When your UPS Batteries Fail And You Have A Sold Out Show In Two Hours

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

A long time customer who is on these forums had his UPS batteries fail after just three years, and oddly they worked just fine in the few days before. He arrived in the booth to the battery alarm chirping on the UPS, and he had completely pre-sold out the afternoon show. What to do??? You borrow four 12 volt batteries from the auto parts store and have your electrician temporarily wire them in place of the original battery pack. I'll bet he will want a Tripp Lite bypass panel after this...

[Steve Guttag]

Alternately, I would have used a power strip and bypassed the UPS itself. In fact, we only ever plug in one thing to the UPS...a Tripplite UL800CB power strip...everything else gets plugged into that so if you do need to plug around the UPS, you just have to unplug one thing.

We also use ATS (automatic Transfer Switches) both of our design and Cyber Power's This way, if a UPS tanks, you go immediately to city power. A very bad trait of Tripplite's UPSes is that if the batteries fail...it will play possum and appear to be completely dead (no front panel indicators at all). We are looking at APC UPSes again to avoid this problem though APC are notably more expensive. We've also found that the Tripplite SMART1500RM2U (and the 1000VA) variant with the current digital readout to be particularly prone to failure...especially the charging circuit. I will no longer spec them. The older style with the 5 or so indicators never had an issue.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Considering this is the second time in nine years this has happened among 320+ system ups's, all the extra expense of auto transfer would be wasted money to the small exhibitor. With the short life span of digital gear this entire system.will likely.be gone before that ups ever fails. The only thing this UPS feeds is the projector and Dolby 3D controller. At other sites the stand alone server is also tied in. Since its 240 volts its not all that easy to simply move cords around because of the type of AC plugs used. I have one site that bought one transfer panel to be able to revive any one of their six screens should a ups fail, but its been in its box for going on seven years. In fact not one UPS has actually failed. Just a battery with an.open.cell. Batteries are also uber easy to get with in a day or so no matter where you are.

[Steve Guttag]

My experience is inconsistent with yours. I've had MANY more UPS type failures (mostly battery but more recently, we've seen the charging circuit fail on those SMAR1000/1500 units). One lost show because a lack of transfer many times pays for the transfer switch.

In fact, on a recent 10-plex installation we did, the manager came from Regal and when he saw the UPSes in each rack his question was "how do we bypass that when it fails." My response was to show that it has an ATS in the rack right above it so the show will never skip a beat if the UPS fails and then the ATS will start flashing to note that the UPS circuit isn't supplying power. ATS can be had in 120 and 220 varieties so that isn't an issue either. We have, by and large, supplied 120V UPSes and then used a step up transformer to make 230V for the projector's electronics since that is the only thing that has needed the 230V and only Barco has so needed...NEC and Christie work with 120V on their electronics. Thus, the one UPS can back up the projector, automation, network switches and even sound electronics.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I put in the SMART 1500 units everywhere except on NC900's where I used the SMART 1000. What I have found is the intake screen on the front behind the plastic front has to be kept clean for the unit to cool properly. Although I have yet to have one fail, I have found that intake screen completely plugged up on yearly maintainance schedules lots of times. Twice a year is better if there is lots of stuff in the air. Mountain States are bad in this regard, especially when the cottonwoods let go. That stuff ends up on every air intake period. AC Voltage is highly irrelevant. I have yet to install a piece of gear that is not universal voltage, and 220 volts is much more efficient.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I like the movie-themed car batteries you're using.

The go-to brand around here is APC and I'm not a friend of them. Over the years I've seen many failures, one big fire triggered by a faulty unit (I wasn't there when it happened, but I saw the result) and I've had one APC UPS go up in smoke in front of my eyes once. Before they merged with APC, I used UPSes of the MGE brand, which I found to be pretty consistent. Ever since they're gone, I've never really encountered a great alternative. Tripp Lite isn't such a household name around here, but maybe I should give them a try.

We actually have removed those small rack-mount UPSes in some sites, because there were more issues with them than without them. I can imagine that when you're at a location with a shaky power grid, you probably want to have one in there, but fortunately, the power grid over here is generally pretty stable. Most equipment also is pretty well buffered, so it usually survives a sub-second brown-out with ease.

At our own office, we recently installed a larger, central UPS in an external shed. Ever since I've seen the result of that UPS fire, I'm wary of putting anything with large batteries into my house or office...

[John Thomas]

UPS failures have been hands-down the most common failure I have seen in digital cinema, Doremi power supplies being a close second. People just don't proactively change the batteries. Temperature drastically affects the battery lifespan as well. It's often necessary to remove the front grill to fully remove dust, especially on Tripp Lites.

