Back-UPS BX900R-CN... always charging...

[Anonymous user]

So I finally bought my first APC UPS a couple weeks ago and sure enough with my luck, things are not looking too good.

As it says in the title, it's a BX900R-CN, XS series --- and speaking of which, what is the deal with the XS series; some kind of Canadian models apparently (uh, what on earth would the difference(s) be ?)... not listed in the products with all the other (numerous) series; you can only find it if you search for the exact model number...

Anyways, I bought it 2 weeks ago Wednesday, plugged it in and let it charge for 24 hrs first. Then I plugged my tower and 21" LCD into it, turned things on, installed Power Chute 2.0 - everything looking good, 100% charged.
2 days later, printed couple of pages (Samsung 2510, BW laser, plugged into a surge protector on a different wall plug) - UPS switched to battery for about 3 seconds when the printer started up. Next thing I know, P.C. shows 98% charge and charging... for the next 2 days ! Did 3 more print jobs, 1 of which caused the UPS to switch to battery again for 2-3 seconds. Then a week ago - P.C. started showing charge @ 91% and charging, and that's where it's been ever since.

- self-tests all turn out OK
- tried reinstalling P.C.
- unplugged UPS from the wall for a while, discharged down to 60%, plugged it back in - sure enough it recharged back to 91% and that's where it sits again, constantly "charging" (or whatever the heck it's doing)

So that should sum things up, needless to say I'm not happy; and today is the last day I can return it for refund so I'm about to pack it up and drag it back to the store (great, never mind the hassle of taking it back, I also spent good 5 hours moving/rewiring all my computers and peripherals around this thing...)

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions I would love to hear them,

thanks,
jd

[Anonymous user]

Also, somewhat off-topic, but I find it quite amusing that your regular desktop will have a UPS tab in the power properties, as long as there is no UPS plugged in, but that tab will disappear as soon as you hook it up to an UPS, and the power properties change to look like on a laptop. Is it just me ?

[Anonymous user]

The BX900R-CN is a Canadian model UPS. In order to sell products in Canada, packaging must be in both French and English, and there are sometimes different testing regulations required for Canadian UPSs. Your UPS, however, is functionally identical to the domestic BX900R model sold in the United States.

When your laser printer turned on, it apperantly created a localized brownout event, and the UPS went to battery momentarily due to the low voltage. When it came back online, it should have started charging again until it reached 100%. It seems that your UPS is charging, but I don't know why it does not show a charge level past 91% unless the UPS is going on battery fairly often, and its causing the charge to drop prior to you checking it. The chances of that are not very likley, but it is conceivably possible. Regardless, If you still have the UPS, I would recommend calling APC tech support because there may be an issue with the battery in your UPS.


To address your second post:
The UPS tab in the Power Option menu is used for serially connected UPSs. When Windows detects a UPS connected via USB, is disables the serial UPS support, removes the UPS tab, and adds the Power Meter, and Alerts tabs. These are the same tabs present on a laptop.

[Anonymous user]

Thanks for the reply...

"don't know why it does not show a charge level past 91% unless the UPS is going on battery fairly often"

nope, it's only been on battery for the 5-6 seconds combined during those 2 brownouts (until, of course, yesterday when I unplugged it from the wall for a while)

"and its causing the charge to drop prior to you checking it."

I've been staring at that P.C. window for hours (+ it's still not recharging anyways)

-----
as for the unimportant things...

".... Canada ... packaging ... testing regulations ..."

* guess I should be used to that by now, but I actually thought there was something about the whole XS series - still don't see them anywhere on the APC website. Also, they do sell ES, and some RS, BX, Smart-UPS in retail here without any changes (?)

* as for the UPS tab, thanks, I had no idea 🙂

[Anonymous user]

My understanding is that the XS UPSs are SKUs meant to be sold through retail only. They are not listed on the APC website because they aren't purchasable through the website. In addition to the substantially lower price (from what I've heard) of the XS UPSs, there are a couple differences between the XS and their most equivalent UPS sold direct from APC - the RS model UPSs.

The XS model UPSs offer voltage boost, but the RS models offers both voltage boost and voltage trim abilities. This means that in an extended overvoltage situation, the RS UPS would be able to trim the input voltage down to an acceptable level, but the XS model would go to battery power. Undervoltages are much more common that overvoltages. In the case of and undervoltage situation, both UPSs would be able to boost the incoming voltage to an acceptable level.

The other difference between the RS and XS models is the data line surge protection. The XS models only offer phone/fax/modem data line protection, and the RS offers phone/fax/modem, and 10/100 Ethernet surge protection.

[Anonymous user]

Well, I returned the thing like I said I would, so forget all that.

Sure enough, couple days later Staples put some UPS's on sale and with a coupon on top of that I managed to get a BX 1300 LCD-CN for the same price as the previous 900. This one seems to be working fine, no problems with charging and all, the LCD is great... however, just to keep up the tradition of nothing ever going too well for me >sigh< here's what seems to be a problem: I only put 100-110W load on the UPS, which should give me, according to the APC charts, nearly 1.5 hrs battery runtime. Now I obviously don't expect exactly 1hr 28min or whatever, but I think it would be fair to expect more than an hour, say up to 1:15. Unfortunately, this unit is only showing about 38 min (!) ___ I'm not really sure what to think of this, the only thing I can think of is that the battery was charged to 100% when I brought it home, which I don't think is right. And to answer the obvious follow up question - yes, the package was sealed, never opened before (and that is something I am very picky about - never buy anything open box/refurb/used) - so is it possible I ended up with a refurb unit/battery sold as a new one? that's about all I can come up with.

