BR1500GI and battery runtime.

[BillP]

Hi,
I have bought others BR1500GI and I'm doing some test.

I opened the envelope, I connected the UPS to AC and waited until the battery is fully charged,
after about 30 minutes Power Chute sayed that battery is fully charged.

I connected my laptop to the UPS (my laptop requires 60W when operating normally) and disconnect the AC
for 1 minutes and 10 seconds than reconnected the AC.

Now the battery indicator on UPS displays 3 of 5 indicator and the power chute software says that the remaining battery power is 65% and charging.

Is it possible that with a laptop that requires 60W with 1 minutes and 10 seconds of outage I consumed 35% of the battery? 😮

Is this normal?
Please help, is the unit defective?

[BillP]

Just to add a bad experience to the many good one experienced using an APC products.

Last weekend I was coding in my mountains house, oh good, in that locations AC was quite bad
and I got an outage. I tought that it was a temporary interruption and I continued coding for about 5 minutes than I realized
that the (life-saving cabinet) needed to be restarted to restore the AC.

I went to the cabinet, restored the AC and I noticed that a ghost has turned off my pc.
mmm... ghost? no there wasn't a ghost, my batteries died.

When coding (not compiling) my PC eats 140W, my BR1500GI lasted about 7minutes at 140W of load, excellent.
The UPS in the mountain home is new (I bought it on december 2010) and I used it really few, no outage since today,
only one to try it when it was new.

Now my questions is, APC is the best brand I have seen when talking about warrenty, I can confirm that they offer piece of mind warrenty,
but what am I supposed to do now?

[BillP]

I tryed a second times, I waited that the battery goes 100% than disconnected the AC for two minutes and half, battery is at 56% now.

How this is possible? Please help.

[BillP]

I have bought three BR1500GI and I have done the same test on all three UPS,
same results on all three unit.

Is there someone who can explain me this behaviour please?

Thanks.

[BillP]

clarkson wrote:
The UPS will report 100%, but won't quite be there. It requires 24 hours for a full top off charge. I would plug them all in and leave them that way for 24 hours and try the test again.

Thanks Clarkson as usual, you are our light in the APC world 🙂

Ok, 24 hours passed and I tryed again this small test.

After one minutes battery says 67% remaining, this is not possible, but now it reached 66% after 8 minutes, this clearly means that battery is now more charged than yesterday.
The strange things is why battery percentage drop to 67% after only one minutes of outages.

It seems that the percentage indicator in powerchute is really much unprecise.
From the UPS screen I can also read 3 out of 5 bars.

Have you got some idea?
Thanks.

[BillP]

I have read a post from Clarkson that suggest to do this for a manual calibration:

To perform a manual calibration simply charge the unit and pull the plug while following these rules:

1. Battery must be at 100% capacity when the Runtime Calibration is initiated/started.
2. The UPS must have at least a 30% load on it during the calibration.
3. The load cannot fluctuate more than +/- 5% during the calibration.
4. The battery must be discharged to at least 25% capacity (it is best
to allow the UPS to shut off due to a discharged battery).

Should I need to do it?

[BillP]

I really hope so, I really hate the usually scratched reconditioned unit...

Thanks Clarkson.

[BillP]

sblantipodi wrote:
I have read a post from Clarkson that suggest to do this for a manual calibration:

To perform a manual calibration simply charge the unit and pull the plug while following these rules:

1. Battery must be at 100% capacity when the Runtime Calibration is initiated/started.
2. The UPS must have at least a 30% load on it during the calibration.
3. The load cannot fluctuate more than +/- 5% during the calibration.
4. The battery must be discharged to at least 25% capacity (it is best
to allow the UPS to shut off due to a discharged battery).

Should I need to do it?

I tryed this kind of calibrations and it doesn't solved anything.
Please help clarkson or I picked a wanna.

[BillP]

Two UPS of mine in my house are fine now, percentage drop to 85% of load just when unplugging the AC, indicators goes to 4 of 5 after
two minutes and remains in that way for minutes.
The battery calibrations seem that helped.

