A large number of entrepreneurs believe that improving the resilience of a data centre UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) system would mean a decrease in energy efficiency and an increase in running costs. However, it is not the case with the sophistically designed data centre UPS systems in India.
All data centre customers want 100% availability and absolute protection against any data loss. Thus, the level of resilience should be sufficient enough to make sure that the data centre operation does not get affected by faults or failures.
One needs to understand that both resilience and energy efficiency in a data centre depends upon a number of factors. But, out of all, the most important one is the design of the UPS system. Although the UPS system manufacturers face a lot of challenges while designing a system that has both the features. But, thanks to the technology, which enables them to design such a system that is not just resilient and efficient but scalable as well. Therefore, scalability can be achieved only when you start using a modular design either at the system or at the individual UPS level.
Efficiency versus Resilience: The Debate
Undoubtedly, the key to increasing resilience is to build more redundancy into the UPS system and if you try and add redundancy in your traditional system, it will reduce the load level and make it invariably inefficient. Therefore, the solution here lies in the emergence of such technologies that concentrate on such number of modules which satisfies the immediate demand for power rather than sharing the load equally between all power modules. In the conventional type of UPS system, the on-load modules operate efficiently whereas the off-load modules are put to a state that consumes no power at all. Switching the off-load modules to normal operation takes only a couple of milliseconds ensuring that the workability does not gets affected with such a transition.
Efficiency versus Resilience: The Solution
The leading manufacturers of data centre UPS system, India, uses highly advanced technology where individual UPSs are made up of several power modules. Using which you can establish an accurate match between instantaneous power requirements and the number of modules that need to be in service to meet those requirements.
To boost the energy efficiency of a highly redundant UPS system, manufacturers have come up with energy saver functionality. For almost all critical data centre applications, the double conversion UPSs are the first choice. This is because it feeds the load directly from the mains supply only when the supply is within tolerance and problem free. And in the energy saver mode, one can achieve efficiencies of about 99% or even more without impacting the transition.
The UPSs of today, have lowered losses considerably than in the conventional types as they produce less heat and require less cooling. Thus, the data centre managers can now save money and energy not just on the primary function but even on the running costs of it.
