Need help with Smart-UPS 1500 and whole home surge protector

[MikeinWA]

Hello everyone

I hope you can help me.  We have a whole home surge protector, and it sometimes stutters power when an event happens.  Meaning that power comes goes off and back on every half second or so a few times.  Is there a configuration I can set on our APC Smart-UPS 1500 with Network Module 3 to keep everything on UPS battery power until we have 10 or 15 seconds of solid AC power?

Thanks!

[Teken]

I'm not really clear what you're trying to describe so will take a guess. You have some random brand of whole house surge protector. This whole house (SPD) begins to operate erratically for some reason and than - causes the electrical power in the home to flicker?!?!

Without more details like the brand of SPD, how its installed, where its installed, and the specification of the whole house SPD. There are a lot of assumptions to be made and possible root cause / solutions to be provided.

Regardless, lets just focus on the UPS, you set the upper and lower input transfer voltage. You can set the sensitivity on the unit to more sensitive. One defines when the system will go into AVR mode while the other defines when the system will go into battery only mode.

When the system is in AVR mode the hardware is essentially using the different transformer taps to trim / boost the input voltage and do the same in reverse to the outputs. The intention of the AVR is to allow the system to operate within the user defined input voltage to save the battery power while outputting a regulated output to the connected hardware.

The sensitivity settings defines when the system will go into battery only mode. The intention is to ensure the cleanest output voltage / power is supplied to the connected loads. Obviously, being on battery only power will degrade the operational service life of the battery cartridge in terms of years of service. 

As it relates to the SPD you will need to offer more details and specifics because I am not sure what you're trying to say or describing. As a matter of fact if I take you literally it sounds like the SPD is defective. Because there is no whole house SPD that is designed and installed correctly to a service breaker panel that would cause anything in the breaker to flicker.

A SPD by its very design is to take a defined high voltage and shunt to ground that input. If a specific threshold has been met the SPD will either self sacrifice and break or continue to absorb the high voltage and shunt to ground the remainder to the homes single point earth ground.

Anytime the input voltage from the POCO is erratic whether it be a so called brown out (sag / lull) or high input (rise / surge) a person could see the effects. If the power comes on / off very quickly or what many simply define as flicker (fast transients) which bring in a whole lot of other problems (spike, THD, frequency drift) a person will also be able to see the cause and effect.

Make the changes up above and report back what you see and observer. If you can elaborate as to what is actually happening and the information as it relates to the SPD better insight can be offered.

Cheers! 👍