Battery shows charged but no backup.

[Anonymous user]

I have 2 Back UPS BX1300LCD units that are 'behaving badly'. There are basically two modes of failure that I am seeing.

One is where the battery indicator shows the batteries as having a charge (80 - 100%), but when the power fails or glitches the ups fails to cut over.

The other failure is an occasional F01 error when power is interrupted.

I chatted with an APC chat tech who ran me through a "brain dead" test where the unit was disconnected from the AC mains and then so was the battery, then I held the power switch in for 10 seconds. After this, no change in the failures. At this point the tech said the ups needed replacement.

I've taken the batteries out and measured the voltage across them under load (approx 1.3 amps) and they show a little over 12 volts which seems acceptable... I did not monitor them over time to see if the voltage dropped.

Granted the batteries may be defective/old but given the cost of replacing them ($80) and what the tech said I'm leery of spending the money just to find out that the ups's are faulty. The cynic in me wonders if he was just trying to get me to buy another UPS...

Any suggestions?

[Anonymous user]

Same exact situation with a BX1500LCD. It shows the battery ok, charging. charged. If I pull the plug with full charge at 60 watt load the UPS shuts down immediately. Not sure how to tell if the UPS is dead or just the batteries. Sorry this does not help you, but you at least have company.

Consider swapping the batteries. See if that changes things. (you have two identical bx1300lcd ups's)

Message was edited by: TSnor

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply and suggestion, but both of my units are acting up. When this started (at about the same time btw) I did find one battery (each unit has 2) that was only showing about 9 1/2 volts. Ok so that one IS bad. But the other three are showing over 12 volts. One thing more I did discover was that one of the batteries that was left out of the unit for a few days now shows only 6 volts. I'm thinking that one is bad as well, probably a cell with high internal resistance...

Thanks too for the commiseration, I'm going to see if I can get a couple of batteries from somewhere that'll take them back if it turns out the UPS's are bad. Don't know if that is possible, after all a lot of places won't allow you to return electrical parts like batteries.