The third unit continues to drop to 50% just after one minutes and half at 60W, I called APC here in my country and they
are giving me a replacements 😞

Do you know if I will receive a reconditioned unit with reconditioned batteries or will I get a new one?

[BillP]

i would suggest letting it run as long as you can without any data cables attached. lets see how long it runs on battery and not focus on what the UPS is reporting via the LCD. sometimes it just needs a calibration.

[BillP]

Ok, I received the new unit, charged it for 22 hours and than tested it simulating an outage.

Same problem.
With 50W of load my new BR1500GI got from the RMA drop to 3 of 5 bars and to 73% or remaining batteries after 45 seconds of outage.

What does this means?

[BillP]

Thanks for the reply but the remaining time is important to me, I don't need complete accuracy but at least I need
an idea on how long I have to save what I'm doing.
In this way there no way is to know the battery runtime since percentage are really really unaccurate from both UPS LCD and PowerChute software.

Is there a way to make a real calibration?

[BillP]

well what i mean is, do what i said, which WILL be the calibration, and then let it charge up and see if its accurate.

[BillP]

do I need to make a complete discharge of the battery?

I have just done it with the old UPS and it doesn't solved the problem,
ok I will try again without reinserting the data cable this time, I will keep you posted.

[BillP]

i would personally do a complete discharge of the battery. then let it charge back up and check the accuracy. i noted above you said you did it with the old one and it didnt solve the issue.

i would put a decent size non critical load on the UPS if you can, ensuring its 100% charged when you start and let it turn off, then leave it overnight and see what you get.

other than that to be honest, not sure what else can be done with this type of unit, unlike an older Smart UPS, it does not allow for any manual adjustments to the runtime.

not sure if clarkson or JonPro has any other ideas?

[BillP]

When I started the test on the old UPS I charged the battery for 24hours without any load on the UPS.
Than I attached 300W on the UPS with zero fluctuations, 300W always not 1W less not 1W more,
I simulated the blackout and the battery lasted 16 minutes, the indicator on the LCD dropped to 3 bars just as far I disconnected the AC.

So this isn't a problem of a specific unit but an engeneering problem, I'm really disappointed to know this
and to know that the data that APC advertise on their site isn't true at all.

APC says that BR1500GI will last 25minutes at 300W, my BR1500GI lasted 16 minutes at 300W with no fluctuations,
this is 34% less than what APC advertise.

I will try with this unit returned from RMA and I'll keep you posted.

I really appreciate your work Angela and I'm sorry if I'm quite pedantic, but when I order something,
usually I order dozens of this something and I have no problem to pay something more but I want that
what I receive is compliant with what I paied for.
I'm sorry angela if I bother you and thanks for your assistance.

[BillP]

no, you're not bothering me. we're here to help. you're right if its being advertised improperly. i just have no say in it and my product support doesnt generally cover Back UPS/consumer level products so i dont have any other info currently, personally.

let me know what you find out and ill forward it to the appropriate parties.

[BillP]

ok, let me see if i can get any comments on this and let you know. before that, can you PM me the serial number on your unit as well as let me know if you see any date codes or information on the actual battery itself. also, what are you using to simulate your non fluctuating 300W load? these are things i am most likely going to get asked.

[BillP]

Is there some warrenty on the batteries? May I change only the batteries for a warrenty replacements?

[BillP]

same behaviour also with the new unit after 24 hours of charge and the same test.

it lasted 17 minutes at 300W, and the battery percentage runtime drop to 70% after 30 seconds also with 50W of load.
no one with the BR1500GI have noticed this problem here?

[BillP]

I angela I sent you the information you asked via PVT, thanks for your patience.

To simulate the 300W without fluctuating I used two 150W incandescent lamp and I measured it with my wattometer.

[BillP]

So was this problem ever solved?

[BillP]

Bump!

[BillP]

no news on this?
thanks.

[BillP]

just to confirm, i had sent this response via PM.

[BillP]

thanks clarkson, great service, I will recommend APC to all my collegues.
tomorrow I will contact the customer service here, see you soon.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

@clarkson

Can you plese reply to this thread? Is this problem already solved? Please.