge

[Anonymous user]

also AS 1043 is the number so week 43 2010.  so its barely 3 yrs old.

[BillP]

OK - wasn't sure if it was a newer or older UPS. So you have one with an LCD screen on the front. Did you recently have an outage or anything? Sometimes we see that after an outage where the battery becomes fully depleted and its older and never is able to charge back up.

Most likely it's a new battery but a voltage measurement would make me feel more comfortable personally.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Yes we had a long power outage and I have not looked at it for a while.  I had turned off the servers but maybe the stupid switch sucked it down.  Should I take the battery home and charge it up with a charger?

[BillP]

i would consider a replacement. At 3 years old, you could run into issues with the battery swelling or worse if you over charge it with an external charger. These are designed to last 3-5 years depending on usage, so to me, its at that point and did its job and even if it somehow recovers, I wouldn't trust it long term. .

[Anonymous user]

I ordered a new battery.  Thanks your help!

[BillP]

you're welcome!