APC UPS Blog - ExcessUPS.com

Smart-UPS Battery LED’s Flashing

If  all of a sudden the Battery Charge LED’s on your Smart-UPS started blinking, there could be several things going on.

 

1. The battery LED’s start blinking once the UPS knows it can’t support the attached load for longer than 2 minutes. This could be because your batteries are aging and at that load, you won’t have more than two minutes of run time. It could also be because you increased the load. Try and take some of the load off and see if the LED’s stop blinking.

2. Reset the Low Battery Signal – For example, take a Smart-UPS 1400 with 15 minutes of run time at the current load, if the low battery signal is set to 9 minutes, then if there’s less than 8 minutes of run time available the LED’s will start blinking. Set the battery signal warning time to a lesser value in the configuration menu and the UPS shutdown parameters sub menu in Powerchute plus.

3. Perform a run time calibration – this will give you accurate run time availability. This will also let you know if it’s time to change your batteries, they might have aged to the point where they can’t provide enough run time, but they haven’t completely expired. Follow the calibration procedure to do a calibration.

Battery LED’s flashing on a Smart-UPS even after Battery Replaced

“I replaced the batteries on my Smart-UPS, the replace battery light went OFF but the battery charge LED’s are still flashing, what do I do?”

There are several reasons the battery charge LED’s flash, but in this case, the calibration is inaccurate. When the previous battery was coming to the end of it’s life, it wasn’t able to support the protected load for more than 2 minutes. That sets off an alarm in the UPS and it starts blinking the battery LEDs to let you know. The firmware in the UPS has reprogrammed itself with this error.

When you replaced the battery, the UPS sensed the battery was holding a charge and the replace battery light went off, but the UPS really doesn’t have a way of knowing how good this battery is.  So the blinking lights remain to let you know the UPS doesn’t think that it can provide more than two minutes of run time.

In order to clear this error, you need to perform a run time calibration. If you have a newer SUA unit like the SUA750, SUA1000 or the SUA1500 you can try the software calibration feature in PowerChute. If you’d like to perform a manual calibration, that will work as well (some say even more accurately). Make sure to charge the battery to 100%, it’s even better if you let the unit charge for 24 hours.

If you have an older unit like the SU700NET, SU1000NET, SU1400NEt then it’s best to perform a manual run time calibration. The software calibration isn’t as accurate with these units.

Follow the manual calibration instructions to perform this calibration and clear the error.

Once the calibration is complete, the UPS should be reprogrammed with the new run time availability and the blinking lights on the battery bars should disappear.