SUPPLEMENT FEATURE UPS & STANDBY POWER
WHAT CAN BE DONE about poor power quality?
Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) are used in many applications to provide back-up power in the event of a power failure. However, as Rob Morris, country manager at Powervar UK explains, this is not enough and only tackles the obvious problems
A
lthough power cuts and surges are fairly rare events, they get noticed because they cause fuses to blow and lights to go out. In reality, there are smaller events that slip under the radar but happen much more often and have the ability to damage components inside electrical equipment or cause complete failure of the device. Issues that are caused by poor power
quality may well go unnoticed such as a computer locking up and incidents like this can damage the equipment over time, eventually leading to complete failure of the computer. Often, there is no apparent cause for the failure, and the cost of an engineer call-out and replacement of the equipment can also add up.
WHAT IS POOR POWER QUALITY? Poor power quality can be defined as any variation in the voltage magnitude of the electricity supply. These variations include noise, spikes and surges, as well as dips and complete blackouts. A dip in the performance of electrical
devices is not the only result of poor power quality. The actual lifetime of the devices itself can be shortened as small dips and surges erode components inside electrical devices, making them act up, and eventually fail completely. A restaurant or pub could lose customers without a working EPOS system so a call to an engineer is inevitable - but this costs money. Without a clear reason for the EPOS system acting up or failing completely, the broken component will probably need replacing. When this happens time and time again, it could become very expensive for any business.
WHAT CAUSES THESE EVENTS? Power problems can have many causes such as storms, faults in power lines and heavy power usage by homes and offices. This creates enough of a drain on the electricity grid to cause a dip in the energy supply. However, more often than not the
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problem is caused by something within the building. Switching electrical devices on can create noise on the line or send voltage spikes around the electricity supply of the property. These events then go on to damage the internal components of other devices. Cardboard crushers at the back of a shop draw large amounts of electricity from the mains which can then affect the chip-and-pin machine at the front. Even a freezer in a pub kitchen can send interference through the power system which can lead to damage of internal components in sensitive electronic equipment. When powerful electrical devices like laser
printers, cardboard crushers and freezers are turned on, they can send interference through power lines, disrupting other devices in the building. While we might think a freezer in one room won’t have any effect on the fridge in another, the two devices use the same power lines and are therefore both connected.
WHAT CAN BE DONE? Power conditioning equipment contains a surge diverter and back-up power supply, already seen in some homes and offices. In addition to this, it removes the irregularities in the power which affect electronic devices. RST, a provider of point of sale (POS)
solutions and information technology, saw the benefits of power conditioning
Above: Retail Systems Technology (RTS) provide point of sale (POS) solutions and information technology to the hospitality and retail sectors
Below: Powervar UK can provide power
conditioning systems which remove the irregularities in the power supply which affect electronic devices
when its customers were experiencing problems. It provides businesses in leisure, hospitality and retail industries with electronic point of sale (EPOS) equipment but found customers had been experiencing problems with the terminals. One hotel which hosts large events during the summer found that food orders were lost, incorrect or weren’t transmitted to the kitchen properly. It might appear that this was caused by a problem in the EPOS system but RST knew that it was the power. Dips and surges can confuse EPOS systems, causing the problems seen by the hotel. Understandably, staff and customers got frustrated. To address these problems, RST installed power conditioning equipment in EPOS units. In more than a decade of using power conditioning equipment, RST has seen the problems in its units almost completely disappear. The problems in the power, while often
hidden, are very real. The effect they have on electrical equipment is also very real. When we experience electrical devices acting up, we rarely think the cause might lie in the power lines. Power conditioning removes these problems, protecting our sensitive equipment. Not only does this save us the time required to fix the problem, it also saves us money by extending the lifetime of equipment.
Powervar
www.powervar.com T: 01793 553 980
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