BX1500G battery life

[Anonymous user]

So I've had my XS 1500 Back-UPS (model BX1500G) system for almost exactly one year now; I bought it at Best Buy last mid July or so. I'm running a high end gaming desktop on it, which typically runs at load at no more than 400w for the entire system (which includes monitor) for a couple of hours a day or so. My machine idles at approx. 200w (including monitor). As I recall this machine used to get at least an estimated 10-15 minutes of time on battery, however I (re)installed PowerChute today and it estimates 4 minutes of battery now.

When I say I reinstalled PowerChute today I should explain that for some reason I didn't have PowerChute installed on my computer for several months. I want to guess that I uninstalled it when Windows 7 came out and forgot to reinstall it, but I have no idea. Either way, the only modification to my machine that I've made since the UPS was purchased has been the replacement of one power-hungry video card with two much more efficient cards. If I remember correctly they should run about the same wattage, but no more than about 10-20w higher than the old video card.

This just seems like a ridiculously short amount of time on the battery to me. While my gaming rig has a 750w power supply it uses nowhere near that amount at idle, and it rather worries me that my UPS is giving such a short estimation. Am I losing my mind, or is this not normal?

[Anonymous user]

Well, after unplugging the UPS from the wall and staring at both the LCD screen and PCPE, the estimated runtime did not change, and would appear to have operated as it estimates. The battery was 100% charged before the test, and after being unplugged for about 10-15 seconds the charge went down to 96%, which seems roughly on par with the estimate given by PCPE. The unit passes the self-tests that it runs, of course (not that the self-test has anything to do with the condition of the battery).

This just boggles my mind that the UPS is only at 20% load and has a 4 minute battery life. I could be wrong, but that just doesn't seem correct. I bought this UPS specifically for use with a gaming computer, which is why I bought a 1500VA UPS, and I don't expect much battery runtime out of it, but that seems too low to me.

Anyways, thanks for your help Jon, I appreciate it.

Clint

[BillP]

Let us try this Clint.

If you have time, let us perform a manual runtime calibration with your UPS. Make sure to remove non-critical load from the unit because we need to completely discharge the battery. Close/ stop the PowerChute service that is running on your PC. What needs to be done is to unplug the UPS from the power source and let it run on battery until it drains. For the calibration to be effective make sure that the following conditions are met:

* Battery must be at 100% capacity.
* The UPS must have at least 30% load on it during the calibration.
* The load must not fluctuate more than +/- 5%

[Anonymous user]

Alright, a manual calibration has been performed with the load avg of 30%, fluctuating no higher than 35% and no lower than 28%. The UPS was completely discharged and shut off. With the power restored it has been slowly charging back up, and is currently at about 50% charge. Unfortunately PCPE is still estimating a 1 minute runtime on the 50% charge.

The time results were interesting, however. The UPS complained that it had 0 minutes of runtime left for a good 15 minutes. It took roughly 20 minutes to discharge completely at a 300w average load, which I believe would indicate that the battery is still operating normally, however it seems that the UPS is incapable of correctly estimating the runtime.

[BillP]

Thank you for doing the steps above.

Do you have another UPS or computer that is running PCPE? We can swap them and see if the other one would change. Also have you tried reseating the USB cable and restarting the APC PowerChute service? What version of PCPE are you running and the operating system that you are using? I would like to check as well if you have another UPS communication cable that we can swap with.

[Anonymous user]

I might have an old APC UPS lying around somewhere. Can't remember what I did with the one that replaced this...

But yes, I have tried reseating the cable, examining it for any physical damages, but it seems to be clean and in good condition. The computer and PCPE have been restarted multiple times in the last two days. I'm using PCPE 2.2 and I'm running Windows 7 x64.

I'll look around and see if I have that old UPS anywhere...

[BillP]

I would like you to try installing the PCPE update patch on your system. The part number is SFPCPEUPD100

[PCPE Update Patch|http://www.apc.com/products/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=SFPCPEUPD100&tab=Software]

[Anonymous user]

No dice. Installed the update and restarted. Unplugged and reseated the USB cable. Still registers very low battery life (actually 2-3 minutes now, after the discharge).

I read something while I was looking for thorough instructions on how to perform a manual calibration that might be of importance. It said that it was possible that some erroneous variables have changed in the UPS itself that PCPE or the UPS cannot correct which may be throwing off the estimate.

The article appears to be from an open source Linux/Unix equivalent of PCPE called APCUPSD. It appears that most of the document is concerned with the Smart UPS units, but it still seems interesting. The article is here: http://www.apcupsd.com/manual/manual.html#resetting-the-ups-battery-constant

Would the aforementioned battery constant be a possible cause, or am I just over-diagnosing?

[Anonymous user]

I have had the same problem, you have to get and load and older software i think ver 1.55 then go into the self test and there you will find the area to check that you have installed a new battery. and that will take care of it . they left out the install of a new battery on the new software.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

It happend to me once and I corrected this by doing what jboden said. I installed the 2.0 version of PCPE and clicked on "Installed new battery" and everything got back to normal.

In my case it was my fault. I tried to recharge a smaller battery from an old and broken UPS, it charged the battery but then I ran the self test and the PCPE started telling me that there were less than a minute of battery charge and the UPS started beeping constantly. I thought, well this battery is bad, it is not holding charge... Then I put the original battery back on the UPS and the PCPE started telling me I had 1 minute of battery power no matter what I did to fix this. The only thing that worked for me was telling the UPS I installed a new battery.

[Anonymous user]

Ding ding ding! That was the correct answer! Both the UPS and PCPE are now correctly estimating the battery time remaining. It appears, actually, that in PCPE 2.2 there is the option to reset the battery maintenance information by clicking the battery in the Run Self-Test tab (or perhaps it was added by the patch JonPro suggested).

Still, it is working beautifully again,thank you very much gentlemen, all of you. 🙂

[BillP]

It is good to hear that everything is back to normal again. For future reference, the purpose of the battery icon is to update the last battery replacement date. We suggest that this button be used if a new battery has been installed. If you have an old battery on the UPS and you've used this button, it might give you a longer runtime on the software but the actual runtime might be lesser since an old battery is in place.

[Anonymous user]

So I've had my XS 1500 Back-UPS (model BX1500G) system for almost exactly one year now; I bought it at Best Buy last mid July or so. I'm running a high end gaming desktop on it, which typically runs at load at no more than 400w for the entire system (which includes monitor) for a couple of hours a day or so. My machine idles at approx. 200w (including monitor). As I recall this machine used to get at least an estimated 10-15 minutes of time on battery, however I (re)installed PowerChute today and it estimates 4 minutes of battery now.

When I say I reinstalled PowerChute today I should explain that for some reason I didn't have PowerChute installed on my computer for several months. I want to guess that I uninstalled it when Windows 7 came out and forgot to reinstall it, but I have no idea. Either way, the only modification to my machine that I've made since the UPS was purchased has been the replacement of one power-hungry video card with two much more efficient cards. If I remember correctly they should run about the same wattage, but no more than about 10-20w higher than the old video card.

This just seems like a ridiculously short amount of time on the battery to me. While my gaming rig has a 750w power supply it uses nowhere near that amount at idle, and it rather worries me that my UPS is giving such a short estimation. Am I losing my mind, or is this not normal?