atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Can Generator cause issues??

HI! I had a customer have a electrican install backup generator at there office over weekend , i did not know till i got a call that phone system was not working, Nortel cics V7, with call pilot 100, 8 co lines about 14 Tel. The system has a apc 500 , Power was on ,voltages were find , some telephone displays worked but buttons wouldn't respond,i could only hear analog ringer working, i shut everything off unplugged and pulled all cards , replugged everything , still wouldn't work, it would flash , reset , buttons wouldn't work, i did this about 3 times , i grabbed another system and just swapped the software , didn't help ,swapped whole system didn't help, put old system back in pulled all digital port jumpers and put them on 1 at a,time x221 worked , 2nd 3rd etc all started working on original system , i just had a few buttons on telephones to reprogram, was this a glitch caused from apc ups and generator?? I even had it plugged in a different outlet just in cause an it was the same. All is working but wanted to avoid this in future if this was the cause?? Thanks

It certainly could have caused it if the sparky just worked on the circuits with the Nortel in the on position, he should have powered it down while he was working cause I'm sure he turned the backup on and off a few times to test it. As we all know Brown outs can really mess with a systems programs and if he was testing it then he was creating his own brown outs.

Thanks Dualtonemulti-frequency i figured as much , but sparky and customer were in denial .

Of course they would would deny it.........

Fact is, you had to rectify it.

Yes and that came with a premium price!!

It was working until we put the generator in, what could the problem be? Sometimes the obvious is just to hard too figure out.

What bill said...,.

Will they dispute your bill....

The sparky is a friend , and she must be in protect mode ,, i'm also 1 of there insurance customers , she very nice and won't deny the bill, .

When was the last time you tested the APC 500 for correct operation?

When was the battery last replaced?

It's possible that the system had never (recently) been transferred to the APC, and this was the first time that the APC was called upon to power the system, and failed due to an out-dated battery.

Also check the model and serial # of that UPS. There was a recall 10+ yrs ago for it:
https://www.apc.com/site/press_cent...two-uninterruptible-power-supply-models/

A quick check would be if the case is white, then it is probably of that vintage. Probably time to get rid of it anyway and get a new one (preferably with pure sine wave output which handles electrical spikes and dips that some generators put out for electricity).