Ailing APC SmartUPS 1400
Jimmie Mayfield
Hello. Recently I purchased a pair of APC SmartUPS 1400s at a dotcom
auction. After getting them home, I found that one appeared to have
a bad battery. Having had UPS batteries go bad before I thought nothing
of it...even considering the cost of a new battery, the overall price was
still good.
Yesterday I finally got around to replacing the battery and let it
charge for around 24 hours. Afterwards, the UPS's battery charge indicator
indicated fully charged. However, upon actually simulating a power outage,
the UPS still thought the battery was dead...charge indicator immediately
drops to almost nothing. The firmware claimed a 2 minute reserve time for
the ~150W load I was testing. Not good.
I have a couple other APC1400s laying around that are known to work. Denote
one of the working UPSes "A" and its corresponding battery pair "batt1".
Denote the flaky UPS "B" and its (brand new) battery pair "batt2".
I swapped batteries so that "A" is using "batt2" and "B" is using "batt1".
"A" indicated that "batt2" was fully-charged and successfully handled a
simulated power outage. This suggests that the charging circuit on
UPS "B" is functional. On the other hand, UPS "B" indicated that "batt1"
had very little charge. This is wrong...this battery was known to be
fully-charged before the batteries were swapped.
Is this enough information to identify a culprit? Bad inverter maybe? I find
it interesting that the unit IS able to carry a load during an outage but
for an unknown amount of time (if you believe the UPS's firmware, 2 minutes
at 150W). I did not test to see how much reserve time it actually had in
this handicapped state.
Thanks for any insight.
Jimmie
--
Jimmie Mayfield
http://www.sackheads.org/mayfield email: mayfiel...@sackheads.org
My mail provider does not welcome UCE -- http://www.sackheads.org/uce
Jeff Liebermann
(Jimmie Mayfield) wrote:
>
>Hello. Recently I purchased a pair of APC SmartUPS 1400s at a dotcom
>auction.
If they're like the ones we bought, they're the worst designed pieces
of junk ever to leave the APC manufactory.
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com/pics/home/apc1400.jpg
I have about 20 of them and they all suck.
One problem is that they have 4 batteries, in two banks of 24VDC.
These are charged in parallel which does not work because there's no
way to balance the charge current between banks. Invariably, when I
remove the dead batteries, I find one bank with seriously bloated and
overcharged cells, and one bank that's never been charged (and may
actually have good cells). In several cases, the batteries have split
open and spilled gel electrolyte all over the place.
What we've done is use external batteries. I fabricated a mounting
bracket for the plastic DC power connector and mounted it in the
rectangular hole on the rear panel. I then used the other half of the
DC connector to run to a pair of large 100AH 12V gel cells. No
chargeing in parallal. At 300watt load, I vaguely recall getting
about 2 hours runtime.
>After getting them home, I found that one appeared to have
>a bad battery. Having had UPS batteries go bad before I thought nothing
>of it...even considering the cost of a new battery, the overall price was
>still good.
>
>Yesterday I finally got around to replacing the battery and let it
>charge for around 24 hours. Afterwards, the UPS's battery charge indicator
>indicated fully charged. However, upon actually simulating a power outage,
>the UPS still thought the battery was dead...charge indicator immediately
>drops to almost nothing. The firmware claimed a 2 minute reserve time for
>the ~150W load I was testing. Not good.
>
>I have a couple other APC1400s laying around that are known to work. Denote
>one of the working UPSes "A" and its corresponding battery pair "batt1".
>Denote the flaky UPS "B" and its (brand new) battery pair "batt2".
>
>I swapped batteries so that "A" is using "batt2" and "B" is using "batt1".
>"A" indicated that "batt2" was fully-charged and successfully handled a
>simulated power outage. This suggests that the charging circuit on
>UPS "B" is functional. On the other hand, UPS "B" indicated that "batt1"
>had very little charge. This is wrong...this battery was known to be
>fully-charged before the batteries were swapped.
Yeah, I've seen this on one of the units I've been playing with. It
usually goes hand in hand with the internal fan being stuck on
permanently. That's a sure sign that the battery terminals have been
momentarily reversed. Everything works exept the fan runs all the
time and the charge indicator and threshold go nuts. I haven't
isolated the exact components that blow up yet.
Incidentally, don't assume that just because the charge indicator
shows full scale, that the batteries are properly charged or even a
good pair of batteries. Find some means of determining if the
batteries are good. I used a known good pair of new batteries for
testing. I had several pullout batteries that indicated full charge
(high terminal voltage), but wouldn't hold a charge.
