BX1500M alarm problem

[namsilat]

This is a BX1500M that's 3 years old. The episode started in November with extended alarm, looking at the screen the battery bar is entirely blank, so I hit mute button to shut off alarm, only to have it happen 12 hours later, then every 12 hours after. During one of those episodes instead of hitting mute I pressed power button to turn the unit off, then back on again. That "solved" the problem, with battery bar back to full. However, every 2 weeks, I am guessing when this unit does some sort of self-diagnostics, the whole thing recurs again. My solution so far has been to just hitting power button as before, but it's somewhat of an inconvenience that I have to reboot everything connected to the APC twice per month. I don't think the problem is with battery, there seems to be some issue with the display or diagnostics. Is there  a way to turn diagnostics off, or change frequency to longer than every 2 weeks?

[Teken · Accepted solution]

You may consider the following information and action items:

Brain Dead: 

https://www.apc.com/us/en/faqs/FA158947/

Battery: The service life of the battery cartridge is 2-5 years based on usage, temperature, and environmental conditions.

You can validate if the battery is still somewhat fine by removing AC Mains. Time how long the system continues to run for and compare it to the APC Runtime Calculator.

If the system turns off immediately replace the battery. If the system only runs for 1-5 minutes based on the defined load as seen in the APC Runtime Calculator say 60 minutes - Replace.

If the system runs for 35-45 minutes vs 60 minutes schedule a replacement in the near future.

The above test is extremely crude but is real world. Ideally each battery cell would be measured and tested for (Resting) voltage, internal resistance (mOhms), load capacity (AH) based on a defined time &  value at a specific operating temperature.

Self Test: The self test schedule is based on when the unit is first powered on. Than it will complete the self test every 14 days.

So you can simply pick a time and remove all AC / DC power from the system. Reconnect both AC / DC power and the system will commence the self test 14 days from this point forward. 

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