UPS & STANDBY POWER SUPPLEMENT FEATURE CLEAN AND RELIABLE POWER
Jorge Aguinaga, manager, 3-phase UPS product management for Eaton’s Power Quality Business in EMEA, explores the issues surrounding the quality of future power supplies and looks at the technology being developed to help
A
lmost every aspect of industry and commerce today is critically dependent
on having continuous access to IT resources. This uninterrupted access can only be assured, however, if those resources receive electrical power that is reliable and free from disturbances. In itself this is nothing new, but there is a fresh challenge facing designers of power systems for IT applications. The quality of power provided by the public supply network is likely to deteriorate, at least for a time, as the transition is made to renewable energy sources and as older power plants are shut down because they do not meet current environmental standards. The supply network was designed to receive power from a relatively small number of large generating plants that had very predictable outputs. Now the network is being asked to receive power from a large number of smaller energy sources with much less predictable outputs. It is simply not possible to reconfigure the network overnight to cope fully with such an enormous change but, until this work is complete, which may be many years, supply quality is likely to be compromised, with voltage and frequency variations much more common than they were in the past. This means that there is a greater need than ever for means of safeguarding the supply of power to key assets in order to ensure business continuity. In critical applications, this most often takes the form of an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). When the mains supply is available, the UPS ensures that the load receives high quality power and, during power failures, it draws on its energy storage (typically batteries) to continue to provide the load with power. The UPS must make sure that, at any
given time, the load receives clean and reliable power regardless of the condition of the mains power. It must protect the load against many types of power quality problem, including not just long and short term supply interruptions, but also frequency and voltage variations, transient voltages, harmonic distortion and many more. Advances in technology and the
growing ‘digitalisation’ of the world mean
Above: Jorge Aguinaga, manager, 3-phase UPS product management for Eaton’s Power Quality Business in EMEA
that many more IT applications must now be considered critical. Simultaneously, environmental concerns have been increasing along with the cost of power, leaving UPS users with difficult choices to make about achieving the right balance between resiliency and efficiency, as it has traditionally been considered that it is necessary to make sacrifices in one of these areas to make gains in the other.
UP FOR THE CHALLENGE UPS manufacturers are now addressing this conundrum. The latest products combine lowest total cost of ownership (TCO), achieved by providing market leading efficiency and excellent scalability features, with exceptional resiliency supported by innovative technology and design.
an issue. The first of these is the development of novel high efficiency power converters based on the latest IGBT technologies. This has enabled the overall efficiency of the latest UPSs to be raised to 97% when operating in double conversion mode. The second development is a new energy saving technology based on powerful algorithms that allow the UPS to operate on a ‘double conversion on demand’ basis determined by the quality of incoming mains. In the best examples, the transition between energy saving mode and double conversion mode is seamless and extremely fast (less than 2ms), and is therefore invisible for the load. As a result of these developments, users can benefit from the unmatched security and quality of supply that only double conversion UPSs can provide, while also enjoying reduced energy bills, which will ultimately provide big savings in TCO. A further benefit is that the high efficiency of such UPSs means that they generate less heat, so users also save on cooling costs. Other key features offered by the latest
UPSs include paralleling technology and battery management. Paralleling allows more UPSs to be added to an existing installation as user requirements grow, providing convenient and cost effective scalability without any risk of compromising resilience or reliability. Battery management extends battery life by as much as 50% by charging batteries only when they need it rather than continuously float charging them. Another area which has seen
Above: the digitalisation of the world combined with an increased mix of renewables is increasing the need for clean and reliable power
One way this is being achieved is by
using double conversion topology. This means that the incoming power is processed in two stages - (a) from AC to DC via a rectifier and (b) from DC to AC power to the load. Double conversion UPSs are acknowledged as providing the best possible protection for loads as they ensure clean and reliable power to load irrespective of the quality of the mains supply. However, historically, double conversion was also considered as having a potential shortcoming - its two power conversion stages both contribute losses meaning efficiency had to be sacrificed in favour of protection. However, thanks to two recent
technological advances this is no longer / ELECTRICALENGINEERING
developments recently is the power management software available with the UPS. Key things to look out for are whether it is fully compatible with all major operating systems and all popular virtualisation software and therefore allows the UPS to be easily integrated into almost any IT environment. The digitalisation of the world combined
with an increased mix of renewables is increasing the need for clean and reliable power. This combined with the ever increasing quest to develop cost effective solutions and reduce environmental impact is creating challenges never seen before in UPS systems. Thankfully, there are now a number of advancements in UPS technology which enables the design of power systems for IT applications to be adapted to meet these challenges accordingly.
Eaton
www.eaton.uk.com T: 01753 608 700
Enter 237 UPS & STANDBY POWER | SEPTEMBER 2014 S15
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