Message was edited by: jaydee

[Anonymous user]

yes it changes. everything works like it should, discharge/recharge, run time changes and all. Except that 100% charge seems to be half of what it should be (like an old battery that doesn't hold as much charge as it used to)...

power chute is used on one computer, shows the same as the LCD; same thing without P.C. on a different computer. It shouldn't matter anyways since you can get the info directly from the UPS's LCD

[Anonymous user]

These units do take some time to fully charge their batteries. I would recommend leaving the UPS plugged in overnight, and record what type of runtime you get in the morning. If it still reports minimal, pull the plug and make sure it changes to the proper runtime.
You may want to contact APC Support (800-890-4272) because it could be a potential firmware bug with the unit.

Thank you.

[Anonymous user]

Sorry if there's any confusion here- I've had this unit for a week at that time, battery was charged and all, so this has nothing to do with leaving it plugged in overnight. The runtime is reported properly as well, it doesn't change when I plug or unplug the UPS from the wall --- looking back at the previous posts, I meant that it counts down properly when I said it changes 🙂 - I realized now how you meant that question, my bad.

The problem is that the (supposedly brand new) battery:
1. was charged when I bought it - as far as I know that shouldn't be the case
2. holds less (full) charge than it should (at 100W load it gives me only half the runtime it should!)

I called the tech support yesterday, but didn't get very far - they told me to fully discharge the battery and then charge for 6 hours... I guess I will do that when I have enough time just for the heck of it, but I think we all know what that will accomplish...

Message was edited by: jaydee

[Anonymous user]

So I finally bought my first APC UPS a couple weeks ago and sure enough with my luck, things are not looking too good.

As it says in the title, it's a BX900R-CN, XS series --- and speaking of which, what is the deal with the XS series; some kind of Canadian models apparently (uh, what on earth would the difference(s) be ?)... not listed in the products with all the other (numerous) series; you can only find it if you search for the exact model number...

Anyways, I bought it 2 weeks ago Wednesday, plugged it in and let it charge for 24 hrs first. Then I plugged my tower and 21" LCD into it, turned things on, installed Power Chute 2.0 - everything looking good, 100% charged.
2 days later, printed couple of pages (Samsung 2510, BW laser, plugged into a surge protector on a different wall plug) - UPS switched to battery for about 3 seconds when the printer started up. Next thing I know, P.C. shows 98% charge and charging... for the next 2 days ! Did 3 more print jobs, 1 of which caused the UPS to switch to battery again for 2-3 seconds. Then a week ago - P.C. started showing charge @ 91% and charging, and that's where it's been ever since.

- self-tests all turn out OK
- tried reinstalling P.C.
- unplugged UPS from the wall for a while, discharged down to 60%, plugged it back in - sure enough it recharged back to 91% and that's where it sits again, constantly "charging" (or whatever the heck it's doing)

So that should sum things up, needless to say I'm not happy; and today is the last day I can return it for refund so I'm about to pack it up and drag it back to the store (great, never mind the hassle of taking it back, I also spent good 5 hours moving/rewiring all my computers and peripherals around this thing...)

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions I would love to hear them,

thanks,
jd

[Anonymous user]

It sounds like the others might be right, lasers printers draw a large amount of power when warming up, and it could have made your UPS think it was a brownout, but that begs the question, why even plug a printer into a UPS? I will have only my PC and a monitor so I can shut it down if power is going to be out for a while, a printer even at idle would just be wasting power that could be going to my PC.

And a somewhat unrelated topic, how is the software that comes it, Im considering purchasing a BX900R and I was wondering what all the software can do?

[Anonymous user]

You also might want to find out when the unit was actually made. Some retailers hang onto units for a bit before it actually gets stocked, or sold. This can (obviously) put some older batteries out there when you buy a 'new' product.

Also, where are you getting the 100w figure, through powerchute? Through another software, or a hardware connected device monitoring PSU usage? Its important to note that during operation the voltages in a computer fluctuate, the more you do, the more you draw. During startup (and depending on computer) sometime after that the computer will inrush more voltage then if idle an hour into operation.

One thing you might want to try is a manual calibration and visually see what your runtime is. Though if you are seriously doubting the time reported, definitely call tech support and have it looked at and troubleshot with them.

Laser printers, if being used at all should be put on a seperate circuit if at all possible. Ive had calls from offices using just 1 on their circuits that dimmed then entire building with the current inrush. So if at all possible get it as far away as possible.

-Syn

[Anonymous user]

OK, the UPS is reporting the correct runtime while on battery, but it shows 100% charged when it appears it is not charged fully? How long has the UPS been charging?

Thanks.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Not for very long... it was charged (!?) (or so it thought) when I brought it home so no initial charging; I haven't been around much for the past few days hence I only drained it once to 90% and 80%, so whatever time it took to recharge from that.