BR-900 spurious overloads

[BillP]

This question was originally posted by dick on APC forums on 8/13/2011

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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?

[BillP]

This reply was originally posted by dick on APC forums on 8/15/2011

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Great question. Not sure I recall noticing. I'm out of town--and can't get into my home network,presumably because the UPS has crashed. I will look next time I see it in this state.

Are flash codes documented somewhere? Don't recall reading about this in the users' documentation for the BR-900.

[BillP]

This reply was originally posted by Angela on APC forums on 8/15/2011

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yup, these usually are in the user's guide as "Status Indicators."

not sure if this is your unit -> http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BR900

but assuming it is, this users guide does not appear to have the status indicators. let me know what you see and I will look it up on some other documentation i have. i agree, this does not sound like it is functioning properly but if we can see whats going on with the LEDs, we can decipher any fault conditions if they are present to be sure.

[BillP]

This reply was originally posted by dick on APC forums on 8/23/2011

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It was showing two short overfload flashes and a constant beep. Wassitallmean?

FWIW, APC Support was very helpful and did an advance RMA withe a refurb unit--despite the unit being past warranty. I did read one Google report to the effect that spurious overload were a common condition with this specific model. (I think the word was "notorious".) Maybe it was a known problem and that's why APC was so helpful? Either way, I'll see if the new one fixes this issue. I'm hopeful...

[BillP · Accepted solution]

This reply was originally posted by Angela on APC forums on 8/15/2011

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when this happens, is the overload LED on the front flashing or solid?