>Is this enough information to identify a culprit? Bad inverter maybe? I find
>it interesting that the unit IS able to carry a load during an outage but
>for an unknown amount of time (if you believe the UPS's firmware, 2 minutes
>at 150W). I did not test to see how much reserve time it actually had in
>this handicapped state.
>
>Thanks for any insight.
>Jimmie
Incidentally, another problem with the 1400RH is that it sucks
100watts of power from the AC line doing nothing. Put a clamp-on
ammeter on the AC line to the UPS. No load on the UPS. Put a fully
charged set of batteries inside or just run it without batteries (it
won't blow up). I get about 0.6A or 100watts of smoke doing nothing.
That's $120 in electricity per year to own and operate this turkey.
--
Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
(831)421-6491 pgr (831)336-2558 home
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com WB6SSY
je...@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us je...@cruzio.com
Jimmie Mayfield
(je...@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us) wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Aug 2002 02:01:01 GMT, jim...@excelsior.sackheads.org
> (Jimmie Mayfield) wrote:
>>
>>Hello. Recently I purchased a pair of APC SmartUPS 1400s at a dotcom
>>auction.
>
> If they're like the ones we bought, they're the worst designed pieces
> of junk ever to leave the APC manufactory.
> http://www.LearnByDestroying.com/pics/home/apc1400.jpg
> I have about 20 of them and they all suck.
Similar but these are the standalone units instead of rackmount (and they
are the black version instead of tan though I assume that's just
cosmetic).
> One problem is that they have 4 batteries, in two banks of 24VDC.
Ah. Guess that's another difference between the rackmount version
and the standalone: these guys have 2 batteries in a single 24VDC bank.
So I don't think this one suffers from the same asymmetric charging
problem as your 2-bank UPSen do. That sounds like a nasty problem.
> What we've done is use external batteries. I fabricated a mounting
> bracket for the plastic DC power connector and mounted it in the
> rectangular hole on the rear panel. I then used the other half of the
> DC connector to run to a pair of large 100AH 12V gel cells. No
> chargeing in parallal. At 300watt load, I vaguely recall getting
> about 2 hours runtime.
Hmm. I would have expected a longer runtime. I'm currently drawing
354W from one of my working 1400s and it reports a 40 minute reserve
capacity at this load (the battery was just calibrated yesterday so
I would assume that number is reasonably accurate). Given that these
are 18AH batteries, I would expect your 100AH batteries to deliver
just under 4 hours if they ran until completely discharged.
I'd like to do something along these lines but I fear the cost of a pair
of 100AH gel cells :).
> Yeah, I've seen this on one of the units I've been playing with. It
> usually goes hand in hand with the internal fan being stuck on
> permanently. That's a sure sign that the battery terminals have been
> momentarily reversed. Everything works exept the fan runs all the
> time and the charge indicator and threshold go nuts. I haven't
> isolated the exact components that blow up yet.
If you ever delve into this deeper, I'd very much like to know your
results. This unit doesn't have the fan problem and it appeared to never
have been opened (the screws had no marks) but who knows.
Sending the unit to APC for costly repair isn't really an option given
that I picked it up for less than $100 and had arranged to sell it to
a friend at cost (I have no need for 4 SU1400s around the house).
> Incidentally, don't assume that just because the charge indicator
> shows full scale, that the batteries are properly charged or even a
> good pair of batteries. Find some means of determining if the
> batteries are good. I used a known good pair of new batteries for
> testing. I had several pullout batteries that indicated full charge
> (high terminal voltage), but wouldn't hold a charge.
Yes, good point. That's why I tested the battery in another UPS during
a simulated outage. It worked like a champ.
I do have a bad battery at the office that will indicates a full charge
but doesn't actually hold a charge. In fact, it led to some data loss
because that particular SmartUPS never indicated that the battery was
bad until I manually initiated a self-test after puzzling over why the
machine fell over during a brownout.
Trevor Smith
a bad battery.
Turn on ups let battery charge to 100%
Turn of beep alarm with software (comms cable connected)
Put a 33% load on the ups (must be between 30% and 35%)
Disconnect comms cable to stop software turning ups off
Now pull mains input cable out of ups and leave untill it turns off
The ups will signal/beep when it reaches old battery flat point
after a couple of minutes but cannot turn off and so will keep
discharging until it reaches new battery flat point. You are
now calibrated though you might want to cycle another time.
Well thats what worked with my smart ups 1400.
Trevor.
"Jimmie Mayfield" <jim...@excelsior.sackheads.org> wrote in message
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