A UPS is used as the backup power supply when the mains fails, therefore, the readiness of it is critical. It’s necessary to conduct maintenance to make sure the readiness of UPS. 

For advanced UPS, it’s better to contact your UPS dealer to study the best practice. For examples, if you have a three phase 60KW UPS and it supports the power of the whole small factory, you definitely want it to run well 24/7. There are so many different combinations of the arrangement of the maintenance. For example, you can install the redundant UPS to make sure the supply even the really rare case happens — the UPS fails when the mains is gone. Once you install redundant UPS, the maintenance would be different from the others. For non-redundant UPS, you still can choose with or with MBS (Maintenance Bypass Switch). Then, you would consider the frequency and the items for checking. There are so many possible combinations, and each could have pretty different costs. Thus, it’s better to contact your UPS dealer to study together to find out the most suitable package for you.

For UPS like our NANO, NanoFit, ECO, FP series 

• Check the environment
  Just like most electronics, a suitable environment would make the UPS to run smoothly long. Dust, humidity and temperature are the key factors to impact the operation. When electronics operate, they always generate heat. Higher power generates more heat. Therefore, to keep ventilation and/or natural air flow smooth is necessary. Humidity could make electronics and metal aging faster. To check if too much humidity is good for the UPS health. To clean dust is necessary too to make sure the air flow, as well as to prevent the small conducting parts mixed in dust and damage the circuitry. To use vacuum to clean is the best practice. Do not use wet cloth to wipe the UPS, especially when it is plugged into the mains
  Corrosive gas would damage electronics seriously. The good news is such gas does not exist in normal rooms. If your UPS is not installed in special factory ( some manufacturing process might generate corrosive gas) or farm ( if it has some special smell), it should not be a problem
• If the indicator shows any warning or error signal
  Entry level UPS has limited indicators to show the status and warning or error. To check the indicator(s) from time to time is a good way to make sure the UPS operation
• Check if it works without mains from time to time
  As we know, UPS is always standby to backup when mains is running. In this mode, it won’t check the backup function. Therefore, it’s better to remove mains proactively to test if the backup function and the battery are both functional from time to time

For UPS like our iFP, Eufo, Champ, Custos 9X+, Clippers series 

Probably you want to arrange the maintenance for middle level UPS. For entry level UPS, there is no LCD display and no communication to PC. Therefore, in fact you cannot do too many things to check it. Besides, it’s usually not too critical to spend too much time and money on maintenance which is more than purchasing a new one. For an advanced one, as mentioned earlier, it’s too complicated and better to study with the UPS dealer together. For middle level, you can do more. We recommend you to consider warranty, operation environment, battery test, inspection items, record items and scheduling.

1.Warranty
First of all, all UPS has its own warranty period and warranty terms. Please check when you purchase. Usually the UPS warranty is 24 months, and the battery is 12 months. Within the warranty period, please do not open the housing of UPS to prevent it from violating warranty terms. Besides, depending on IP level, most UPS’s are indoor types. To use them outdoors might violate warranty terms. 

2.Operation environment
As mentioned earlier, check dust, humidity, temperature and corrosive gas

3.Battery test
Battery is the heart of UPS but it has no electronics inside and does not provide its status regularly. To make sure it works well, it’s necessary to conduct a battery test. There are three self-test methods through the UPS monitoring software, Viewpower.

1. 10 second self test: Battery will discharge for 10 seconds
2. User define self test: Users can set battery discharge time for self test
3. Deep test: This test will let the battery discharge until it’s at a low battery level

We recommend to perform 10 second test once every month, and every 3 to 6 months to conduct a deep test once. There are so many different battery manufacturers and they have pretty different characteristics, the test frequency might vary accordingly.

4.Check Items

• Visual inspection, for switchgear, circuit breaker, loose connection, burned insulation or other signs of wear
• Visual inspection, for liquid contamination from battery
• Review maintenance logs
• Review events statistics
• Replace air filters
• Full function test

5.Records
To keep the records of maintenance would help a lot. Many signs change gradually instead of Yes/No suddenly. To use the records to company and analyze would help a lot to figure out the early signal of any failure

6.Scheduling
To set the maintenance schedule is good. It would remind you to do it when the schedule is set in advance. Depending on different check items, you can arrange the schedule. For example, every 3 months, you can do a basic check, and every year you can do a complete check.