BACK UPS pro 1500 error code f02 after shutdown for the night, help !

[Anonymous user]

Hi all,

Yesterday night I put my 8 months old BR1500 off for the night and this morning when I woke up I tried to get it on. Bam error f02. I tried all solutions with step by step approach but nothing worked. I was a bit desespera because I bought my piece in Switzerland and now I live abroad in West Africa (Benin). I have between 3 and 10 electrical cut a day and in my city, Cotonou, there is only one reseller for APC and he said by phone he couldn't repair it or replace it.

Finally I tried to find a solution by myself and went to this youtube video: https://youtu.be/72_RtK6PUu4

I gave it a try if nothing is working, what he does is simple:

0. remove all plugged elements except power cord

1. just power off your APC

2. just remove the power cord from sector, keep battery

3. press constantly power button until you hear the second beep signal

4. Let the apc restart, it will mark f02 error again

5. plug the power cord

6. restart the APC

The solution is half working, the APC works until the next electrical cut and i have to redo all the procedure everytime. Does somebody has a fully working solution to this strange problem ?

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi Boris, 

An F02 error code displayed by the BR1500 indicates solid state component damage, i.e. a blown fuse, relay weld, etc. Please try the following steps:

1. Remove all load from the UPS. 

2. Power cycle the UPS. Unplug the UPS from the wall, unplug the battery. 

3. Plug the battery and UPS back in and turn it back on. 

If the fault returns, then the UPS will need to be replaced. 

You mentioned the UPS is 8 months old, so it should still be under factory warranty. If you call into your local APC tech support, they should be able to send you a replacement UPS. 

Regards, 

Nicole 

[Anonymous user]

Or how about check the battery, you may find what I found. 

I was under the impression sealed batteries are not supposed to do this unless a major malfunction happened in the charging  circuitry that didn’t properly monitor the battery voltage. 

I had a powersomething or other smoke on me, so I won’t buy those anymore. The tan units lasted a long time with replacing batteries, but st least it told me when the battery failed. This was ran it’s daily checks and passed every day. Then I lost power and it was only under 15% load max. I noticed everything reset and the unit didn’t turn on. 

So I did a hard reboot and I\itcame back ok, ran the check and showed a full battery. Next time I lost power for a shot flicker it followed with a load constant alarm and the F02 error. Wow, it didn’t even detect the battery issue. I find it hard to believe this battery is sitting at 24V in this condition but still passed daily checks that it ran.

TO have a unit final fail after 15 years from leaking surface mount capacitors that supported the microprocessor (assuming it handled the charging) was acceptable. This was one of my older tan units.

But to have the newer black 1500VA  fail in this fashion and not even detect the battery fault is unacceptable and brings into question all the other 7 APC UPS BackUp’s I have in the house from 1080VA, 1280VA, and 1500VA units. The older ones didn’t even have and LCD to check the load it was under and I used the computer and never take the unit over 60% load max. And even then 60% is rare for me. The raid NAS’s turn off in 5 minutes of the power doesn’t restore so it never runs more the 5 minutes either.

I think it might be time to invest in solar, build my own battery storage from 18650 to Li-Fe cells and stop  wasting my money on these units. I’m sure if I replace this battery the same thing will happen. It won’t see a problem, and next time the batter could rupture with even worse  consequences when these are supposed to protect my electronics not burn down my house. 

Scott

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Although this thread is old, I thought would add that I also had this F02 error on my Back Ups Pro 1300.  It happened randomly overnight and shut itself off as well as the server that was connected to it.  There was no sign of power events (all of my clocks were fine).

After doing some basic troubleshooting, I measured the battery voltage with a DMM.  It was approximately 26 volts, seemed ok.  However, I replaced the battery pack and the UPS worked again.  

After disassembling the battery pack, I measured each battery individually, bother were about 13V.  Using 12V 20W halogen bulb to load the batteries, one of the batteries could not even light the lamp... so indicative of a bad cell in the battery.  The other one was just fine.  So, it appears to have been an internal battery failure in my case.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Had F02 error this morning on a new (2-3 months)1500 that mirrored Rubin's experience in that it took down the server and there was no power outage to trigger a draw down.

Turned the until off, then on without unplugging anything and everything came back up. in addition, the led showed the unit was at full power and current load is 10%.

[Anonymous user]

Had the same early morning F02 incident a couple of days ago that shut down the network, again. Used same resolution: power cycle the UPS and found it was at full power. 

Today, network went down in mid-morning. By the time i got to the office about 5 minutes later and as I power cycled the UPS, i noted that the server, modem, and maybe router were operating normally . (During previous incidents, the server had stayed up even though the network was down but I didn't think beyond that.)

While UPS power cycled this time, I surmised that perhaps only the switch had shut down so I moved the switch plug to another outlet and will see what happens.

At this point does it make any sense that the fault is in a single UPS port?

[Anonymous user]

Hey! Thanks for the question. I had the same thing with APC BX1500M (got it here)

[ugurg]

Thanks you.

[dalbert]

I have a brand new Back-UPS 1350. I bought it because I have been having frequent brief (1-30 seconds) brownouts and wanted a UPS to keep my server up when the mains voltage sagged.  I initially plugged in the batteries and plugged the UPS into the wall, but with no load connected; I was using it to monitor the line voltage (to see how badly the voltage was sagging).  After several brownouts, the UPS started sounding the buzzer continuously and displaying F02.  Then I had to manually turn the UPS off and back on at which point it would self-test and then resume operation, but thereafter it would fail F02 any time there was a brownout.  The final time I cycled power, it locked up when it performed the power-on self test: the display turned off, the green power light was on, and pushing and holding it then releasing it did not turn off the UPS, neither did unplugging it; I had to unplug and disconnect the battery.  I assume the unit is toast and will be returning it as it is only a few days old now.

Some hints for APC/Schneider if anyone is interested: my mains voltage has been sagging significantly; usually the sag is brief (1-5 seconds).  The voltage typically drops to 107VRMS but sometimes significantly lower; I've seen it drop as low as 70VRMS.  The UPS reported the voltage accurately (I compared it with a good multimeter) These brownouts are usually brief, never more than 30 seconds and often less than a second.  It seems like a good bet that this caused the issue.