UPS & STANDBY POWER FEATURE
Standby power is no longer a last resort for First Response
Providing finance to over 16,000 customers per year, and with approximately 8,000 active motor dealers on the company database, First Response’s data centre security and business continuity is of fundamental importance to the running of its motor financing business. To maintain this, UPS Systems, an independent supplier of standby power solutions, has provided the company with a 20kVA UPS and two V8 cabinets
Left: since the installation of the new UPS, First Response has experienced 24/7 up-time, no loss of customer interaction or data and no power outages
us, which could delay the process of them obtaining finance to purchase a vehicle. This could mean car dealers going to our competitors to secure finance for their customers. Also, our collections department would lose access to the data they need to carry on functioning.” Having experienced prolonged power
outages in the past due to grid failure, First Response sought enough back-up power in order to prevent business down time. The company was unable to accommodate a permanent generator on-site, so needed substantially more battery autonomy than normal.
D
ata from thousands of its customers is held on servers at First
Response’s offices. The company’s substantial database supports 24/7 IT operations and data updates. Neil Raspison, IT infrastructure engineer for the company explained, “If we lost the data centre, First Response would simply cease to operate.” Therefore, a reliable and secure source
of power to the data centre is fundamentally important. Without it the very foundations of the business are at risk. A major power outage could result in business partners and staff unable to access vital online resources, significantly damaging the reputation they have built as a first class service provider. First Response required a reliable and robust data centre that would support business opportunities as they arose.
CONSEQUENCES OF POWER LOSS Neil Raspison explained the risk that power loss would have on the company, “Customers would not be able to contact
THE SOLUTION UPS Systems provided a 20kVA UPS and two V8 cabinets, each comprising 1,800kgs of batteries, to provide six hours of standby power. A dedicated generator hook-up point was also installed. UPS Systems arranged a service contract to ensure a hire generator could be delivered on-site
within four hours, allowing it to be plugged straight into the hook-up point if necessary. As a permanent generator could not be
accommodated on-site, the length of battery run-time required was unusually high. Therefore, the UPS was purpose built with additional chargers to cope with a much larger battery bank.
THE RESULTS Since the installation of the new UPS, the risk to business continuity has been mitigated with First Response benefitting from 24/7 up-time, no loss of customer interaction or data and no power outages. The 20kVA UPS was supplied with sufficient headroom for First Response to increase the load, if required, for its communication operations room.
UPS Systems
www.upssystems.co.uk T: 01488 680 500
Enter 215 KEEPING THE BOYS IN BLUE ON THE BEAT
Powertecnique has recently upgraded two UPS systems at a Northamptonshire police station to support the critical police communications infrastructure, and ensure that the building is never offline. Peter Chai-Tsai, sales and marketing director at
Powertecnique, explained, “We contacted the facilities department of Northamptonshire Police and offered them a consultation to review its current systems. During this review we found that the existing UPS units weren’t functioning as efficiently as they could, so we presented the facilities team at Northamptonshire Police with some options to improve it.” Powertecnique then supplied two 30kVA eKasar units
in an N+1 configuration with a three string common battery which supports various security systems. Configuring the batteries in this way meant that they could be shared between the two new UPS modules to
keep the infrastructure of the site up and running. Having the two UPS in an N+1 configuration guarantees that should one unit fail, the other will be able to seamlessly support the load. Chai-Tsai continued, “Our engineers were mindful
that we didn’t disturb an operational police station during installation, so planned the entire project to minimise disruption and down-time. There was only the briefest period of planned down-time to the existing systems. “We managed this by designing a solution that
fitted over the top of the existing battery and switchgear, replacing both UPS’ and tidying the wiring for the installations.”
Powertecnique
www.powertecnique.com T: 01489 560 700
Enter 216
/ ELECTRICALENGINEERING
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING | JUNE 2014 29
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64