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How to cold start a Smart-UPS

A cold start is when you start a UPS without input power. This is useful if you need to test if the UPS is not turning on due to bad input power or if you need to turn the UPS on to operate during a power outage/failure. It’s also a good test to see if the battery in the UPS is functional (not necessarily at full charge, but holding some charge)

APC Smart UPS 1500VA

To cold start a Smart-UPS:

1. Turn OFF and Unplug the UPS from the wall

2. Press and HOLD the power button (Test) on the front of the UPS until you hear a long beep

3. During the long beep, let go of the TEST button. If you waited too long and the beep stopped, you’ll have to do it again

4. If you let go during the long beep, the UPS should start, go through the self test and run off battery power. The unit will beep to let you know that it’s running on batteries

5. If you’r testing to see if the wall outlet is working, you can plug the UPS back in to the wall socket, if there is acceptable power, the UPS will switch to normal operation

 

 

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.