Question CyberPower UPS discharging in seconds under load...

mrblazito

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May 9, 2010
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I bought a 1000PFCLCD model a little less than two years ago. About two weeks ago I experienced a brownout which lasted all but 2 seconds. I have my PC connected to the UPS which draws 90-100 watts while idling. During the 2 seconds brownout I noticed the battery discharged from 100% to 62%. I figured the battery was failing so i claimed warranty with CyberPower. They had me run some tests with the unit fully charged, disconnected from the outlet with a light load. It was still discharging within seconds. The same thing happened when running a self-test via the Power Panel software. It takes about 3 seconds to run the test and it discharged the battery from 100% to 62-65% in those 3 seconds. CyberPower sent a new battery. I swapped the battery and let the new battery charge for 8 hours. The problem still persists. Is the unit itself failing? Anything else I can try? Thanks in advance.
 

mrblazito

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So I shut my PC down, unplugged everything from the UPS, 100% charge at this point, plugged in a 60w lamp and a 40w fan to give it around a 20% load. Unplugged the UPS unit from the outlet and turned on the lamp/fan. The unit behaved as it should. It gave me around 20 min run time with a 110w load. However, after the unit discharged to 0% and lamp/fan turned off, i plugged the UPS back into the outlet and it immediately showed 2 bars on the battery. I unplugged it from the outlet and let a lamp run on the battery and sure enough it gave me another 3-4 min of run time. The calibration seems to be off. Anyways, I'm going to let the battery charge for 12 hours and run the self-test again. I have a feeling this might be a software issue? if that's possible. Will update once I run the self-test.
 

mrblazito

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I let the battery charge over night and ran a self-test from the unit itself. the test ran for 3-5 seconds and the battery discharged from 100% to 89%. So it's definitely better than previously. I'm thinking this is a calibration issue. I followed the calibration procedure for APC units by letting the battery discharge under a 20% load. Not sure what else I can do to calibrate it correctly.
 

mrblazito

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Can my power supply be causing this issue? I mean the UPS unit worked fine when I only had a lamp/fan plugged into it. But seems to discharge rather quickly when my PC is plugged into it. Although it showed only 92 watts being drawn by my PC during the self-test. Weird.
 

mrblazito

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So I ran another test today after letting the battery charge overnight. This time i unplugged the communication USB cable from the unit and simply unplugged the UPS from the wall outlet. Again the battery dropped to 85% within 2-3 seconds, but, the battery percentage bounced around between 79 and 85 for about 30 seconds before I plugged the unit back into the outlet.

This definitely looks like a calibration issue. I may need to drain the battery again with a smaller load, say around 75 watts? We'll see what CyberPower has to say. They have opened a new case for me since the new replacement battery didn't resolve the issue.