Supply Modular

Modular Upss Keep Data Centres Flying

Modular UPS technology has gained momentum over the past few years, especially in data centres. Uninterruptible Power Supplies Limited (UPSL) sales director Peter Bentley and operations director John Bladon explain the energy efficiency and environmental factors behind this growth.

 

Ever wondered why modern jet aircraft are equipped with two, and in some cases four engines? ‘For extra power and speed’, is the most common answer. That’s one reason, but there is another, arguably more important one – to provide redundancy.

 

Of the several meanings of the word, the one associated with engineering implies fault-tolerant design. Fault-tolerant systems continue operating, even when one or more of their redundant components fail.

 

Bird Strikes

Unlike your hot hatch or family saloon, aircraft are equipped with redundant engines so that in the event of one failing – as the result, for example, of a bird strike or BASH (bird aircraft strike hazard) – the other engines continue to support the load.

 

“UPS modules are related to a Ups System in the same way that individual engines are related to an aircraft’s propulsion system,” suggests Bladon. “The two roles of the engines may be regarded as being one for capacity and one for redundancy (1+1). Modular UPS systems may also have 1+1 and other more complex N+1 and N+n capacity-redundancy configurations (also referred to as parallel-redundant configurations).”

 

 

 

Modular UPS systems

The introduction of transformerless UPSs into the market – single-phase UPSs in 1994 and three-phase UPSs in 1997 – paved the way for the development of rack-format modular UPS systems.

 

“Transformer-based UPS systems were far too large and heavy to ever become modular,” says Bladon. “However, light and powerful transformerless three phase UPSs were perfect for rack-mount, modular configurations.” The world’s first three-phase modular UPS system, the PowerWAVE9000, was launched by UPSL in 2001.

 

There were two main incentives for this development. The first was that the capacity of UPS systems could be extended to support the increased critical loads as data centres grew, which they almost invariably do. Nowadays, we know this as system scalability.

 

The second was the all important goal of system availability. “By paralleling UPS modules in parallel-redundant configurations, the availability of UPS systems, and consequently the availability of the critical systems that they support, was very significantly enhanced,” explains Bladon.

 

Hot-swappable modular UPS systems are cheaper to run

Unlike aircraft engines, up-market UPS modules possess the property of ‘hot swappability.’ This means that UPS modules can be inserted and removed from UPS systems while they remain operational.

 

In a parallel-redundant configuration a module can be taken out of service for repair or maintenance while the remaining UPS module(s) continue to support the load.  Due to ‘hot swappability’ there is not any risk or disruption to the critical load during this process.

 

 “‘Hot-swappability’ of modules gives UPS systems the ability to continually match their capacity to the size of the critical loads they support. This ‘right-sizing’ delivers energy efficiency,” asserts Bentley.

 

Meeting the ‘blade server’ challenge

State-of-the-art modular transformerless UPS systems – like UPSL’s PowerWAVE9000DPA™ – are highly efficient (95 to 96 percent efficiency between 25 and 100 percent full load rating), have very low input current harmonic distortion (2 to 3 percent THDi between 30 and 100 percent full load rating) and attract low whole-life costs.

 

They are also blade-server-friendly – capable of supplying loads with a leading power factor up to 0.9 without the need for UPS de-rating. Blade-server-friendliness is an increasingly important consideration in data centres where the growth of the blade server population is continuing its steep upward trend.

 

Environmental Issues

Power consumption in most data centres is continuing to rise rapidly as a consequence of ever increasing round-the-clock demands for more IT services.

 

Bentley points out that corporations are having to strike a balance between complying with the government’s vision for them to consider the economic, social and environmental impact of their activities, to become more aware of their corporate social responsibilities (CSR), and delivering the highest possible level of system-availability demanded by their customers. “State-of-the-art modular UPS systems are best equipped to enable corporations to strike this balance.”

 

Increasing share of the data centre market

Bentley says that as a consequence of the many benefits they provide, there is an increasing momentum for modular parallel-redundant (N+n) UPS systems in the market, especially in the data centre segment. “Today, over 70% of the UPS systems that we sell are parallel systems. Three factors have brought this about.

 

“Firstly, early parallel UPS systems required system managers to assign individual UPS modules to either ‘capacity’ roles or ‘redundancy’ roles. Today’s systems have the capability to auto-configure, which means that their UPS modules operate in ‘capacity’ role if they have to, or in ‘redundancy’ if they could do.

 

“Secondly, the relative costs and physical size of UPS systems have significantly fallen. Today’s modular 200kVA parallel-redundant systems have a footprint of less than two computer room floor tiles and an impressive power density of 342kW/m2,” continues Bentley.

 

“The third and final factor is that the business or mission criticality (importance) of the loads powered by UPS systems has increased to the extent that parallel-redundancy is no longer a ‘nice to have’ – it’s an essential.”  UPSL’s hot swappable PowerWAVE9000DPA™ modular UPS system can provide 6 nines availability.

 

Where continuous power is mission critical, UPS systems of the ‘true’-on-line parallel-redundant hot-swappable modular variety just keep on flying.

About the Author

Peter Bentley is the sales and marketing director for Uninterruptible Power Supplies Limited. He has over 20 years experience in power technology and is the co author of ‘The UPS handbook’, the definitive guide to the UPS industry. The book is now in its third edition and has sold over 30,000 copies worldwide

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