T1500 G3 ups never stops charging

[sbraz]

hello, i recently bought a new t1500 g3 (220v european) to protect some pcs. 

after following the instructions and let it charge without any load connected for 24h, i tested it a bit and noticed its battery never reaches 100% but instead keeps cycling between "resting" and "charging" states.

after simulating a power outage draining the battery for less than 20% of its max capacity, the fan stays on constantly for more than a day before reaching the silent idle state, while in the manual it's stated it should take 3 hours tops to charge. 

the battery is at 40.06V , load can vary from 6% to 30% depending on what's powerred on at the time, i already did the battery self-test which passed without errors.

is it normal to take that much time to enter bypass mode? could the voltage setting switches be the cause of this behaviour?

thank you! :)

[sbraz]

i've taken out the battery pack and measured voltage on the separate bricks: 

13.36V - 13.27V - 13.28V

[Brooster]

Hey @sbraz,

I noticed the same. Did you manage to work it out and found a cause?

Any tip would help. Thanks,

Regards.

[sbraz]

hey @Brooster 

no i haven't but i stopped worrying and had no problem after all this time even during thunderstorms with brown/black outage events.

a prolonged non scientific observation shows the unit might tests itself more or less every 30 days consistently for a duration of somewhere inbetween 24-48h. fan spins during the whole process, after that complete silence.

at this point i'm assuming it does a trickle charge when it's silent and a harder jolt during the self-test but i never REALLY tried to understand it. the manual isn't clear on this but it is stated that the unit does self-tests. so... yeah.

current reported battery voltage is 38.48V.

if you REALLY need it for troubleshooting i could measure the 3 cells separate voltage.

[Brooster]

Well, this reflects my experiences with HPE T1500 G3 exactly. What I'm seeing is a constant cycle between Charging and Resting, with a fixed battery capacity of 97%. Reported voltage in status is 39.89V, while the HPEPP graph is showing 40.77V.

I did check the cell voltages. They are all above 13.3V and consistent (within 0.1V). On the hardware side, all seems ok.

Still don't like that UPS does not settle down at float voltage and enters standby without charging. On the other hand, due to visibly limited HPEPP software (it must be a rebranded Eaton IPP software), this might just be what we are seeing.

Actually, doing a direct query against the SqlLite3 DB they are using, the following values can be seen:

62 3C84510602 UPS.PowerSummary.PresentStatus.ACPresent 1
63 3C84510602 UPS.PowerSummary.PresentStatus.Discharging 0
65 3C84510602 UPS.BatterySystem.Battery.PresentStatus.Discharging 0
75 3C84510602 System.Name HP T1500 G3 UPS 1400
78 3C84510602 UPS.PowerSummary.RemainingCapacity 97
80 3C84510602 UPS.BatterySystem.Temperature 291
81 3C84510602 UPS.PowerSummary.Voltage 39.89
83 3C84510602 UPS.BatterySystem.Battery.PresentStatus.Charging 1

They don't expose the pack temperature in UI.

Thanks @sbraz.