UPS not working properly


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2 hours ago, jonathanm said:

Plugged into the wrong outlet on the back of the unit? Many units have a strip of surge only outlets, typically notated by only a lightning bolt instead of a lighting bolt + cell icon.


I thought so but I just checked after you asked and it is plugged into the surge + battery side. I checked the manual just to be sure.

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Sounds like you need to do a load test on the UPS to make sure it isn't faulty.

 

Temporarily plug the UPS into a switched outlet so you can kill the power without breaking the ground circuit, plug about 350W worth of load into it, switch off the power, and see what happens. Incandescent lamps make good loads, if you have a halogen work light many of those are 300W all by themselves.

 

For this exercise, you can also test the shutdown function of the server if you leave the USB plugged in to the server, but temporarily run the server on a surge protector plugged into another outlet. That way when you switch off the power to the UPS, you can observe how the server reacts without the possibility of dumping the server if the UPS is bad.

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Looking at what you posted up.  Your load is 324 Watts!   I would next suggest that you look up the spec's on your UPS and see what the runtime is at that load with NEW batteries.  Then think about the age of those batteries.  (Battery capacity drops steadily with age until it almost reaches ZERO.)  (That "Run Time" number is almost never very accurate.  Don't put much faith in it...)

 

I also noticed that you have both the "Time left" and "Battery Level" set to 10 minutes and 10%.  That  is probably way too long and too a low percentage when the battery is a couple of years old.

 

You first need to do the test that @jonathanm suggested.

 

I would also suggest that you set the Time on Battery" to something like 30 seconds.  The exact number on seconds something you should determine based on your experience in with your local Power Company.  The reasoning is simple.  In the most of the developed world, if the power is out longer than the value you set, it will be out for an extended period of time.  Far longer than any reasonably priced UPS system can provide.  You might as well bite the bullet and shutdown the server down quickly.  At the same time, the period should be long enough to get you past those power dips, line issues, and power company controlled outages.  (When I lived out the country, the power would go out an sunny summer afternoon day without a storm with three hundred miles for about 20 seconds.  The only thing I can think was happening is that the line repair men were opening a line breaker so they could make the final connection to the high line under a "no power" condition.)

 

One more possible issue.  The Max Wattage rating on a UPS is a very hard limit and is an instantaneous maximum.  If it is exceeded longer than a few milliseconds, the UPS invertor will do a hard shutdown!  (This is done by the manufacturer to protect those switching transistors to reduce the warranty costs.)  You might need to figure out what the peak load of this server is when everything powers up during the shutdown procedure.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thank you both. The UPS is supposed to be around 850w but it is a few years old. This is my first real experience with a UPS. I just kind of assumed the "runtime left" would take into account the age of the battery, reflected by the current rate of discharge. I guess not. I've run the test and see if I need a new battery, which is most likely the case. How long do they last typically? 1 year? 2?

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My suggestion would be to run the load test on the UPS after one year of replacing the battery and every six months after that.  Replacement batteries may, or may not, be of the same quality as the OEM ones. 

 

One more quick observation on my part, the manufacturer's of most UPS's will use the same battery in a number of different of models in the design series having different power ratings.  (example, the 450W, 600W and 750W models.)  What will differ is the runtime at rated power!   Only the electronics have been beefed-up to provide the additional power.  When you buy a new one, you need to look at the manufacturer's spec sheets to figure at the point when they increase the actual battery ampere-hours.  And I can also tell you that those high ampere-hour replacement batteries often carry a substantial premium over the base line batteries as they are often a 'custom' package of two standard batteries!

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  • 5 months later...
  • 3 months later...

God, I've kept this thread alive for too long. So... My power went out yesterday, which once again reminded me I need UPS batteries. I need to stop risking it and actually get some. The model number is CST1300ALU. Cyberpower doesn't have any replacement batteries on their website; it's a discontinued model. I'm looking around for some but haven't yet found a site that has batteries for that model. Here is the link on the Cyberpower site:

https://www.cyberpowersystems.com/product/ups/cst1300alu/

It was actually a fairly cheap UPS I got at Costco. It might just be cheaper to get a new one. I check replacementupsbattery.com and batteriesplus.com and they didn't seem to have replacements for that model as well, although I just looked at the model, not the actual specs. Any other sites that might be worth checking? I'm not even going to bother looking for batteries locally. It's a small town and I doubt there is anything here.

EDIT:
Will this work?:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AAZJ9Y8/ref=twister_B016XAKTQA?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
It
looks like the right one according to the specs but I'm not sure.

Edited by bobbintb
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Look at the specification page of the link you posted.  IT syas that it is a 12V/7AH battery.  IT is probably an industry standard.  Pull the Batteries out and measure their physical size and start looking at the battery sites.  You should also measure the terminal width as some are 3/16" and others are a 1/4".  

Edited by Frank1940
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Just now, Frank1940 said:

Look at the specification page of the link you posted.  IT syas that it is a 12V/7AH battery.  IT is probably an industry standard.  Pull the Batteries out and measure their physical and start looking at the battery sites.  You should also measure the terminal width as some are 3/16" and others are a 1/4".  

 

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. Thanks.

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