surta1500rmxl2u wont come on, has utility power, and battery connected

[Anonymous user]

Hello,

I have had 2 of these do the same thing, is there anything I can do to try and troubleshoot without calling APC tech support? Customer has ordered quite a bunch of these, and the last few have done this. Any help will do. Thanks in advance.

[BillP]

First thing I would do is want to know how old they (the UPS units) are and if they have been sitting in storage with or without the battery connected. We should also measure the DC voltage on the batteries. These units need good batteries to turn on and the batteries are left connected to the UPS but the UPS is not plugged in, then the batteries will discharge in the UPS and be too low of a voltage to be able to turn the UPS on.

The other thing you'd want to try, perhaps even first, is cold start the UPS. Remove it from AC power/unplug it and hold down the test/on button and see if you hear any beeps. If you do, it should be two, and let go during the second. This would attempt to start the UPS off of battery power and at least tell you that the UPS is operation without some potential variable from the input power source causing an issue.

[Anonymous user]

These units were just purchased within the last month from APC. The one in question was just ordered 2 weeks ago, just took it out of the box and tried to install it. I did try the coldstart, it did nothing. Could it be the batteries? What should the voltage be from the battery pack so I can let the customer know and possibly get him to measure. Thank you Angela for your help.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi Erin,

These are on a 48V system so the float voltage is 55vDC about. I would expect at least something in the 40's for voltage, especially if everything is very new. I also don't know if the customer has a network management card available either to see if even though the UPS won't turn on, if the Network Management Card powers up in the UPS while it's connected to AC power. PowerChute might be worth a try, just to see if the UPS intelligence is active and can shed any light on why the UPS isn't turning on.