Serious Problems with (sort of) new XS1300

[Jonny_Quick_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 9/8/2010

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I'm the "tech guy" for a small business office. "The Boss" bought an XS1300 from Best Buy 6 months ago and it sat new in the box until last week.

I installed it on their server and right from the start there were problems. The batteries seemed to not be able to hold a charge, and Powerchute reported there was always "less than a minute" even with the wattage draw was 0 watts.

I called APC Tech Support (I have a case number somewhere) and told him about the 6 months between purchase and use and he said the batteries were probably bad. So today I bought two more batteries, removed the old ones and rebuilt the battery pack and it behaves even worse now than it did before I started.

I spent a week with the old batteries "stretching" them, by draining them completely, then charging them completely i.e. "deep cycling" and after a week I was able to get the batteries to output 75 watts for about 17 minutes. This was an improvement from the 3 that I was getting in the beginning. Despite this "success", both the battery and the APC software claimed there was never any power available, which was somewhat true but not completely.

I've been reading online about something called "calibration" and am wondering is this is the problem.

Any help ?

[Jonny_Quick_apc]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 9/9/2010

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Thanks JonPro. I'll do this today and report results.

Are these directions published anywhere ? How would a person in my situation know how to do this procedure ?

I've done something similar to this, but did not load the battery down to 35%.

Would this need to be done on a battery back-up that has brand-new batteries ?

[BillP]

This reply was originally posted by Jonathan on APC forums on 9/9/2010

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You are welcome Jonny.

We have an APC Knowledge Base article that shows these steps -> [APC KBase 1497|http://nam-en.apc.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1497/kw/flashing%20battery]. On the knowledge base it talks about the APC Smart-UPS units. It is best to do this steps on UPSs that has a new battery, there are some cases wherein we also do this when the battery is within a year old.

[Jonny_Quick_apc · Accepted solution]

This was originally posted on APC forums on 9/9/2010

---

I'm the "tech guy" for a small business office. "The Boss" bought an XS1300 from Best Buy 6 months ago and it sat new in the box until last week.

I installed it on their server and right from the start there were problems. The batteries seemed to not be able to hold a charge, and Powerchute reported there was always "less than a minute" even with the wattage draw was 0 watts.

I called APC Tech Support (I have a case number somewhere) and told him about the 6 months between purchase and use and he said the batteries were probably bad. So today I bought two more batteries, removed the old ones and rebuilt the battery pack and it behaves even worse now than it did before I started.

I spent a week with the old batteries "stretching" them, by draining them completely, then charging them completely i.e. "deep cycling" and after a week I was able to get the batteries to output 75 watts for about 17 minutes. This was an improvement from the 3 that I was getting in the beginning. Despite this "success", both the battery and the APC software claimed there was never any power available, which was somewhat true but not completely.

I've been reading online about something called "calibration" and am wondering is this is the problem.

Any help ?