Don't Ignore Your UPS

It seems that I manage to get bitten at least once a year when there is a
power failure -- one UPS out of the five I have (I live at the 'end of the
line' in an area with many huge trees and elderly infrastructure so power
can be problematic) will surprise me by running out of power far sooner
than it should. So, just as a gentle reminder, go and do a self-test on
each of your UPS units to verify that the batteries are still viable.
Replacement is usually pretty easy and not too expensive.

On 12/22/2015 7:16 AM, John McGaw wrote:
It seems that I manage to get bitten at least once a year when there is
a power failure -- one UPS out of the five I have (I live at the 'end of
the line' in an area with many huge trees and elderly infrastructure so
power can be problematic) will surprise me by running out of power far
sooner than it should. So, just as a gentle reminder, go and do a
self-test on each of your UPS units to verify that the batteries are
still viable. Replacement is usually pretty easy and not too expensive.

Aren't the automatic UPS' self tests good enough?
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On 12/22/2015 4:38 PM, Ant wrote:
On 12/22/2015 7:16 AM, John McGaw wrote:
It seems that I manage to get bitten at least once a year when there is
a power failure -- one UPS out of the five I have (I live at the 'end of
the line' in an area with many huge trees and elderly infrastructure so
power can be problematic) will surprise me by running out of power far
sooner than it should. So, just as a gentle reminder, go and do a
self-test on each of your UPS units to verify that the batteries are
still viable. Replacement is usually pretty easy and not too expensive.

Aren't the automatic UPS' self tests good enough?

Not for me. I want to see the self-test run so that I can tell how much
that brief discharge knocks down the predicted runtime -- after a while it
will get to the point where the self-test runs for a minute or whatever and
there is too little time left meaning that it is ready for new batteries.
Once they start failing they seem to go downhill pretty quickly.

My main problem seems to be that I have four UPS units in places where I
don't interact with them -- three are in the basement running a server and
two number crunchers and the fourth is buried in my home theater. I don't
ignore the UPS on my daily driver system nearly as much and usually catch
it when something is going wonky.

John McGaw wrote:
It seems that I manage to get bitten at least once a year when there is
a power failure -- one UPS out of the five I have (I live at the 'end of
the line' in an area with many huge trees and elderly infrastructure so
power can be problematic) will surprise me by running out of power far
sooner than it should. So, just as a gentle reminder, go and do a
self-test on each of your UPS units to verify that the batteries are
still viable. Replacement is usually pretty easy and not too expensive.

Mine beeps when the battery is weak.

It does some kind of one second long load test
once a day or so. And checks for voltage drop
(increased battery impedance). It doesn't flip on
the inverter when doing that either, it's a
battery side test.

What mine lacks though, is an LCD. It uses
the piezo beeper, and it only beeps *once*
on weak battery. It's almost impossible to
figure out what in the house is beeping, when
it happens, and it took me several weeks before
I happened to be present and close enough to
figure out who was doing the single "beep".

Apparently when they designed mine, they couldn't
afford any $0.10 LED indicators. Maybe someone has
a patent on that :-)

Paul