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).

Look no further than the APC. It is either defective or it is too small to sustain power to the system for a reasonable amount of time.

Emergency generators take some time to come up to full load. The better ones get the engine and generator full up before cutting the power through the transfer switch. In that time period which can be several seconds to several minutes, the UPS needs to be able to fully power the system until the generator takes on the load.

In the city, we have several clients that will call, from time to time, and alert us to a planned power outage. When that outage is for a prolonged period of time, beyond what the UPS can sustain, we dispatch a technician and power down the system. When the power is restored, we send the tech to power the system back up again. We have never had a client complain or not pay the bill. It's just good insurance.

The electrician has no obligation to go to every electrical device and power it down. That's the owner's responsibility. You should have been notified by the owner of the planned outage and then you could have dispatched and powered down the system. The electrician had to power down the entire building or, at least, the part that your telephone system was connected. The emergency generator transfer switch has to be between the commercial power and the load for the generator to work. That involves a planned power interruption.

Rcaman

While not practical in a typical commercial setting, Central Offices will have battery strings that will support the present load while the site generator fires up and the transfer switch shifts from commercial to local power.

In the old panel and SxS COs, the entire office was run on battery all the time. The commercial power was just used to keep the rectifier chargers going. It never made a difference if commercial power was available or not, the Bell Telephones ALWAYS worked!

Rcaman

Modern C.O. facilities are still operating that way. Offices can run on batteries for a period of time. Of course that isn't a situation that any provider wants to have happen.

This maybe be a litte unrelated. A few years ago when Starbucks opened in town. They had issue to get the utility power hooked up. They started to set up the store when running on a generator. The frequency was set incorretly instead of 60 HZ it was set for 100 HZ as a result the store had lotsa stuff that didnt like it. They had to replace a bunch of the electronic's.

LOL, I thought you were going to say that all the clocks were running fast - and they were clocking out in 5 hours for an 8 hour shift!

This is why it's important to have a good generator with frequency and voltage meters to allow monitoring of the supply. There's a lot of room to go cheap, but this is not one of them. Expensive does not necessarily mean better, but in the world of generators, it usually does.

Rcaman

Thanks for all the info , very good help, already informed the customer for future reference. Will update apc ups. Much appreciated.

Not all UPSs have AVR. (automatic voltage regulation)

Cheaper ones don't kick in till the power is out and they will pass through low and high voltages.

When they installed the generator, they had to also install a transfer switch which means they had to kill the power to the building.

I'm willing to bet they didn't turn off everything, like your phone system and it had to go to the UPS.

Like everyone else said, UPS was probably bad or on the edge of being bad. When I was taking care of Fire Alarms at a school District, I got into the habit of testing everything that was battery backed up once a year and replaced the batteries every 5 years.

I have seen way too many UPS units that have never been touched since they were installed and many were so overloaded they would never of worked correctly even if new.

You put in small unit for phones and IT comes and plugs in all their stuff.

I always mark mine with a P-Touch (largest font) "For Telephone Use Only".

At one client the IT guy had done exactly that, so I asked him why, He said for power backup in case of a power failure. I then asked him how many of his computers would work without power. The look on his face was priceless!

LOL!!!

I went to replace APC ups and the same problem happened again after powering down the Nortel Cics and Call pilot 100, ,the system telephones don't reboot back to normal , the don't work until i pull off all telephone jumpers for digital phones and punch them down 1 at a time , i guess the system most have been corupted or power supply has been damaged and does not handle a full reboot, unless i take jumpers off ?

We are all here to help, and I wish to offer some advice in the most gentle way possible. You have gone through some weird operations of trouble-shooting that have wasted your time and made you confused and frustrated.

First, you swapped out an entire system, and the problem was probably just the incoming power. You still don't know if that's really the original cause. Now you suspect that the power supply is damaged, after all.

Finally, you are using up your time by pulling out cross-connections and re-terminating them ???!!! For goodness sakes, wouldn't it be more efficient to just go around and unplug the phones? Or unplug them right at the KSU?

Now that you think you have a reliable UPS, by-pass it, and plug the system directly into commercial power. (Have you measured the power at the receptical?)

Do you have (from one of your earlier attempts) a spare power supply? Can you swap it in a reasonable time frame?

Arthur remember when you were in the field and starting to go around in circles on a case of trouble? You'd go sit down in the coffee shop have a cup of coffee and talk about something else; and all of a sudden the light would come on and you'd have the trouble fixed. part of being some of the old true blue telephone men.

Jim, no, I don't remember replacing any systems, without first doing some basic trouble-shooting steps. But then again, I am inept at most things non-telephonic. Telephony trouble-shooting is the only thing at which I excel. It just seems to be something that was hard-wired into my brain at birth.

Atechguy: I still wonder at the method of pulling off cross-connections, and then re-terminating them. Why can't you just unplug each phone, right at the desks, and then re-plug them?

Have you watched the output of the power supply rails with a DVM, first with no phones attached, and then when you do the re-attachment of the phones? If you really believe that there is a power supply issue, go back and replace it with a known working one.

Have you visually inspected the electrolytics on the PS board? Do any of them exhibit swelling at the tops? There may indeed have been a power surge when Sparky was working on the generator. It may have caused a marginal cap to go bad.

Why walk around to 12 telephones , when i can do it at the terminal block ,its faster without interrupting all those people, i have electronics certificate , and have replaced caps ,on Samsung systems, i will have to take a look at power supply and test. Thanks

12 phones??? I thought we were talking about a big system.

Because every time you remove and then reterminate a cross connection, you introduce another possible failure. Because the wires get shorter. Because you might swap them by mistake. Because it's a waste of time.

Since the system is not working properly to begin with, what's the big deal in unplugging a few sets for a minute or two? You've already theorized that the current drain is causing the PS to fail. Now it's time to prove it by watching the supply with a meter.

I would do the same and for the same reason. Sounds like a bad power supply on the board which means changing the KSU and reprogramming.

What I would do:
a) Bother each user and take note of their phone's model, buttons and their programming (Yes it's a PITA, but they'll appreciate it as they won't have to reprogram any buttons afterwards.) While there also note the ext's number & port. Example: 223/126 You'll need this on the bench!
b) Take note of all "system" programming
c) Pre-Program another CICS with the same level of software on the bench. When programming each extension, connect the same model of phone as that extension had with the old system or you're wasting your time.
d) Return to client either during off hours or preferably at a "quiet" time during the day...usually lunch hour, and replace the KSU.

All programming will be as it was if you did it right and you'll be the hero. Total "Client Down Time" should be 5-10 minutes.