CHLORIDE SHIPS MODULAR UPS, CLAIMS EFFICIENCY RATES UP TO 99%
UK-based electrical equipment manufacturer Chloride unveiled its latest modular UPS system in October, which the company said was scalable up to 9.6MW of power, while operating at up to 99% efficiency. A single Trinergy UPS cubicle can consist of up to six base 200kW modules.

Up to eight cubicles can be connected in parallel to achieve maximum capacity.

Each cubicle is a complete UPS, which means several of them can be used for redundancy and concurrent maintainability. The system does not have any single point of failure, as each module is a rectifier or an inverter.

The UPSs share the load according to the number of modules each of them consists of. Any of the modules can be isolated for maintenance work without interrupting supply of conditioned power to the data center.

Trinergy monitors the incoming power’s quality and automatically switches between three modes to maximise efficiency. The modes are Maximum Power Control, Maximum Energy Saving and High Efficiency and Power Conditioning.



According to a Chloride representative, the system acts as a “true harmonic filter”, able to correct voltage and harmonics, while monitoring the load. If the load reduces, modules are switched off automatically.

AEG ALSO ROLLS OUT A MODULAR UPS
Another European electrical-equipment vendor also rolled out a modular UPS system in October. Netherlands-based AEG Power Solutions launched its Protect 8 line of UPS systems, starting with Protect 8.31 – an industrial double-conversion model, offering three input phases and one output phase.

The company customises the system based on each client’s needs, building it out in modules. Each rectifier, inverter and bypass module is configured individually, according to the client’s requirements.

“Protect 8 UPS (systems) are customerised,” AEG UPS Protect Family line manager Luca Buscherini said in a statement. “This means that, thanks to our innovative building block approach, each customer gets precisely what they are looking for in terms of mechanical protection, input and output voltages, battery type, and autonomy and desired documentation.”

Similarly to the Chloride solution described above, up to eight Protect 8 UPS systems can be connected in parallel to maximise capacity and redundancy. Each parallel UPS can work with either its own or central battery. Input and output voltages are customisable.

The system is 90-95% efficient, with module capacity up to about 120kVA or 96kW.

AEG’s new product follows the 60-year-old company’s previous line of UPS systems – Protect 3. The company holds more than 70 active patents in power conversion.

ACTIVE POWER MAKES LARGEST SALE EVER
In the US, manufacturer of flywheel-based UPS systems, Active Power, announced its largest deal ever with one of the world’s biggest search engine providers, agreeing to buy more than 16MW of the company’s CleanSource UPS systems.



The deal was Active Power’s second multimillion-dollar order, following two orders it announced in August, totalling about $5m. The orders were for the company’s PowerHouse containerised power and cooling systems.

Each system can contain a generator, a UPS, a generator starting module, switchgear and a chiller.

CleanSource UPS operates at efficiency rates of up to 98%, with capacity to handle up to 3,600kVA, or about 2.9MW.

One of its relatively unique features is the use of flywheel to store energy – a somewhat controversial technology in the industry, with one side boasting the environmental friendliness of chemical-free energy storage and the other arguing that batteries are safer because fewer moving parts means less chance of wear-related maintenance or failure.

One of large data centers deploying flywheelbased UPS systems is the Yahoo! facility in Quincy, Washington, according to the company’s director of climate and energy strategy, Christina Page.

Active Power expects to begin shipments on the new CleanSource deal by the end of 2009, with installation beginning in early 2010.

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This article first appeared in DatacenterDynamics FOCUS magazine

Keywords:data center power, modular UPS, energy storage, UPS, uninterrupted power supply, critical load, data center energy efficiency