Out with the old – in with the new
Uninterruptible power supply systems (UPSs)
have for many years been relied upon by computer users to provide standby power
in the event of an unexpected outage. The ubiquitous UPS has been found lurking
under desks, in server closets and in other areas around the office for many
years.
Up to now, users have accepted their
ability to provide only a short period of time (usually between six and ten
minutes) in which to save any data they were working on and exit the programs
they were using before the secondary power source (the UPS-linked battery) ran
out.
However, as South Africa’s power crisis
worsened and power-outages and load shedding became an inescapable fact of
life, so the focus on UPSs has been refined.
How reliable are some of the outdated UPSs
that have been doing duty for many years? Have their levels of service not been
compromised by age and deteriorating battery performance? Are they capable of
meeting today’s ‘power-conditioning’ demands – in other words, eliminating
harmful spikes and ‘brownouts’ often associated with load-shedding which are capable
of doing immense damage to sensitive computer systems?
As UPSs migrated from the back offices and
data centres of corporate South Africa, being press-ganged into active duty in
customer-facing environments (in retail stores, supporting checkout counters,
cash tills, Speedpoint devices and emergency lighting), so the inevitable
compromises common to most aging devices have been highlighted.
Probably the most important is their
inability to provide a pre-determined power supply for long enough to see out
the duration of the average load-shedding event – which is from an hour to over
four hours.
Without doubt, the efficiency levels of modern
UPSs are significantly enhanced. In fact, specially engineered ‘long-run’ UPSs
from Powermode’s Q-on brand are capable of providing up to five hours of
standby power.
These systems incorporate charging system design
advances, allowing modern deep-cycle battery packs to be linked ‘daisy-chain’
fashion for a sizable boost in efficiency.
Modern UPSs also address the issue of total
cost of ownership (TCO). A UPS system depends not only on the purchase price,
but on many other factors over the course of its lifecycle, including
installation costs, operating and maintenance costs and potential upgrade costs
to meet future demands.
Good quality, modern UPSs now compete with
traditional, centralised UPS systems on many fronts. They have a smaller
footprint and are modular in design, with the ability to scale to meet
tomorrow’s power provisioning requirements.
Generally, UPS systems do not function at
100% capacity all the time, but rather under partial load conditions. This is
particularly true of outmoded centralised systems which were often
‘over-engineered’ and purchased with all the capacity anticipated for the
future. As a result they have been running well below capacity for a number of
years.
Modular systems, on the other hand, by
their nature, can be configured - and re-configured - close to capacity to meet
increasing demand over time.
Because a UPS system runs at its highest
efficiency when it is near maximum rated capacity (as load levels drops, so
does efficiency) modular systems owners enjoy an energy efficiency advantage.
They can also enjoy reduced maintenance
costs. As small modules are ‘hot-swappable’ and isolated (without load
interruption) they can be returned to the manufacturer for a quick repair
without jeopardising the entire system during a lengthy and costly call-out of
a service crew.
This shorter mean time to repair (MTTR)
metric can be up to 12 times less compared to a centralised system, increasing
the availability of the UPS installation approaching the 99.999% (five-nines)
goal of just dive minutes downtime per year.
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