sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Vodavi Telephones & Systems Power Surge

The past two week i had two stse go down after a power outage/surge. Both were installed on 2005. Is there a age issue or is this revision not as able to counter a power issue, Both have co and power protection.

Thanks gary s.

Yes Gary you are correct. In time 10 years or so maybe less.
Component on the CPU failure. Improper voltages from output of power supply. It has nothing to due with your Installation. It will fail.... Good luck. I gave up on them, unless your blessed with several spare KSU-s.It is not always a Battery issue.

I would consider a small UPS for it...might help it last a bit longer.

Yes i did consider a ups. We had one ksu repaired for less than $200.00 with a 1 year warranty. My customers see that as a better choice than a new system. These are small mom and pop locations. Thanks both for your comments. gary s.

What do you mean by going down? Did the system just lose programming due to a dead memory batter?

It's a pretty well-known fact that the memory retention battery will fail on any systems after 7-10 years of service. That's a pretty good run for the money in my book. These are not easy at all to replace in the field on the STS family.

There are also some power supply issues on the 3501 versions. My suggestion would be to purchase a used KSU and send it in for factory repair/refurbishing/upgrade.

In the meantime, get database backups from all of your customers that are using these systems as a courtesy during your travels. When/if their KSU fails, you can show up with a good-as-new replacement, load their database in ten minutes and save the day.

Take the bad KSU and send it in for the same repair process. We do it all the time and it's great for support of your customers.

You have zero reasons to believe a UPS does hardware protection. For a long list of reasons that can be provided in another post, if curious.

Second, most damage is due to manufacturing defects. Not due too 'dirty' power, voltage variations, and other popular urban myths. Those other 'reasons' mostly come from speculation encouraged by advertising. Not from learning engineering and how electricity works.

Third, protection in a CO does little to protect a local KSU. Protection adjacent to that KSU can even make damage easier. Protection from transients does not exist if not recommended with numbers. For example, a potentially destructive surge can be hundreds of thousands of joules. An adjacent protector absorbs how many joules? Hundreds? A thousand? That near zero protection sell for $30 or $90. What kind of protection is that? Protection of their bottom line. And not of your hardware.

Fourth, something completely different - unfortunately called a surge protector - does protect from typically destructive transients. That costs about $1 per protected appliance. It must connect low impedance (ie less than 10 feet) to what actually does protection. To what harmlessly absorbs hundreds of thousands of joules. Single point earth ground.

Effective protection comes with numbers that claim protection from all typically destructive transients - including lightning. Lightning is typically 20,000 amps. That means a protector for AC main must be at least 50,000 amps.

Notice recommendations based in numbers. Recommendations without numbers are often only from wild speculation. Protection of a KSU means a destructive transient does not even enter a building. Without that solution (that has been standard on phone equipment over 100 years ago), then a typically destructive transient (typically once every seven years) can obtain earth ground destructive via a KSU.

But again, most damage is traceable to manufacturing defects. No magic box such as a UPS even claim to provide hardware protection. Always demand spec numbers with any recommendation. What is left is honest recommendations based in science.

Most of my outages have been caused by either an expired battery or if in the case of a truly dead KSU, just a blown capacitor that is fairly easy to replace. Other than that, I have had only a few KSUs that I have replaced instead of actually repairing. But if one doesn't know these simple fixes, it can be discouraging. All systems have their expected useful life expectancy but I seem to be able to keep my Vodavi stuff just going and going.

A ups protects against a power outage, not a surge, but sometimes power going up and down over a short period of time can do some harm to a phone system, dump the programming for one, even with a good RAM battery. Power outages can take out a PRI card. I have known it to happen more than once...so it may not add life to all the hardware, but it certainly can't hurt. And I have to disagree about lightning protection as a rule...I have used it on exposed arial and long buried wire runs to phones with success. Saved the KSU and the set when other pieces of equipment were damaged on site by lightning.

Now in this case, if the system has a bad RAM batter a UPS will help only as long as the KSU never loses power, which isn't much help at all, since you have to unplug the system to plug it into the UPS...so my suggestion was not a good one to fix the problem at hand.

Derrick
also know by many of my fellow RVers as -Gramps-