Forgotten UPS Maintenance… and How It Cost Thousands of Dollars
A piece of equipment that never fails might be exactly the one that poses the greatest risk.
A few years ago, a mid-sized company had a small but reliable data center. Or so they thought. They had a 40 kVA UPS running “without issues” for 6 years. Nobody touched it. Nobody checked it. Until a real power outage put it to the test.
The day it wouldn’t start.
The electrical grid failed during a storm. The UPS, which was supposed to hold for 10 minutes, failed in 8 secondsThe battery was sulfated. The inverter was damaged. The alarm had been disconnected for months.
Estimated cost of the failure:
- Internal service outage: 4 hours.
- Loss of access to ERP and CRM systems.
- Client contractual penalty
- Data recovery: partial, with errors Estimated total: $28,000 USD
What went wrong?
- There was no maintenance plan.
- The battery was never replaced.
- No one checked the alarms or logs.
- A transfer test was never performed.
What does the TIA-942 say?
The standard requires Documented maintenance, periodic testing, and qualified personnel.Ignoring this is a technical non-compliance and an operational risk.
Lessons learned:
- A UPS is not “plug & forget"
- Every battery has a lifespan: between 3 and 5 years.
- Failures don’t give warnings: that’s why testing is done under controlled conditions.
- Preventive maintenance is much cheaper than corrective maintenance.
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