[SOLVED] Help/advice needed with Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) setup

[euphoria4949]

Hi all, I'm looking for some advice and help regarding Uninterruptible Power Supplies.

Firstly, should I be leaving my UPS powered on 24/7 even if the connected devices are off; not just plugged into the mains but actually on and ready to go?
I've been reading that they're designed to be on 24/7 and switching them off every day/night will cause battery drain while they're off and therefore a constant need to recharge every time they're powered back on, but everything I know about batteries and charging is you don't leave them on all the time because they end up charging every time they drop just 1% charge, so I'm confused and conflicted.

The second question is regarding a Windows 10 desktop PC connected to the UPS - are there any settings within the OS that I must change or config?
Because I'm having an issue where my UPS' software is set to auto shutdown after 15 minutes without mains power, but most of the time the instant the power goes off the system immediately shuts down like Windows is forcing an instant shutdown on switching to battery. Even weirder is it's not repeatable every time, it sometimes works as it should by powering the system for 15 minutes or until the mains power returns, but the majority of the time it just instantly triggers a shutdown.

Appreciate any help regarding these two.

[Edit] = to add more context

 

[kanewolf]

Hi all, I'm looking for some advice and help regarding UPS.

Firstly, should I be leaving my UPS powered on 24/7 even if the connected devices are off? I've been reading that they're designed to be on 24/7 and switching them off every day will cause battery drain while they're off and therefore a constant need to recharge, but everything I know about batteries is that you don't leave them on all the time because they end up charging every time they drop 1% charge, so I'm confused.

The second question is regarding a Windows 10 PC connected to the UPS - is there any settings within the OS that I need to change or config? Because I'm having an issue where my UPS' software is set to auto shutdown after 15 minutes without mains power, but most of the time the second the power goes off the system instantly shuts down like Windows is forcing an instant shutdown of switching to battery.

Appreciate any help regarding these two.

I would recommend leaving it plugged in 24/7. That way you can be sure the battery is charged. You should replace UPS batteries every 3 - 5 years so even if they charge some, that is how they are designed to work.
My guess on your "instant" shutdown is that you may be overloading the UPS. The other possibility is that your PC power supply can't tolerate the waveform output from your UPS when on battery.

 

[euphoria4949]

I would recommend leaving it plugged in 24/7. That way you can be sure the battery is charged. You should replace UPS batteries every 3 - 5 years so even if they charge some, that is how they are designed to work.
My guess on your "instant" shutdown is that you may be overloading the UPS. The other possibility is that your PC power supply can't tolerate the waveform output from your UPS when on battery.

Thanks for the reply. I edited my post to give better context but you replied before it

Regards leaving it plugged in, I mean should I leave it switched on not just plugged into the wall? If I leave it plugged in but powered off the battery drains a few percent overnight, so I wondered if I should actually leave it powered on 24/7 so it stays at 100% all the time, but would that not be worse for the batteries if they're charging all the time?

As for the instant shutdown, it's definitely not overloaded, it happens even when the system is idle and only drawing 50w, the UPS is 1400w. The power supply seems fine with the UPS when it's working correctly, it's like sometimes Windows triggers a shutdown before the UPS app controls the shutdown timer, if that makes sense. because it's about 50-60% of the time it does it, all other times it works as it should :-\

 

[kanewolf]

How old are the batteries? Does the UPS have a self-test to verify that the batteries can support a load?

 

[euphoria4949]

How old are the batteries? Does the UPS have a self-test to verify that the batteries can support a load?

It's brand new, the batteries are less than 6 weeks old. And the self-test says everything is golden. It powers the system under full CPU, FPU, GPU, and RAM stress tests all together without issue, it's just this weird instant shutdown thing keeps happening... but not every time which is the weird part.

 

[alceryes]

UPS software could be faulty or need an update.
Also, the UPS may take the current draw (when the power is cut) and extrapolate that the draw is too much to keep the system powered for 15 mins triggering an immediate shut down. Are you able to set it to 5 mins?

 

[euphoria4949]

UPS software could be faulty or need an update.
Also, the UPS may take the current draw (when the power is cut) and extrapolate that the draw is too much to keep the system powered for 15 mins triggering an immediate shut down. Are you able to set it to 5 mins?

This was something I thought of, even though the system at idle is pulling only 50-60w I wondered if setting a lower timer would help so I tried 1 minute and tested it 7 or 8 times by simulating an outage (flicked the breaker off for that room)... it didn't help, 3 or 4 times it instantly shut down.

But I think you might be on to something with the UPS software. I was just chatting with someone of another forum about the issue and he said to check the battery configs within Windows to make sure they're set to "Do nothing", which they were, but this got me thinking if maybe I should let Windows control the UPS, uninstall the UPS software and set Windows to auto shutdown when the batteries drop below xx% instead of a timer with the UPS app.

What do you think? Is Windows 10 reliable at controlling a desktop on a UPS?

 

[alceryes]

Only one way to find out.

 

[euphoria4949]

Only one way to find out.

Already on it

I'll keep the thread open and reply back after in few days if the problem persists or if the UPS app was the issue. At the moment while infrastructure upgrades are being done we are getting between 2 and 10 power outages per day, it's the reason I bought the UPS, so I should have a good idea whether it worked within just a few days.

 

[kanewolf]

What do you think? Is Windows 10 reliable at controlling a desktop on a UPS?

Do you have a USB between the UPS and PC?

 

[euphoria4949]

[Update]

So, for the past week, I've been allowing Windows 10 to completely control my system while on my UPS to see how Windows handled it and whether the problems persisted. And just like I suspected Windows has had multiple tests because we've experienced between 11 to 13 power outages in just 1 week... 5 of those were in one day, it's driving me f***in' nuts!

The results:
Windows 10 does a perfect job of controlling my system and UPS, all the problems disappeared meaning it's the stupid UPS software that is the cause of all the issues. Unbelievable I know, Windows 10 actually can do things right, I mean it's probably hoovering up all my personal data but that's beside the point.
The only loss is I can't shut down the system on a timer as Windows can only do it by battery percentage but it's not a huge loss. The main thing is I have a working UPS now, not a hugely expensive paperweight.
Contacting the manufacturer over the past month for help, advice, and informing them of the issues has been a great help, resulting in nothing, zero, nada, not a single damn response from multiple emails, tickets, and call back requests. Truly amazing customer service.

Big thank you to @alceryes and @kanewolf for all your help and advice, it was much appreciated.