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When The UPS Fails
When Murphy’s Law kicks in, there is no holding him back. I had an UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) die on me at 11:45pm, 12/31/2012. That’s right. 15 minutes before the New Year. I may as well was having a baby! To add insult to injury the UPS was only 2 months out of warranty!
In any case, apparently we took a brief outage at the transmitter site and the return surge was enough to damage something in the UPS. The UPS in the other rack had no issues. How did it fail, you might ask? At the time of the utility interruption, the unit switched to battery power as normal, but when utility power came back, it did not switch back and the batteries ran out of juice.
When I tested and discovered this I noticed that I can force it back to utility power by turning it on and off. Eventually the relay that switched to utility will close. Yes, the UPS starts on battery and tests utility before switching on. Of course no love from the manufacturer except for the “we have service, please call….” I already ordered a new one. I may find a replacement relay and make the repair myself, but something in the back of my mind is telling me that some logic issue is involved and it is not just the relay.
How often do you relay on instinct when making repairs? I do quite often with great results. I’ll follow up if I do this repair do to boredom. 😉
Cheers
UPS Swap: WTF?
As tweeted earlier I received the new UPS today. I did all the usual things to it on the bench before the install. I cruised through preparing everyone to go on the Aux STLs and warned them of the Telos phone system going down during the transition. I do the swap. I check all systems. Everything looks good. Then I notice the satellite receiver. WTF? No signal! Alarm!
My heart pounds for a moment. I do the usual things like check the connections. I even whipped out the spectrum analyzer and verify signal from the dish. Go it. Check receiver again and it is back with no issues. DUH! Solar transit season! I go online and check to see when for our area and GE-8. Lo and behold, right smack in the middle of my verification checks! DOH!
When you do not have to deal with certain things on a regular basis you get a bit complacent. Things work. You get complacent. Not lazy, just complacent. Ha! Got bit. Oh well, at least I can laugh about it and I did not make and frantic phone calls! Remember: Don’t Panic!
Tech Notes from the Field 