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In response to my mail to APC last night, I got a message back from APC saying returning NEW UPS 2 is okay.
Here's my new letter back to them.
I now have in my possession three APC UPS units (UPS ELDA, NEW UPS 1, NEW UPS 2) that put power on the ground pin, and two of them are in failure states. The third has only been lightly tested.
I have three APC UPSes which have been tested and definitely do not put power on the ground pin, and work fine.
I still don't know whether it is within design perimeters for APC UPSes to put power as described on the ground pin and I'm now in a state of not knowing whether this is allowed by design. I still very much need that answer, because these are not our only APC UPS systems and now I don't know whether I have to watch out in the rest of the building for conversions to GFCI.
Following some disastrous experiences with CyberPower, we've been an all-APC environment for several years. We have several other APC UPSes in service, none of which I've talked about. If I plug them into GFCI circuits, will they start tripping those GFCIs? I don't know, and I really need to.
We've been buying APC just automatically for some time. They've been very good for us, until now. Now, I'm in a state of rather strong uncertainty, and I've not received a clear answer to my question about ground pin voltage. Given the failure rate so far, I'm pretty sure now that the answer is "no, there should be no voltage on the ground pin." But I'm not an EE, I just have electrician training (and my degrees are in CS and Maths). My electrician training says no, I don't know for sure, and I don't have that answer from your company. And while both customer services reps I've dealt with have been very pleasant, I still can't seem to get that answer.
Now I'm looking at buying a different replacement for UPS ELDA - that'll be our third go at this, something which historically has been buy-and-forget - but I don't want to buy another instance of the previous model, check it for ground pin voltage, and have voltage show up without knowing what that means. I'll have to return it, too.
So, once again:
Are APC UPSes expected to put both AC and DC voltage - in my case, AC at 50-60V/16-20mA and DC at 7-20V/16-17mA - on the ground pin, while still being GFCI compliant?
Here's my new letter back to them.
I now have in my possession three APC UPS units (UPS ELDA, NEW UPS 1, NEW UPS 2) that put power on the ground pin, and two of them are in failure states. The third has only been lightly tested.
I have three APC UPSes which have been tested and definitely do not put power on the ground pin, and work fine.
I still don't know whether it is within design perimeters for APC UPSes to put power as described on the ground pin and I'm now in a state of not knowing whether this is allowed by design. I still very much need that answer, because these are not our only APC UPS systems and now I don't know whether I have to watch out in the rest of the building for conversions to GFCI.
Following some disastrous experiences with CyberPower, we've been an all-APC environment for several years. We have several other APC UPSes in service, none of which I've talked about. If I plug them into GFCI circuits, will they start tripping those GFCIs? I don't know, and I really need to.
We've been buying APC just automatically for some time. They've been very good for us, until now. Now, I'm in a state of rather strong uncertainty, and I've not received a clear answer to my question about ground pin voltage. Given the failure rate so far, I'm pretty sure now that the answer is "no, there should be no voltage on the ground pin." But I'm not an EE, I just have electrician training (and my degrees are in CS and Maths). My electrician training says no, I don't know for sure, and I don't have that answer from your company. And while both customer services reps I've dealt with have been very pleasant, I still can't seem to get that answer.
Now I'm looking at buying a different replacement for UPS ELDA - that'll be our third go at this, something which historically has been buy-and-forget - but I don't want to buy another instance of the previous model, check it for ground pin voltage, and have voltage show up without knowing what that means. I'll have to return it, too.
So, once again:
Are APC UPSes expected to put both AC and DC voltage - in my case, AC at 50-60V/16-20mA and DC at 7-20V/16-17mA - on the ground pin, while still being GFCI compliant?
