Symmetra LX 16 RM - New Batteries won't charge

BillP · ‎2021-06-29

Hello,
We recently purchased new SYBT5 batteries and installed them into our 3 year old LX 16. The UPS does not seem to want to charge the batteries. They've been installed for weeks but they show a load of 16%, and a charge of 11%, with a 7 min run time. We had a 5 sec power outage the other day it took everything down. In the web-interface, in the "Overview" tab it says there is a battery fault. But in the "Status" tab it says 0 bad, 4 good for the batteries.

What should I do to get our UPS up and running?

Thanks!

Anonymous user · ‎2021-06-29

Ouch! 52.5V on the battery bus is not good. The nominal voltage is 120V on most (all?) Symmetras, with the actual voltage being somewhat higher, like 134V. I wouldn't expect the Symmetra to even be able to do a cold start with the battery bus that low.

Did you get your SYBT5's from an authorized APC distributor? Some outfits "refurbish" these modules, with varying levels of quality, and some even try to sell them as new. Unless the modules were drop-shipped to you by APC (a number of distributors don't keep stock of these modules on-hand for reasons I'll discuss below), they could be in "new" sealed APC packaging but still be quite old, if they were sitting in a warehouse for an extended period of time. Batteries will self-discharge over time, which may or may not be recoverable, depending on how long they were stored, the environmental conditions where they were stored, and what the voltage they're producing today is.

If you post the serial numbers here or contact APC technical support, they should be able to tell you how old those modules are. I'm just another end user, so I can't help you with that.

See Answer In Context

BillP · ‎2021-06-29

Thanks for the reply.

It's currently in Bypass, but it was online when we had the outage. Actual battery bus voltage is 052.5 VDC. We replaced all four of our SYBT5 Whole Modules.

BillP · ‎2021-06-29

Is the UPS currently online or in bypass?
What does it show for the battery voltage(listed as actual battery bus voltage)? show show this info under STATUS or detailed status
When you say you replaced the batteries, did you actually replace the WHOLE sybt5 or did you replace the 10 batteries inside each SYBT5?

Anonymous user · ‎2021-06-29

Ouch! 52.5V on the battery bus is not good. The nominal voltage is 120V on most (all?) Symmetras, with the actual voltage being somewhat higher, like 134V. I wouldn't expect the Symmetra to even be able to do a cold start with the battery bus that low.

Did you get your SYBT5's from an authorized APC distributor? Some outfits "refurbish" these modules, with varying levels of quality, and some even try to sell them as new. Unless the modules were drop-shipped to you by APC (a number of distributors don't keep stock of these modules on-hand for reasons I'll discuss below), they could be in "new" sealed APC packaging but still be quite old, if they were sitting in a warehouse for an extended period of time. Batteries will self-discharge over time, which may or may not be recoverable, depending on how long they were stored, the environmental conditions where they were stored, and what the voltage they're producing today is.

If you post the serial numbers here or contact APC technical support, they should be able to tell you how old those modules are. I'm just another end user, so I can't help you with that.