APC BackUPS Batteries Keep Dying/Constant Alarm

[Nighthawk69]

Hi All,

I have been through three APC BackUPS units in the last year due to the same issue and I'm not quite sure what the deal is.

The problem is, after about 8 months of use, or so, the unit will start a constant, audible alarm. The only way to silence this alarm is to turn off the battery backup side of the unit and just use the surge protection. The surge protection side works just fine. I have tried unplugging all of the battery backup side, power cycling it, unplugging the unit, etc., and the alarm always continues again once it begins. Therefore, now I have three large surge protectors with batteries in them that do not seem to function.

I do not have these units hooked to PCs to monitor, as they are all hooked to Linux boxes and I did not want to fool with monitoring them as it was not something I wanted.

Does anyone have an idea why this might be happening? It's very strange...

Thank you!

Tim

 

[John]

APC offers a 2-3 yr. warranty. Which APC model(s) are we talking about? What's the load on them? Since they function fine for a given period of time it appears that you just might have a case of bad luck.

 

[jonmcc33]

Have you checked your wall outlets to make sure they are wired correctly?

 

[Modelworks]

Are the backups having to cycle on because of power failure ? Or are they not being used much at all ?

A ups battery can fail ifs its being used too much, the plates can fail inside the battery.

 

[Mark R]

A continuous alarm on the backUPS units means that the battery backup is overloaded, because too much stuff is plugged in.

 

[gba]

Originally posted by: Mark R
A continuous alarm on the backUPS units means that the battery backup is overloaded, because too much stuff is plugged in.

yeah, exactly.. Under normally circumstances, the alarm would be alerting you that the battery would not be able to keep all of the stuff you have plugged into the UPS going in the event that the wall power should stop flowing.

Is it possible that you do not have a large enough valued UPS?