Back-UPS ES 550, BATTDATE : 2008-04-02

This UPS is shutting down and turning back on overnight.

There is printing and an led on the UPS by the power switch that says
Green:Power On, Red:Replace battery, the led is green.

I have another APC UPS that did indicate the battery needed to be replaced.

I did a "brain-dead reset" and couple status indicators said
LOADPCT : 6.0 Percent
BCHARGE : 100.0 Percent
TIMELEFT : 31.6 Minutes

I did a power outage test, I pulled the UPS power plug with couple devices still plugged in, the UPS beeped and remained on with the devices still powered up.

I'm using apcupsd UPS monitoring software, in apcupsd.events there are no indicated power outages or anything else power related.

I checked couple APC UPS forums for unexplained issues and it was a lot of people experiencing similar issues with no solution.

Anyone have any ideas, suggestions? THANKS

BATTDATE : 2008-04-02

^^ This is a ghost, the readouts you are getting are likely bogus. I find it hard to believe it can stay up for 31.6 minutes.

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You may want to check out the Back-UPS ES 450/550 User guide, It mentions that the UPS battery life is approximately 3 to 5 years dependent on the number of discharge cycles and environmental temperature.

Your leading statement: shows that your battery is well past its sell by date at 10 years old. You've got a couple of options:
1.) Replace the Battery
2.) Replace the whole UPS

When working with UPS' in a data centre environment, we discovered that replacing the whole thing was probably better economically as the charging and inverter components had been stressed over the life of the unit.
But... You pays your money and makes your choice.

My

Play Bonny!

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Depends on what is connected to the UPS. A 6% load would be something like a router. What do you have running?

However, if this is the origional battery from 2008 then it would be unlikely it would last 31 minutes.

Do you know how long the UPS is off? I have not looked at the manual for your model but some perform a self test at regular intervals.

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Batterymart sells rebranded batteries, for instance I happen to know they sell same Deka batteries Harley-Davidson is selling for half a price. Branded as Big Crank. Still the same Deka inside.

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They usually do a self test every 24 hours.

Normally the test either passes or it fails and reports you need a battery.

Unfortunately they also do the self test and shut down.

Happens to us all the time.

Replace either or both battery and or ups.

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Thanks everyone for the comments and opinions.

I was surprised by the battery date and that something didn't happen sooner.

I have a slackware computer and slackware current raspberrypi3 connected to the UPS.

When I check on things, the computer is off, the rpi3 is on, the UPS is on.

Uptime on the rpi3 shows 18-19 hours as I'm not able to check until the following evening.

Last night I removed the slackware computer from the UPS and left the rpi3 connected. Whatever's been happening didn't happen. Uptime on the rpi3 now shows 1 day and about 19 hours.

The configuration file for apcupsd has a self test option commented out.

I know I can replace the battery but if the UPS isn't reporting what it should, I'd rather replace the UPS.

A bad/old battery can cause the UPS to not work correctly?

UPS can only estimate the condition of battery, mostly based on voltage and charge current. With old battery these estimates can go wrong.

Those small UPSs cannot actually measure anything useful about battery condition without putting load on the battery. It can only put load on the battery by switching from mains power (which normally powers your load) to the internal inverter which runs on battery and is normally not running at all. If the battery is good, and the inverter starts as expected, the thest is a success and it switches back to the mains after a few seconds. If the battery is dead then the test fails immediately and your computer is dumped.

So when it tells you it can run for 31.5 minutes the number does not result from any actual measurement of your battery condition, rather at best it is calculated based on your current load and what might be (optimistically) expected of a new battery.

Run time from battery under the best of conditions is very difficult to predict as it will dramatically vary based on temperature, battery age and the total previous history of that individual battery. Never, ever trust any runtime estimate other than the most recently measured actual run time... In other words, if it ran on battery for five minutes yesterday, then it is probable that it can run for five minutes today. If it ran for twenty minutes a month ago, then all bets are off today until you pull the plug!

Even with large online UPSs (i.e. which run on inverter all the time) and environmentally controlled batteries specified for extended run times, when asked how long they can run without power I always say, "Two minutes". Instead of thinking that you can run for longer periods then experiencing a hard crash, adopt the view that once the lights are out you should start shutting everything down in a controlled manner pretty quickly.

Think of the UPS as providing a brief window for safe shutdown, not continued operations - no matter what is printed on the box!

And if that battery is 10 years old, it is toast - replace it and be happy!

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With a load of the RPi3 plus a passive load roughly equivalent to your main computer, tell the UPS to run a "long" test. It will run on the inverter until the battery gets low and then switch back to line power. You can see how long it actually holds up with that load.

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Replace. It. Now.

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Replaced the battery. BATTDATE : 2008-04-02? Searched for "apcupsd battdate" found this page where it says:I did that, BATTDATE : 2018-01-13. I finally found receipt for the battery I replaced, it was actually almost three years old.

Since I replaced the battery, uptime 3 days, 1:19!

Don't have to, had couple power outages some months ago and was impressed how long UPS ran before auto shutdown based on time left in the battery, about 25 minutes.

I didn't know about apcupsd battdate.