Back-UPS RS 1500G-IN not giving enough battery backup

[Anonymous user]

Hi all, I recently built a gaming PC and needed a UPS for it so I bought a Back-UPS RS 1500G-IN from a local supplier. It's a 1500VA UPS. I went with this UPS because my PC has a power supply unit (PSU) of 1000W. The place I live in doesn't have frequent power cuts but it can be random sometimes. We have a generator that kicks in as soon as there's a power outage. The reason behind buying the UPS was to be able to safely shut down the PC in case of a powercut. The UPS has a LED display which shows realtime wattage usage and the PC maxes out at 350-380W during high-end gaming. I also have a TP-Link router connected to the UPS at all times. The wattage usage reading remains 0W if the PC is turned off which I'm guessing means the router doesn't pull much power. I've been having issues with the UPS and I think I may need to get it replaced. Some of the issues I've been having - 

1. Incorrect battery backup time - When I got the UPS and had it fully charged, I remember it saying the battery backup time was 125 minutes (0W load) or so. I also remember that I had a powercut soon after, it discharged completely and actually took that much time. That's when the issues started. Once my power came back and the UPS started charging again, it started showing battery backup time as 15 minutes at zero load. That obviously couldn't be right because it had just shown me 125 minutes a few hours earlier. I turned my PC on and the battery backup time fell down to 3 minutes at a load of 150W.

2. LED indicator issue - I started to Google about this and I found a couple of answers on this forum stating that this particular model had a visual bug where the LED display would show the wrong battery backup time but I would it would last as long as it usually should. I tried to test this by turning off my power (UPS was showing a load of 150W and backup time of 3minutes). Within a minute, the UPS started rapidly beeping and it shut off. So obviously it wasn't just a visual bug showing the wrong backup time. I saw another user here point out that the battery backup time issue can be rectified using the PowerChute desktop application. He suggested clicking on the "Replace Battery Date" option in settings which should soft reset it. I did as suggested and it actually worked. My battery backup time shot up from 3 minutes to 47 minutes. To further test that this wasn't just another visual bug, I turned my power off and this time around my PC did not shut off within a minute because of the UPS failing. This suggestion worked, but it brought up another issue. 

3. Minimal battery backup - The battery backup time on the UPS said 47 minutes remaining. I wanted to see if it actually held up for 47 minutes so I left my PC running on battery backup. The UPS was able to stay alive for about 5-7 minutes before it started to rapidly beep and shut down. The battery backup time estimate kept dropping in random decrements( from 47 to 40 to 36 to 25 to 15 to 7) before finally giving out. It did not give me the 47 minutes it promised. All this while, the load on the PC remained the same at a constant of 115W. 

This is not a one time issue. Once the UPS was completely discharged, I charged it up to full and the estimate said 15 minutes again. I did the trick with Powerchute and it went to 85 minutes (I turned off the PC, router still connected, load shows 0W).

When I had a powercut a few days later, I left the UPS on because it showed me an estimate backup time of 85 minutes. I knew my power would be back in 10-15 minutes. But to my surprise, my UPS completely discharged in those 15 minutes. It dropped something like 85-83-70-60-55-30-15 before rapidly beeping and shutting off. This is not a onetime issue, my UPS which shows a backup estimate of 85 minutes at 0 load ends up completely discharging within 10-15 minutes even now. Every single time it discharges like this, I have to do the trick with Powerchute to increase the backup time. 

I've run multiple self-tests using the Powerchute application and it shows everything is fine. I bought a 1500VA UPS hoping it would last a really long time or at least half an hour when a PC (light work) is connected. APC's own UPS selector page suggests this UPS model for my requirements. 

So my question is, is my UPS faulty and needs replacement? I can't even count on it to last 5 full minutes on battery during a powercut even though the estimate shows 40+ minutes. Because of this, my PC has shut down unexpectedly quite a few times. It also discharges fully in 10-15 minutes at zero load when estimates show 80+ minutes. 

Does anyone have any suggestions or know what I can do to fix this? 

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hello,

You should contact local support for assistance.  Local support contact information will be found at this link.

https://www.apc.com/us/en/support/contact-us/index.jsp

You may need to change the region in the upper left of the contact us web page.