UTS 6H Drops Load While Using Circuit Setup Wizard

[BillP]

Hi - just got a new 6H installed last night by an electrician. He left it at the wizard screen for setup and I left it that way overnight. All was well. Tonight I got home from work and went through the initial setup wizard. It brought me through each circuit, one by one, and asked me for the type of load. There were many selections like lights, other, microwave, furnace, etc. All of these I know have different pre configured settings. I have no UPS hooked up (yet) or generator (yet). As I went through each circuit I reached circuit 3 and perhaps I scrolled through differently (reverse direction) and as I hit certain ones, say like Home Theater, the relay would click and drop the circuit load. When I reached furnace the relay took a few seconds to "catch up" if you will and brought the circuit back. I am presuming this is because some types like Home Theater are preset to Uninterruptible, and I have no UPS, the logic said to shut the circuit off. What completely freaked me out was how it changed the settings in a committed way as I scrolled through, doing the relays in real time. I know this is as designed because it is in the manual. I wanted to see if others have had similar experiences. Has anyone ever seen, as you scroll through the load type, the relay drop load temporarily while you hit those ones that have different settings like Home Theater or Computer that have a preset status of Uninterruptible? If no one has seen this - could someone test? Go to circuit setup on a load with just lights or non critical and cycle through each load type about one per second and a half (eg enough time to read the display) and see if you have the relay for that circuit drop the load (and bring it back as you cycle all the way back to Lights)?

This freaked me out because it was happening on my gas furnace. And what happened is as I cycled I had two shutdown and restarts of the furnace, so I shutoff the breaker for fear of catastrophe. I then watched the relay continue to cycle every minute or two while the breaker was off with a fault condition that "Circuit 3: No Load" - so it must keep that relay going back and forth when you have the breaker off to try to sense load? So the fact that the failure condition caused by me shutting off the breaker in reaction to the scrolling through circuit types causing relay clicks through cycling in the wizard caused me panic thinking there was some bug cause a cycle loop (perhaps bad connection causing voltage fluctuations) and call my electrician about an hour ago begging him to disconnect the entire thing. However, once I was able to decipher that the relay cycling was actually occurring for different reasons - both induced by my actions - and that, at least on the wizard cycling, it seems to cycle by design as each option displays, I felt better. I duplicated the issue on 2 other circuits in the wizard which also gave me more piece of mind.

Things are stable right now...I have it as Furnace - Forced Air - and will never make a change to a circuit setting without shutting the breaker.

Has anyone else had a similar experience when in the wizard, and when shutting off an upstream breaker to a protected circuit (two separate questions)?

What are the thoughts of this device ... Is it safe?

Thanks,

Dana

Message was edited by: Dupre29

Message was edited by: Dupre29

Message was edited by: Dupre29

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

What are the thoughts of this device ... Is it safe?

I'm another noob who is somewhat dismayed with setup.

So many people rave about this thing that I figure it's got to be safe and, once set up, effective.

Took awhile for it to dawn on me that selecting a different "Load Type" was hosing my settings.

My take is that the manuals are totally inadequate for a user to set the device up. There's enough information for an electrician to connect the wires... but not much more.

Probably a pretty decent piece of hardware - and I've found telephone support tb excellent... but the documentation is a whole other story.

After a couple of weeks, I'm still trying to develop strategies for determining which loads get shed first.

I guess I ought to bite the bullet and call APC support. Certainly I'm not getting any answers here or in the EU2000 mailing list.