Back-UPS ES 700 - Intermittent flashing/beeping, erratic behaviour

[Anonymous user]

About a week ago my UPS named above started beeping randomly.  The connected devices turned off and it appeared to have lost power.  I have since replaced the battery, but it still appears to be acting erratically.  When plugged in it seems to keep switching state.  Some of the time its showing as connected and with the master light lit too.  Others times the master is not lit, but the power light is sold green.  Others again it flashes red.  I've even had it with no lights on at all as if there's no power flowing through the device.  When hooked up to a laptop it's not charged and appeared disconnected at times, but other times, charged and shown as having a UPS connected.  I've had various combinations of lights and beeps.  None consistently and none predictable.  The only consistent factor is if I leave it long enough it will beep and change state once more.

I'm at a loss as to know what to do or what might be wrong, could it be that it's just a failing device? I've had it since 2017, with a battery change in 2019 due to a faulty battery.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.  Thank you.

[Teken]

The first step is to connect the unit to a computer system running APC Power Chute software. Doing so will capture and inform you as to the input / output line voltage, battery condition, state of charge, and any active faults.

Active faults can be over load, low battery, bad battery, ground fault, over / under line voltage, running on battery due to loss of AC Mains etc.

Im unsure if the actual battery has been (recently) replaced by your statement up above?!? 🤔

If so, and assuming the battery was replaced you may try a Brain Dead Procedure to see if the unit is in some unknown state.

Brain Dead: Power down & Remove all loads, disconnect AC Mains, disconnect battery, press & hold the power button.

You may hear a click & beep. You may not hear anything at all. ☝️

Reconnect the battery, apply AC Mains, connect the USB cable to the computer running Power Chute Software. Turn the unit back on. The unit should complete a Self Test. If there are active faults it should be captured by the Power Chute Software. If no faults are present the self test should indicate a pass with no errors.

Let the unit operate with nothing attached to the outputs. Monitor the unit with Power Chute for 72 hours and see if there are any errors / active faults.

If faults / errors are seen relay what they are here. If no faults or errors are seen than you can begin attaching your loads to the UPS.

If the UPS begins to respond the same way once the loads are connected. Try another load to see if the unit behaves differently or the same. If the unit acts the same with different loads there’s a problem with the UPS. If the unit operates fine with a different load(s) the problem is likely the previous connected load(s).

Report back what you observe once the brain dead procedure is completed. Along with the information captured by the APC Power Chute Software. 👍

[Anonymous user]

Apologies for not been clear.  Yes, I replaced the battery.

I looked up APC Power Chute and it doesn't look like there's a Mac version unfortunately.  I found something called APCUPSD, which works for a Mac, but it looks like this doesn't support the latest OS (Sonoma), so I'm not sure how I'd be able to test.  Unfortunately I don't have access to a Windows machine.

[Teken]

At this point you can try completing the brain dead procedure to see if the unit behaves differently or corrects the fault.

Please follow the Brain Dead procedure as outlined up above. Report back what you observe regardless of the outcome.

[Anonymous user]

Thanks Teken.
I've tried the Brain Dead technique.  No sound when holding the power button.  Upon reconnecting stuff, with no loads connected, after a bit of beeping and flashing, which I assume is the self test, both lights were showing green and the UPS was silent.  Nothing happened for about an hour, then it started acting odd again.

• Power light only, solid, occasional beep.
• About a minute later, power light only, flashing and occasionally beeping.
• Did this for a couple of minutes then went solid again.
• Then started flashing between red and green on the power light for about a minute.
• Then all lights went out, no noise.
• It was like this for about 30 minutes, then suddenly beeped and had a flashing green light on the power light.
• 2 minutes later, all lights again went off.
• 15 minutes later the power light again began flashing green with just a beep at the beginning.
• After roughly 5 minutes both lights came back on, solid green.
• It was like this for around 10 minutes then no lights again.
• Back to the one flashing power light again.
• Then nothing for 10 minutes.
• Both came back on and stayed on for around 5 minutes when all lights went off again.
• Single flashing light again.

Sorry for the breakdown, but it's been going through pretty much this for a few hours now.  Is this to be expected, is it still self testing? Or is this a sign of an issue before even adding a load.

Many thanks

[Teken]

If you could make a video and post a link to the same that would be great.

It would be really helpful if you could borrow a windows computer and load Power Chute software so we could capture the active faults / error codes.

Can you try the brain dead procedure again insuring you follow the exact steps outlined:

Power down and remove all connected loads, Disconnect AC Mains from the wall. disconnect the battery, press & hold the power button until you hear a click / beep.

[Anonymous user]

Hi,

I was able to get access to a Windows PC for a few hours, I know this isn't the 72 recommended, but at least I was able to give it a bit of a try. I installed Power Chute and removed the mains and saw Power Chute recognise the move to battery power. I then carried out the Bran Dead procedure and reset Power Chute to have a clean test.

After carrying out Brain Dead procedure, reconnected the batter, applied the mains, connected the USB to a computer running Power Chute then turned on. After testing the unit settled on the two lights being shown on the video at the beginning.

Images Start Of Test 1 & 2 are screen captures of Power Chute at this point, before I walked away.

I was able to leave the connection running for around 4 hours, during this time the video was recording throughout. I've edited it to trim down the bits where there was consistency and noted on the video the times.

Images End Of Test 1 & 2 are screen captures of Power Chute at the end, when I had to leave, so end the testing.

All of the testing was done with the new battery installed.

As you'll see, other than a 1% increase in battery charge, there doesn't appear to be any change in the Power Chute screens.

https://youtu.be/rseYP34EokI

[Teken]

I’ll first start by saying thank you for taking the time to get all the needed hardware and making this video! 👍

In the first 12 minutes of watching the video I was sure this was going to be related to the Power Saving feature. 🤦‍♂️

That doesn’t seem to be the case as the unit appears to shut off and later reboot and complete the self test?!?

So I haven’t watched the entire video given it’s 4 plus hours! I can’t imagine how long it took you to upload via YouTube! 🤦‍♂️

🤣

Also appreciate the text overlay as to what was going to happen. 🤟

So have a couple questions so maybe more insight can be gleaned:

Power Save: By default this feature is off. For the sake of trying I want you to follow the user manual to turn it on than - off

Link:  https://download.schneider-electric.com/files?p_File_Name=BU_QI_990-3488C-XXX_EN.pdf&p_Doc_Ref=SPD_M...

Logs: Please confirm during the first 15 minutes as seen in the video. That Power Chute did NOT capture or detect the self test / shut down incident.

Please screen capture or provide the logs from the software for review. I’m interested to see if the software declares any error codes or thinks there are power line issues.

Settings: Please show me the different tabs in the settings for the voltage etc. Would like to see what PCPE has defined for the UPS.

Im going to view the rest of the video later today. If there’s a time interval to note please do call it out.

Cheers! 🤟🍺

[Teken]

At 1:06 minutes your unit appears to display a yellow LED colour which isn’t even listed in the full manual?!? 🤦‍♂️🤣

Sometimes the LED flashes correctly to what I come to expect in the manual. Other times they are completely not related to anything. 🙁👎

Once again much thanks for the video. As it’s near impossible to translate that into text and make any sense! 🤢

As stated earlier please change the Power Save and insure the (Master) is defined correctly as outlined in the user manual. The trouble shooting guide at the very bottom calls out the behaviour and the corrective action to take.

You’re going to make these changes solely to rule them out. 👍