New battery already charged?

[Anonymous user]

Hi, I just bought an APC Battery Backup XS Series 1500 VA and on the manual, it says to let the battery charge for a full 16 hours before using the battery power. My red light button is on; however, the LCD screen is off so I assume it's not running battery power. The weird thing is it's telling me the battery is 100% charged, but it’s only been charging for 10 minutes – I just plugged it in. It's running 95 watts and says my estimated battery power is 53 minutes. Is this normal?

Thanks,
Andrew

[TheNotoriousKMP_apc]

Hello,

It's possible that the battery in the UPS is actually at 100% already. As a standard rule of thumb, we recommend that the battery charge for a significant period of time. However, in this case, it's possible that it went from Manufacturing to the Retail store, and then directly to you, with very little turnaround time. That would decrease the possibility of a significant discharge in the battery due to time in storage.

[Anonymous user]

andy wrote:
Hi, I just bought an APC Battery Backup XS Series 1500 VA and on the manual, it says to let the battery charge for a full 16 hours before using the battery power. My red light button is on; however, the LCD screen is off so I assume it's not running battery power. The weird thing is it's telling me the battery is 100% charged, but it’s only been charging for 10 minutes – I just plugged it in. It's running 95 watts and says my estimated battery power is 53 minutes. Is this normal?

Thanks,
Andrew

The same behavior also occurs on Smart UPS series too. Despite what the indicator say, the battery is NOT 100% charged. Battery is charged at limited current until float voltage is reached and from there, voltage is kept constant and charging current continues to decline. Battery ships fully charged and some charge is lost in supply chain. When you get the UPS it should have 80% or so charge remaining. The last 10-20% of charge takes a long time to recover however.

100% state of charge is reached when charging current no longer drops after reaching target voltage. I have observed on SmartUPS 700, 1000, 1400, etc that reports 100% level, but charging current to battery and power (in watts) going into UPS continues to decline for many hours thereafter.

Charging for 16 hours does ensure you get true 100% capacity, but I see no real argument against using it right away. The only thing I recommend is that if you buy a UPS, but don't plan on using it right away, open up the box and let it charge overnight, disconnect battery(if it was shipped disconnected) and box it back up.

[Anonymous user]

Hi,

Thanks for the posts. I did let it fully charge, however, nothing has changed. It still says battery is 100% charged and with running 95 watts of power, I have 53 minutes of backup power. Is this normally backup battery time with the watts it's needing to supply?

Thanks again!

Andrew

[TheNotoriousKMP_apc · Accepted solution]

Andy,

The runtime seems fairly accurate as with a 100W load you should get a little over an hour of runtime.