Trying CyberPower for UPS, Replacing a Battery in the APC
Posted December 28th, 2012 @ 01:00pm by Erik J. Barzeski
The APC Back-UPS RS 1500VA LCD that I got in July, 2008 (product page) has served me well. It's an 865 Watt, 1500 VA unit that gives me around 18 minutes or so of battery powered backup when it's new.
A few weeks ago we lost power, and my computer didn't last very long. When power came back I noticed the battery was behaving poorly, and due to its age, I bought a replacement from ATBatt.com.
I left the batteries to charge for over 16 hours (per the manual), and booted the computer to find this:
nnIn other words, either my UPS somehow went bad OR the batteries I received are bad. I think it's likely the latter, and initiated an advance replacement with ATBatt.com ((To their credit this has been a hassle-free endeavor thus far.)) as they agreed it's likely a bad cell. ((It's also unlikely that if the APC unit itself was screwy that it would report any battery time, let alone a time that's constantly shifting from 0 to 1 to 2 minutes depending on tiny fluctuations in load.))
I have another APC UPS (it's either this model or this one) downstairs hooked up to our TV. It draws 300 amps when it's running, roughly 35%, and has a runtime STILL (several years later) of 15 to 18 minutes.
The current model sells for $189.60 at Amazon, but I took a chance on a CyberPower unit that should be roughly the same: the CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD Intelligent LCD 1500VA 900W with AVR Tower UPS. The reviews are pretty solid, and the unit should be almost identical to the one on my TV at $40 less.
My APC? I'll probably probably take it downtown to use at Golf Evolution. We could always use another plug or two down there, and the battery back up will be a nice bonus over the surge protection we have now.
Donate Life
Posted 15 Jan 2013 at 9:04am #
After replacing the batteries did you do a run time calibration?
Posted 15 Jan 2013 at 10:03am #
[quote comment="73644"]After replacing the batteries did you do a run time calibration?[/quote]
No, I hadn't. I found these steps:
http://excessups.com/blog/manual-runtime-calibration-apc-ups/
I've just started the test and had 31% load of 270w with a halogen lamp. It said the run time was 0 minutes but it's been running since before I started typing this comment so it's at least three minutes. 🙂
Last night I took the entire UPS apart (and put it back together) to try to find a loose wire or something that might be causing this. Thanks for your comment - I just wish you'd posted it about 12 hours earlier!
I'll alert the ATBatt people, too, as their first battery was probably just fine. Now I feel like a bad consumer (though in my defense they did not suggest I manually calibrate the time either).
Update: With 265-275w load (about 31% according to the display - no PCs here so no PowerChute), the battery lasted from before the comment (about 9:58am) until finally giving out at 10:13am. That's 15 minutes at almost 33%. Still not awesome, but not the 1-2 minutes it was predicting.