Reliable UPS suggestions?

[pc1966]

A UPS' job is to provide reliable power in the event of a maind outage/disturbance, but the Dell-branded APCs we have are less reliable than the mains. They were bought some 3 or so years ago, have had failures and been replaced (also one battery pack as they are not compatible with the replacement main UPS - doh!), and now a year or two on we are seeing those fail just outside of warranty.

So we really don't want to see any more APCs, but that leads to the question of who actually produces reliable UPS in the 4-5kVA range?

TL;DR Who to chose for a UPS that does its job?

 

[plugsandsparks]

I have been using:

APC UPS Uninterruptible Power Supply | Comms Express

Explore the range of APC UPS Uninterruptible Power Supply, Tower, Rackmount, Battery Backup, & Back-Ups at Comms Express - Free Delivery Available

www.comms-express.com

Basically APC which has been bought by schneider now. Very large range, old tech batteries, not had a failure yet......

 

[pc1966]

We got 3 of the 5kVA single phase units about 3 years ago from Dell. Of them 2 had to be replaced under warranty as they failed and the replacement was similar, but not quite the same.

Now of the 3 working ones a year ago we are down to 1 working and damn-all confidence in APC even if their parent has changed!

 

[plugsandsparks]

I guess the current range may be the same as the ones you have been using.
It might be worth trying to work out why they are failing. FWIW, i do not go anywhere near their "rated capacity" , i stick to around 60-75%. The ones i have had sitting around for ages are just over 50% of rated capacity.

 

[pc1966]

The most recent failure was over the weekend on no load at all - just testing systems out

The normal load is closer to 20% capacity, peak demand is typically around 50% capacity, but the larger size was bought to allow one to feed two racks in an emergency and to allow longer run-time as well.

 

[plugsandsparks]

Oh *ugger, got me worried now.... what ambient do you run the room at ?

 

[pc1966]

Oh *ugger, got me worried now.... what ambient do you run the room at ?

Was in A/C room to around 20C before, currently without A/C but not more than 25C as hardly anything going yet (new site, A/C on its way).

 

[plugsandsparks]

OK, i am running well over 26, up to 30 . There must be something going on but cannot guess what, do you know why they are failing ?

 

[pc1966]

No idea what is behind it. Original failures were all on self-test with the message "Bypass relay fault" and the output power went off.

More recently when taking them back in to use it was "Power Sys Error - 0200"

Today is went in to bypass mode so power still on, and with "Error P.13" on the display (which had turned red, making it harder to read).

Of course APC provide no documentation of error codes

 

[plugsandsparks]

Dont know if this will help but APC suggests brain dead reset for power sys error 0200

Video: How to perform a cold start and brain dead on Smart-UPS - APC USA

www.apc.com

 

[pc1966]

Dont know if this will help but APC suggests brain dead reset for power sys error 0200

Video: How to perform a cold start and brain dead on Smart-UPS - APC USA

www.apc.com

Will give it a try, as nothing to lose.

But I still won't be buying APC again!