Published on Friday, Dec 18 2009 by
1. What are the issues that our readers need to be aware as far as choosing and using a UPS system goes?
Budget is naturally a key criterion in the selection process. However, it’s important to ensure that suppliers are not cutting costs and corners that will compromise your power protection in the future. Cost-benefit analysis should consider the best price against supplier expertise, product technology and quality, and after-sales services. It’s also important to consider ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ - energy efficiency and other savings mean that the potentially higher purchase price of modern, modular UPS can be recovered within the first year of operation, and will continue to deliver cost benefits for the lifetime of the system.
Choosing the correct UPS system to support a connected critical load is not simply a matter of matching the output power to that load. The solution must also take into account reliability, availability and expandability among other factors. Changes in the way UPS systems are designed have highlighted the benefits of modular, transformerless units. These provide new ways to save energy and costs, including rightsizing the UPS over time, higher efficiency for partial loads, lower cooling requirements, improved input power factor and improved input current total harmonic distortion.
For many business critical loads these days, extended autonomy is essential (rather than graceful shutdown) when dealing with lengthy power disruptions. Specifiers are increasingly specifying UPS systems packaged with a standby generator to provide total continuity until mains supply is restored. UPSL provides integrated UPS and generator solutions, ensuring fully matched systems and a true ‘no-break’ supply in the event of a power failure.
2. Can you talk about some of the organisations that you have worked with who have deployed your products and the challenges that you faced?
We installed PowerWAVE UPS systems at 43 Nuffield Hospital sites, to protect power supplies to operating theatres and intensive treatment facilities. Work was scheduled to minimise the impact on consultants and patients but emergencies frequently meant postponing installations, so teamwork and logistics were vital.
Many Nuffield hospitals are in period buildings so site specific problems frequently arose, including installations requiring block and tackle or cranes, basement access via a narrow spiral staircase, and door-jambs removed and replaced. Many of the battery cabinets were customised to fit the available space and the required autonomy, while some UPSs were mounted on wheels, some in cages and others on plinths. The project was made immeasurably more viable because the UPSs employed are some of the smallest and most efficient on the market.
Financial institutions have also historically occupied city-centre sites with space challenges. On many occasions, installing modular rack-mounted transformerless UPS systems has proven to be the only viable solution to meet performance and floor space specifications, since they provide high power density and the smallest available physical footprint. Compared with traditional stand-alone systems, such modular UPSs typically take up only a quarter of the floor space.
3. The 'green' angle is something we cannot ignore these days – can you say what Uninterruptible Power Supplies Ltd is doing here?
The drive for new technologies that deliver maximum power protection while reducing power consumption and carbon emissions has been key to the development and uptake of our modular UPS systems, which offer significant improvements in energy efficiency and physical footprint. We have also led the advancement of transformerless technology and will soon be launching our next generation of environmentally-friendly UPS.
Analysts Frost & Sullivan have said it is vital that applications consuming high amounts of power, such as data centres, adopt energy-efficient UPS. In our experience businesses are turning to modular UPS solutions to maximise system flexibility and availability, and to meet wider strategic aims on energy efficiency and environmental compliance.
There is also huge potential to reduce electricity consumption by continually matching the capacity of UPS units to their respective critical loads. However, many older UPS systems employ outmoded technology and are incorrectly sized for today’s needs, creating a wasteful gap between installed capacity and the size of the actual critical load. This burns expensive electricity and creates excess heat emissions, compromising companies’ efforts to achieve environmental objectives.
Today’s modular, rack-mounted systems are scalable and can be right-sized by inserting or removing ‘hot-swappable’ modules, enabling power to be added as requirements grow.
We have produced a free ‘UPS energy assessment guide’ (www.upspower.co.uk/energyguide) which illustrates how modern UPS systems can help to optimise power availability while reducing energy use, CO2 emissions and running costs.
4. What are the products/technologies to look out for from Uninterruptible Power Supplies Ltd in 2009?
We have two major launches this year. Our new PowerWAVE Generators series fully complements the PowerWAVE UPS range, providing a ‘one-stop-shop’ for standby power solutions including supply, installation, commissioning and service. With increasing connectivity in IT and growing round-the-clock dependence on critical loads, seamless interaction between UPS and standby generators is a vital development. A turnkey package ensures fully matched UPS and generator systems and eliminates the problem of demarcation between different suppliers.
We will also be launching our latest transformerless three-phase UPS system, delivering the best combination of energy efficiency and overall power performance in the industry. The new addition to the PowerWAVE range will use less energy, generate less CO2, take up less space and provide significant cost savings.
5. What is the future for UPS technology?
The future of power protection is steering towards more intelligent UPS systems, offering enhanced flexibility alongside higher power density. The modular approach is leading to UPS systems being right-sized from day one, with the facility for simply adding capacity or redundancy as and when required; this accurately meets customers’ requirements now and caters for any possible changes in the future. Modular UPS technology also offers a much smaller and lighter solution, lending itself to applications where space is at a premium or where access on site is difficult.
UPSL has also pioneered Decentralized Parallel Architecture (DPATM), which is uniquely designed to remove any single point of failure, achieving virtually zero downtime and the elimination of costly disruptions to mission critical operations. DPA works by paralleling independent rack-format UPS modules, with each containing all the necessary hardware and software required for full system operation.
With a minimum of one module over and above that required by the ‘capacity’ system, the load is supported with UPS power if any one module shuts down, thereby providing full N+1 redundancy and significantly increasing system availability – an important factor at a time when power supply in the UK is becoming less dependable but more critical to business operations.
When compared with conventional power protection systems, DPA dramatically reduces electricity costs, heat loss and CO2 emissions, delivering the industry’s smallest footprint and lowest total cost of ownership. DPA also enables users to hot-swap modules, without risk to the critical load, thus significantly reducing repair time and simplifying system upgrades.