APC SmartUPS: wildly varying battery runtime?

[sejtam (M)]

Wondering whether anyone else is seeing an issue with runtime reporting by a APC SMart-UPS 1500. In my case, this is connected to a Synology DSM7 NAS,

which in turn makes the status available via NUT. My HASSIO connects to that (NUT integration) and reports the remaining battery runtime.

which looks like this:

Those are wild swings in the runtime. There is nothing connected to the UPS that should cause those large swings. (yes, 2x NAS, two macs, a few notebooks etc) but their power usage is not really that valotile.

I set up runtime reporting via Node-red , triggering whenever the reported runtime changes by 10% up/down from a prior reading, and that keeps alerting me every few minutes, with runtimes from 0h45mins to 1h20mins.

Just wondering whether other have seen this and whether it coud be a reporting error, or real varying usage?

[lordwizzard]

Have you run calibration test on the unit at least quarterly? Batteries age over time and the charge/discharge does change the runtime accordingly. Learned that way back in the 90’s for all batteries.

[TH3xR34P3R (Robert Koganov)]

@sejtam

APC SMart-UPS 1500

I have the rack mount version of this one and its setup the same, connected through my synology NAS acting as the UPS server for NUT.

I have not had issues with fluctuations in estimated on battery run times. This is what I have setup for my automations currently for it as I am going by battery level not estimated time left:

alias: UPS Automations
description: ""
mode: single
triggers:
  - type: battery_level
    device_id: 99a9de15ac171c75f8aab9ca2958fcda
    entity_id: 30db6e767ca025c297023dcd29a59cec
    domain: sensor
    below: 99
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 1
      seconds: 0
    id: UPS Discharging
    trigger: device
  - type: battery_level
    device_id: 99a9de15ac171c75f8aab9ca2958fcda
    entity_id: 30db6e767ca025c297023dcd29a59cec
    domain: sensor
    below: 50
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 10
    id: "UPS Discharging: 50%"
    trigger: device
  - type: battery_level
    device_id: 99a9de15ac171c75f8aab9ca2958fcda
    entity_id: 30db6e767ca025c297023dcd29a59cec
    domain: sensor
    below: 10
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 10
    id: "UPS Discharging: 10%"
    trigger: device
  - entity_id:
      - sensor.main_ups_status
    from: null
    to: Online Battery Charging
    id: UPS Charging
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 30
    trigger: state
conditions: []
actions:
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: trigger
            id:
              - UPS Discharging
        sequence:
          - metadata: {}
            data:
              title: UPS
              message: Main UPS is Discharging
              data:
                notification_icon: mdi:battery-arrow-down
                color: yellow
            action: notify.mobile_app_rkphone
      - conditions:
          - condition: trigger
            id:
              - "UPS Discharging: 50%"
        sequence:
          - metadata: {}
            data:
              title: UPS
              message: Main UPS is at 50%
              data:
                notification_icon: mdi:battery-50
                color: yellow
            action: notify.mobile_app_rkphone
      - conditions:
          - condition: trigger
            id:
              - "UPS Discharging: 10%"
        sequence:
          - metadata: {}
            data:
              title: UPS
              message: Main UPS is at 10%
              data:
                notification_icon: mdi:battery-10
                color: red
            action: notify.mobile_app_rkphone
          - device_id: 7a74ba58da9ee2fd8815765451475874
            domain: button
            entity_id: 9350ab3dd8364d2d5e016e98eddaf89b
            type: press
          - device_id: 540ffb6b0a2d7345d96e2dac479e51fa
            domain: button
            entity_id: 9e72c4286c45c30574d8b7d726923594
            type: press
      - conditions:
          - condition: trigger
            id:
              - UPS Charging
        sequence:
          - metadata: {}
            data:
              title: UPS
              message: Main UPS is Charging
              data:
                notification_icon: mdi:battery-charging
                color: green
            action: notify.mobile_app_rkphone

[squirtbrnr]

I have the same or similar UPS. My runtime looks like that. It’s normal. Your NAS power usage will fluctuate as tasks run on your NAS. If you have any backup tasks, data scrubbing tasks, or any application that would cause a high CPU load periodically you will get these fluctuations. My UPS typically sees about a 73W load from my NAS (7% total load on the UPS). When data scrubbing or a backup occurs it will spike to about 90W (9% total load). That 20-25% change in power or about 2% load equates to about a 35 minute drop in runtime. My data scrubbing just occurred a couple days ago and ran from about 1am until 1pm. I then had a TV recording occur around 8pm for a few hours. Here’s the graph showing load and runtime correlation.

This is a brand new battery pack about 1 month old that has had runtime calibration run twice since being installed.