BR 1500G Using both Utility & Battery Power?

[Anonymous user]

Hi Guys,

So, I'd like to invite your opinions on what I'm being told about my company's BR1500G (Back-UPS Pro 1500) UPS. I'll preface this post by saying that I am no tech guru - I started this position in 09/14 and my employer doesn't have records of when the unit was purchased or when batteries have been changed prior to then. I know that confounds everything I'm about to post but I figure it's relevant info to know going into this situation.

So, we have the UPS hooked up in an enterprise environment - it's powering our server rack. It was configured prior to my time with the company. For the first 7 months of my employment everything worked smoothly then, in May 2015, it started to beep for one minute every five hours. I looked up the manual, learned that beep indicates that the battery has failed the diagnostic test and needs to be replaced. Not knowing when it was purchased/installed I figured that was reasonable. I attempted to source a replacement battery myself with no luck. At this point we contacted an independant third-party tech support vendor we regularly do business with who ordered the battery from their suppliers on our behalf. I know that it was a genuine battery (ABCRBC124) not a third-party battery. After it had arrived we had the tech support company send out one of their employees to install the replacement battery, I didn't trust myself to do it correctly. This occured on May 21st, 2015. After that everything was smooth sailing again until this past weekend, September 12th/13th.

A co-worker reports to me that he's hearing a beeping coming from the UPS. When I observed the beeping I knew it was a different sequence than we were hearing previously, this was a chirping that was continuous until silenced. Again referring to the manual, I believe this is the beeping associated with "Low battery condition and battery run-time is very low. Promptly save any work in progress, exit all open applications, and shut down the operating system". I contacted the tech support company we use and relayed this information. There was a bit of back-and-forth about what indicator lights were showing, etc. To summarize: after we first observed this new beep it began displaying "1 Event Occured" - this led me to believe that some flucuation in our Utility power must've occured, the UPS switched to battery, and very nearly ran out. In addition to the "Event" indicator it's now showing the flashing "battery-with-an-X" icon, which I believe means the battery needs to be replaced. The battery charge indicator is full, the load capacity indicator is half, and the "online" indicator with the plug is consistently lit.

A day or two later it began beeping again (same continuous chirp until silenced) and, after pressing the menu button, I observed that the "Event" counter was gone and instead it was displaying an "Estimated Run Time in Minutes: 24" indicator. Every other indicator the same - full battery, half load, connected to utility power, and the flashing battery-with-an-x. I relayed this immediately to our tech support (I was panicking, thinking that meant our whole office was about to go dark in 24 minutes) and they replied that since the "Utility" icon was still consistently on we were not in danger of going dark, just that the estimated time referred to how long it could power our load in the event the power went out. It stayed online and everything was powered consistently. The estimated run time moved from 24 to 20 minutes but did not count down any further than that.

Today (09/18) it resumed beeping again, same continuous chirping, but this time it stopped itself with no action by any of my co-workers. Screen is still displaying all the same indicators. I relayed this information to our tech support and this was what we were told: "What it looks like is that is that it is using a combination of utility power and battery power thus why the time of 24 minutes does not go down. This is not how the device should behave, it should be one or the other but not both. Due to this fact, it appears that the entire UPS appears to be bad, not just the battery. It is our suggestion that the entire unit is replaced rather than keep trying to replace the batteries. We hope this clears up any confusion."

So, I say all of that to ask this - is what they're suggesting even possible?

I can't find anything online suggesting that these devices can simultaneously use utility & battery power.  I'm skeptical - the exact same UPS worked well for at least 7 months with one battery, and presumably longer as I don't know when that battery was installed. Now we're to believe that the system itself has a fault that drains batteries, which very well may be possible but I fail to see how this UPS fault would've manifested itself only since May. If it's helpful I can confirm that the Building Wiring Fault indicator is not on. I don't have access to PowerChute so I haven't been able to check there.

Thanks so much for any input! I tried to include everything - sorry about the long post!

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Jess,

The UPS can and will switch from AC output to on Battery in the event of dirty power i.e. Total Harmonic Distortion (THD). THD can be caused by many things such as an electrical motor running. The best way to see what is happening is to install monitoring software on to the computer. You did not mention what OS the system is, but if PowerChute is not an option you can install APCUPSD to monitor the UPS. The software should provide valuable diagnostic information.