This question was originally posted by dick on APC forums on 8/13/2011
My BR-900 UPS has been prone to going into overload shutdown since new. It does this even though the total load is a small fraction of the unit's rated capacity. This generally happens in place of picking up the load on an input power outage. This makes it essentially worse than no UPS at all: the "protected" gear goes down with the power but does not come back up until intervention at the UPS to turn it off and back on.
Load is <250W max; it has done this with just some comm gear, one PC in stand by and one running as load. I've measured that load with a KillAWatt on the UPS inlet showing a load of app 68 W for the UPS and the attahced gear that failed in "overload". Still it calls it "overload". It's never had a printer as load, laser or otherwise. Replaced batteries with new APC batteries late May after less than three years life. If anything, problem has gotten worse. The unit's circuit breaker has never opened. It always passes self test (except when it needed a new set of batteries). It has never shown overload except in a shutdown. The overload "beep" has always been continuous.
Very unhappy/disappointed with this unit. (Unlike its APC SmartUPS 600 predecessor which was a great piece of gear--save the degree of difficulty of battery replacement.) Is if broken? Was it defective? Is there some setting? What can I do?