A customer contacts us: his UPS displays a battery warning, the technician replaces the battery and six weeks later, the same message. Same warning. Same doubt.
At Infologo, an IT service provider based in Geneva and Lausanne, we have dealt with this scenario several times this year, on APC UPS out of warranty at customers in the region.
The conclusion is always the same: the firmware diagnosis should have preceded the replacement.
What the battery alert doesn’t say
A “battery fault” alert on a UPS does not necessarily mean that the battery is dead. It may also indicate that the management network card is no longer able to interpret the test data correctly, or that the UPS firmware itself is producing erratic results.
This is exactly what we observed with three customers in the space of a few weeks: UPS systems reporting batteries with “unexpected” results, autonomy tests dropping from 25 minutes to 5 minutes overnight, with no visible physical degradation of the battery.
Obsolete firmware can distort capacity measurements and trigger alerts that have nothing to do with the actual state of the cell.
At a customer’s site in the Morges area, the battery had been replaced for the first time, only to realize that the network card had not been updated since the initial installation several years earlier. The new firmware stabilized the measurements. As for the battery, it was still correct.
How to order a battery
The sequence recommended by our team, and validated on APC inverters, comprises two steps prior to any replacement.
The first is the firmware update: network card first, then inverter firmware. These two components have their own update cycles, and they can get out of sync. A UPS that hasn’t been updated for two years can produce erroneous battery readings without the battery being at fault.
The second is the complete stop/restart cycle. Switch off the power supply, wait, perform a reset if the model has a dedicated button, then restart. This operation can be carried out during the day for customers equipped with a bypass, which is the case for most of our SME customers with a server room infrastructure. It does not require urgent intervention or prolonged outages.
If the alert persists after these two steps, isolate the origin using the standard APC procedure: disconnect everything, restart the UPS without battery to check that the equipment is operating without battery, then connect the battery alone to test its response. Only then is replacement justified.
Why is this replacement reflex so expensive?
Replacing a UPS battery costs between CHF 80 and 300, depending on the model, excluding labor. When done twice in two months on out-of-warranty equipment, the total cost often exceeds that of a new UPS. And the second battery doesn’t solve the problem if the origin is software.
We still see service providers responding to a battery alert with a reflex replacement, without checking the firmware. This is understandable: the battery is the visible consumable, the firmware is not. But on three- to five-year-old UPS systems, an unapplied firmware update is just as common as a degraded battery, and much less costly to correct.
Discover our article: How to prevent computer breakdowns in the workplace?
What we do at Infologo
Since this episode, the Infologo procedure systematically includes firmware verification in the battery alert ticket. The automatic ticket generated when an alert is triggered on a supervised UPS now includes the firmware and reset steps before any battery order is triggered. The procedure is documented in our internal knowledge base, with one clear restriction: it applies to battery alerts, not to scheduled annual tests.
Our recommendation for any SME with UPS over two years old: check firmware status before the next alert, not after. A quick audit of your electrical protection equipment can identify devices whose firmware has never been updated since installation. This is often where false alarms originate.
If you have a UPS that repeats the same alerts despite a recent battery replacement, contact us before ordering a new battery.
