UPS trips RCD

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › UPS trips RCD - redux

nic.wise

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#311265 31-Dec-2023 14:59

I found this via Google: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=48&topicid=250858

I have a simlar issue. 30mA RCCD, got a flash new Cyberpower UPS... no issue for a while, as we didn't have powercuts, but now if the power goes out (me on the main board or an actual one), it flips the RCCD, even if there is no load behind it.

Other than taking it back to PBT and either getting a replacement, or a different brand... any ideas? I dont think I can get the RCCD removed, nor I think would I want to (this is in an external studio, and there is another one in the house on the mainboard....)

@robfish maybe?

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3176535 31-Dec-2023 16:30

I have occasionally heard of this happening from various power electronics. If it's intermittent, it's not really easy to troubleshoot or diagnose with any certainty.

Replacing the RCD/RCCB with another brand but the same specification can be an option. Does it trip an RCD when connected in the main house, or only the RCD in the studio?

Replacing the UPS, either with another model or possibly just another unit of the same model, is probably easiest.

You can usually order a transfer to battery from the command line tools, *without* disconnecting the mains. Does this trip the RCD?

nic.wise

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#3212435 31-Mar-2024 10:14

In the end PBTech refunded me, after it went back to cyberpower. Got an Eaton. No issues since.

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

freitasm

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#3212457 31-Mar-2024 11:45

I have three Eaton UPS (one in the lounge and two in the home office). They power router, switch, desktop (HPE Tower), NAS, two monitors, a laptop and a couple of Amazon Echo devices. In the lounge, they keep the TV, Xbox, Chromecast, Fire TV, an Amazon Echo Studio plus a mesh node.

I even replaced the battery in the lounge one, as it's more than five years old and the battery wasn't holding any charge anymore.

Eaton is great.

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neb

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#3212663 31-Mar-2024 21:12

nic.wise:
In the end PBTech refunded me, after it went back to cyberpower. Got an Eaton. No issues since.

In Cyberpower's defence, the UPS you got is way down the cheap-and-nasty end of their range. They make some of the best UPSes around for the price, you just need to avoid the cheapies.

Tinkerisk

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#3212683 31-Mar-2024 22:29

freitasm:

I even replaced the battery in the lounge one, as it's more than five years old and the battery wasn't holding any charge anymore.

Eaton is great.

I've been using two 1600 VA offline UPSs from Eaton for 5-6 years now, and although they only need to be used very rarely because of the high power availability here, the first batteries are still in the oldest one, although the reserve batteries have long been ready for replacement.

- NET: FTTH & VDSL, OPNsense, 10G backbone, GWN APs
- SRV: 12 RU HA server cluster, 0.1 PB storage on premise
- IoT: thread, zigbee, tasmota, BidCoS, LoRa, WX suite, IR
- 3D: two 3D printers, 3D scanner, CNC router, laser cutter

nic.wise

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#3212717 1-Apr-2024 08:22

neb: In Cyberpower's defence, the UPS you got is way down the cheap-and-nasty end of their range. They make some of the best UPSes around for the price, you just need to avoid the cheapies.

maybe. But I’m not spending $5k to protect a $1k NUC and a NAS.

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

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Goosey

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#3212719 1-Apr-2024 08:48

Theoretically, how many minutes do you think this Eaton would give, if it was just to power the following 4 devices?

ONT

Router (ultra hub type)

Unifi AP

Cordless Phone Base

nic.wise

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#3212814 1-Apr-2024 12:12

I have a dynamics 600VA for my ONT, router (unifi UDM, the r2d2 looking one, ) a toothbrush charger (we ran out of plugs…) and a unifi 5 port switch over POE

TBH I have no idea how long it lasts. More than 30 mins I think. That’s about the longest outage we’ve had and it lasted longer than that.

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

freitasm

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#3212828 1-Apr-2024 12:52

One of mine holds a desktop (HPE ML110) and two monitors. It says at the current load, it's 22 minutes.

I guess the other one powering the NAS, router and switch will last longer as they aren't power-hungry like the desktop.

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jim69

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#3212894 1-Apr-2024 15:58

Be careful relying on that estimated run time - my experience is that these displays always report the battery as 100% when its connected to AC, which is fine except that here 100% represents a charge level, not a capacity, that the only way to find out the actual current battery capacity & run time at that capacity (given that it degrades over time) is to perform a test with no AC power and then see what it tells you. If the battery is more than 3 or 4 years old you may be in for a shock.

Jim

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#3212904 1-Apr-2024 16:52

Oh, I don't. As I said, one has a new battery. And the other two are less than one year old.

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neb

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#3212971 1-Apr-2024 18:25

nic.wise:
maybe. But I’m not spending $5k to protect a $1k NUC and a NAS.

I'm not sure how you'd spend $5K on a Cyberpower UPS, my PR1500LCD was $50 (second-hand), and something like a CP850LCD is a few hundred dollars new.

A reasonable proxy for the quality of a UPS is whether it outputs a pulsed square wave, marketed as a "simulated sinewave", or not. If it's a pulsed square wave that's generally a sign of an all-corners-cut UPS, like the APC UPSes that use aluminium wire in their transformers, with predictable results.

neb

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#3212977 1-Apr-2024 19:25

jim69:
Be careful relying on that estimated run time - my experience is that these displays always report the battery as 100% when its connected to AC, which is fine except that here 100% represents a charge level, not a capacity, that the only way to find out the actual current battery capacity & run time at that capacity (given that it degrades over time) is to perform a test with no AC power and then see what it tells you. If the battery is more than 3 or 4 years old you may be in for a shock.

Also they typically only give figures for higher power levels and short runtimes, not trying to run a minimum amount of gear through a longer power outage. Last year I ran a bunch of stuff, but none of it very power-hungry, for 6 1/2 hours during a planned outage and still had a claimed 30% battery left at the end of if, although I don't know how accurate that claim was. Another time it died at the 6-7 hour mark with the same amount of claimed battery left.

freitasm

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#3213032 1-Apr-2024 20:06

I have all my devices connected to the UPS network and set to shutdown after five minutes if mains is not available. It should be ok.

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Tinkerisk

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#3213100 2-Apr-2024 07:47

With reasonably intact batteries and a load of 33% of the maximum effective power, a UPS lasts for approx. 15 minutes, which is theoretical but corresponds to the total statistical power failure duration per year for us here. With ~17% of the maximum effective load, this corresponds to approximately 30 minutes, etc. I have configured my systems so that unimportant computers are notified and shut down after 5 minutes and the servers only start a safe shutdown after a 15-minute wait.