Hi Everyone,
I seem to have a continuing experience with UPS equipment overheating
the batteries. Most all of my UPSs have done this at one time or
another. Here is an example:
At the office, I was to be away for a week and if the power went out,
some of my UPSs sound an alarm which can annoy people in hotel rooms
directly above the office. So I turned that UPS off. Light out, output
off. No sign of life so I thought it was really off. A few weeks later I
tried to turn on that UPS (we don't use that computer every day) and it
immediately switched off with a bad battery alarm. A coincidence I
thought that would happen just then when it worked fine last time. I
went to pull the UPS out from under the desk and found it very warm,
even though it was off. The battery was red hot, so hot I could not hold
it and it was beginning to swell up, but I was able to remove it. The
interesting thing was that APC had replaced this unit a few years ago
when the original one swelled the battery so much it would not come out!
I was able to replace the battery and the unit works OK now. I replaced
the battery on a second identical unit just in case.
How can this happen when I turned the unit off by the button on the
front and the unit seemed off, no indication any power was on at all?
And why do I keep having these problems. I spent two hours taking apart
another APC unit (this one had a metal case, which I like) to remover a
very swollen battery with a cracked case due to the swelling. I have
another of the same model which has the same problem. Not sure I want to
spend two hours again on that one.
All my units are APC, and I like them for their features and reliability
(except for battery problems) and will likely buy APC in the future. I
suspect this problem may occur on other brands as well, a general
industry problem.
I could probably avoid problems by replacing batteries every year, but I
still think the failure mode should be more friendly. Seems like there
is a safety problem here both from overheating, spilling of the battery
contents from a hot cracked case, and lack of performance suddenly when
not expected.
Any thoughts? Has anyone else experienced this?
Doug
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___ _ Doug Smith
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========= Boulder City, NV 89006-0941
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| q-----( ) | o | Email: d...@dsmith.org
\ _ / ] \ _ / Web: http://www.dsmith.org
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