New Battery in XS 1000

[Anonymous user]

Just bought a new RBC 123 battery for my XS1000.  I hot swapped it in.  And immediately on my Mac Pro, the icon in the menu bar said it was at 100%.  Which seemed strange.  I left it plugged in for 24 hours just to make sure it was charged.

I unplugged the XS1000 to test the battery. The display on the front shows the load at 3 of 5 bars.  Upon unplugging unit it immediately went to 1 minute left. In the menu bar info I could see the percentage go down steadily by the second.  Within 60 seconds it was down to 9%.  Then it stayed there for several seconds.  I didn't want my computer to shut off if the battery went out, so i shut down.  With very little load the display on the front of the XS1000 shot up to 10 minutes left.

I plugged in a standing fan.  Probably draws about 50-75 watts.  It ran for about an hour and display went down to 9 minutes left.  Then I plugged in a hair dryer. Put it on low, and UPS immediate dropped to 1 minute, than 0 and turned off.  Unplugged fan and hair dryer.

I plugged the XS1000 back in.  Plugged my computer back in and turned it on.  Upon start up, battery reading on computer said it was at 27% and charging.  Within 2 hours it was fully charged to 100%.

My question is: do I need to calibrate the battery some how?  On 3/5 load shouldn't it last more than 1 minute?  I feel like when i originally got the unit 3 years ago, it lasted at least 5 minutes.  Maybe even 10 minutes with a similar load.

Thanks for any advice/help in advanced.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Your having plugged "dummy" loads (fan, lamp and hair dryer) into the unit and forcing it to run from the battery until it was exhausted is probably all of the calibration that is required. (The hair dryer was probably too much load, and might have damaged the unit. A lamp with a hundred watt bulb, maybe two, will do as well as anything. The load has to be past a threshold of about 30% for the microcontroller to acquire valid calibration data. The battery also needs about eight hours to charge fully before this test.)

I had one unit that refused to "recalibrate" itself through this method. I solved that problem by temporarily using a computer running PowerChute Personal Edition for Windows, and indicating to the software that I'd replaced the UPS battery. This appears to clear any stored data the UPS has about the condition of its batteries, allowing it to relearn that information. There hasn't been a Macintosh version of PowerChute Personal Edition available for a while now, though third party solutions such as apcupsd could be used, if you're comfortable with the command line.