The increas­ing incid­ence of power cuts across UK and Europe has alerted com­pan­ies depend­ent on crit­ical power to the neces­sity for their oper­a­tions to be pro­tec­ted by standby equip­ment, such as Gen­er­at­ors and Unin­ter­rupt­ible Power Sup­plies (UPS).

What is less well under­stood is the care required in spe­cify­ing the most suit­able back-up system, as an inap­pro­pri­ate choice will still leave a busi­ness vulnerable.

Design

Before a standby system is installed, a thor­ough ana­lysis should be made of the spe­cific applic­a­tion to ascer­tain the load, oper­at­ing envir­on­ment and the most appro­pri­ate design for provid­ing crit­ical power. This is seldom done well, if at all and con­sequently many standby systems installed are simply incap­able of ful­filling their emer­gency role. Always consult a sup­plier with in-house design ser­vices for a total power solution.

Install­a­tion

Sur­pris­ingly often in crit­ical applic­a­tions the quality of install­a­tion has not been given suf­fi­cient atten­tion — often as a direct result of a “lowest price tender” system. Where systems have been installed down to a price rather than up to a required quality, risks are ever-present.

Poor quality com­pon­ents, low quality work­man­ship, under sizing of cables, wrong set­tings on adjustable com­pon­ents and circuit break­ers, inad­equate cooling systems, poor fuel systems, etc all lead to high prob­ab­il­ity of failure.

Main­ten­ance

Equip­ment needs regular main­ten­ance to perform at its best and this should be con­sidered a must not an option. There is always res­ist­ance to spend­ing more than the initial cost of the equip­ment. Where the equip­ment does not display any outward signs of noise, motion or activ­ity, as in the case of a UPS, it is easy to forget it after it has been installed. To over­look main­ten­ance would be a grave mistake. The UPS is there to protect and support busi­nesses in an emer­gency, so it has to be ready. Main­ten­ance is an integ­ral part of the UPS system, and should not be mar­keted as an extra level of insurance.

Bat­ter­ies

Bat­ter­ies are the heart of all back-up power systems and are the main cause of oper­a­tional fail­ures. Without con­tinu­ous battery mon­it­or­ing, users of the major­ity of static UPS systems, cent­ral­ised emer­gency light­ing systems and rec­ti­fiers are unlikely to have any warning before their system lets them down.

Age

Most organ­isa­tions would not dream of using crit­ical IT equip­ment beyond 3 — 5 years of age. The same organ­isa­tions seldom con­sider upgrad­ing or renew­ing a circuit breaker or a gen­er­ator control system. Some standby gen­er­ator systems date back 30 years and beyond. Even if a system is cor­rectly designed, installed and main­tained it could still fail due to its age. This is simply because build­ings are dynamic cre­ations, where the ori­ginal cri­teria for the crit­ical power install­a­tion may change over time. As part of your main­ten­ance agree­ment insist on a regular assess­ment of the crit­ical load and the system’s ability to support it.

Tem­per­at­ure

Main standby power com­pon­ents, diesel gen­er­at­ors and UPS gen­er­ate sub­stan­tial amounts of heat. As any install­a­tion draws in its cooling air at these elev­ated ambient tem­per­at­ures it is imme­di­ately heated further by the heat rejec­ted from the equip­ment. This effect often forms a vicious circle, ulti­mately res­ult­ing in the standby system losing its thermal equi­lib­rium with tem­per­at­ures climb­ing inex­or­able upwards until the whole system fails. Chlor­ide, a total service pro­vider, carries out more than 500 load tests each year and has found that many systems installed in the UK struggle to main­tain thermal equi­lib­rium at sub 30ºC ambient tem­per­at­ures. Very few systems would sustain thermal equi­lib­rium at 35ºC and above.

Network Resi­li­ence

The National Grid con­siders that its period of greatest demand is in the winter, which is true given a hol­istic view. It is, however, not true for any “Hi-Tech” organ­isa­tion where the heat gen­er­ated by their equip­ment is a liab­il­ity. In these cases the period of increased demand is in the summer when air con­di­tion­ing is drawing its greatest load. National Grid openly states that it reduces the resi­li­ence of its network in summer in order to accom­mod­ate their main­ten­ance. It follows then, that spe­cific parts of the network, such as the com­mer­cial centres of any City, are subject to less resi­li­ence at the very point when they are at their most vulnerable.

Secur­ity

Crit­ical power systems often have no phys­ical secur­ity leaving systems prone to tam­per­ing or sab­ot­age, maybe by the dis­af­fected employee. Access control and per­son­nel screen­ing is often lacking, whilst night shift absent­ee­ism and even alcohol abuse have been known to leave systems unmonitored.

Remote Mon­it­or­ing

Mission crit­ical systems are often left unat­ten­ded outside normal working hours. Watch­ing over the UPS and mains power remains essen­tial; what happens if a weekend problem goes unnoticed until Monday morning? Com­pan­ies running 24/7 remote mon­it­or­ing pack­ages for both UPS and gen­er­at­ors are becom­ing an essen­tial part of the main­ten­ance mix, provid­ing imme­di­ate iden­ti­fic­a­tion of prob­lems, pre-emptive main­ten­ance and ‘remote fix’ capability.

Finally…

As prob­lems exper­i­enced by crit­ical power system end-users are very likely to be one or a com­bin­a­tion of factors out­lined here this list rep­res­ents a check­list for reas­sess­ing the reli­ab­il­ity of exist­ing crit­ical power systems.

Andrew Hodge is Service Sales Manager at Chlor­ide Harath