The ATS sounds like a great idea.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Actually Dolby power supplies were the most unreliable in Cinema, although there were a couple pretty stable models over the years. I actually do proactively clean the ups at least yearly, if not more often. That perforated steel screen Tripplite uses seems perfect to catch and build up a thick layer of dust, I also change the batteries.every four years. And yes, APC is crap. A perfect example of "you get what you pay for"... The Tripp Lites I use are regenerative UPS's, not fast switch over type. I knew about APC's dismal reliability from my friends in the broadcast industry, and their sites are all well maintained, yet they still failed often. Hence, I knew to stay away from them. so far my record with Tripp Lite is very good over almost ten years standing at just two battery failures.

[Marco Giustini]

My experience matches Steve's and John's - UPS will fail and may not go into bypass automatically (horrible design IMHO). Personally I would have bypassed the UPS physically - I wouldn't have risked connecting very powerful batteries to a potentially faulty unit. But hey. Happy days.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

If you use APC I can believe it. Awful stuff! My overall experience with the Digital Cinema gear that we installed has been very good and stands at about 95% reliability. Two servers that lost media blocks were replaced for IMB servers at the customers request. Most of the actual D-Cinema problems have been HD failures, although some customers opted to do preventitive maintainance on those as well. The NEC projectors just chug right along. I was replacing lots of USA series amplifiers starting several years after all the conversions went in and there are still some that need replacing. All of my installs were at Indies, but some of them also have big multiplexs and are scattered all over a 5 State area? Life is good and troubles are few and its allowed me to.mostly retire, but will continue to help.out any customer that calls me. Considering these systems have been in about ten years now and rated life is at about 15 years, much of it is probably going to make it another five.

[Steve Guttag]

As I said, I won't put in another Tripplite "SMART" series 1000 or 1500 with the digital readout. Their failure point is way too high and they are failing in the charging circuit...something we never saw when the front panel was just LEDs. The Smart Online (e.g. SU1500) have had a better service record though they all will completely shut off due to battery failure leaving one to think the unit is dead.

I, recently, switched to APC due to discussions with others having better luck with them. Mind you, we aren't using the low-end consumer stuff. These are all commercially rated. We use a mixture of line-interactive and double-conversion based on the site and equipment connected. But, if a UPS is going in, so is an ATS.

We're now starting to do Q-SYS where one processor is driving as many as 9-screens worth of audio (it can do more, we just haven't done it yet). That rack has two independent circuits, two double-conversion UPSes, two ATSes, two Q-LAN network switches and two CORE processors. If it goes down, it won't be because just one thing failed! But a hiccup could affect 9 screens worth of audio (hence double-conversion UPS so there is zero transfer time between UPS and Line power). There have been ZERO issues.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The current double-conversion APCs are actually originally of the MGE design, at least over here in Europe and they're a lot more reliable than your average "line-interactive" APC UPSes. I've also been using STS/ATSes systems for HA setups for 25+ years now. Still, I don't really like the idea of having big batteries inside the room where the magic happens.

In future multiplex designs (if the multiplex still has a future), where the function of the booth is slowly vanishing, I guess a more datacenter-like approach could be implemented, with a central equipment room with redundant cooling and power for all the central infrastructure. If you centralize your high-availability equipment into a single room, buying a bigger and often far more reliable UPS makes much more sense and you don't spend a ton on extra wiring throughout the building.

[Sean McKinnon]

Like Steve I am specifying two seperate UPS's served from two different circuits and all of the "primary" equipment goes on one and all of the "Redundant" equipment goes on the other in my multi screen/multi core Q-Sys systems. I have been using the MIT spike arrestor on lamp power. I do not know how much they actually help but I cant think of any lamp power supply failures on an install that has them... thoughts?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I did'nt use the digital readout versions either, no need for that. The LED bar graphs do a good enough job.
You ought to go over to Transmitter Sites on Facebook and ask some of those guys about their experience with APC. They are not using the inexpensive stuff either, and APC is often supplied with new transmitter systems because its cheaper. They utilize small systems for keeping ancillary gear up, and up to huge systems capable of keeping a 100kW transmitter on the air for an hour or more. You will find like I have that they have little trouble with Tripp Lite gear where they have it. The real key to sucess with these has been keeping the front screen clean and doing regular battery replacement.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Most transmitter sites I know use 24V/48V DC setups. Just like most telco sites, that includes mobile cell sites, which all use (-)48V DC. They use this because the backup power setup is as simple as it gets: Just an array of regular 12V/24V batteries and a charging circuit. Most telco and transmission equipment also comes with 48V PSU options.

But yeah, 120/230V AC equipment is creeping in everywhere nowadays...