Uninterruptible Power Supply

Eaton pushes 400/230V unit, but is it ready for (U.S.) primetime?

Last week, Eaton Corp. announced a new uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with a 400V/230V power distribution that’s uncommon in U.S. data centers.

In most data centers, power comes from the utility at 480 volts and then gets stepped down to a 208/120V distribution at the server level. With the Eaton product, the power comes from the grid at 480 volts and gets stepped down to the 400/230V distribution, which is commonly used in Europe, Asia and South America. According to an Eaton whitepaper, the 400/230V distribution is 4% more efficient than the traditional UPS that distributes at 208/120V.

“It only took us about 100 years to get to where the rest of the world has been for decades,” Peter Sacco, president of data center engineering firm PTS Data Center Solutions, wrote in an email to me. “The technical advantages of 400V are undeniable and I believe and outstanding improvement to our 208/120V standard as well as better than DC power distribution.”

But hold on.

“However, don’t buy a new electric razor just yet,” Sacco advised. “Until there is broad acceptance by the power distribution industry, don’t expect to see it widely utilized just yet.”

Active Power makes case for flywheel UPS in new paper

In a new whitepaper, flywheel uninterruptible power supply (UPS) company Active Power makes the case for, you guessed it, flywheel UPS.

The paper points to two studies, one by the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and the other by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, showing that flywheel UPS systems are more efficient than traditional battery-based UPS. The company estimates that if the entire data center industry went to flywheel UPS, they could save $180 million a year.

The major concern of users with flywheels is the ride-through time, which is about 15 seconds. With batteries, the ride-through time all depends on how long the string of batteries is. Active Power responds that good generator maintenance can ensure that 15 seconds is plenty of time for ride-through time before the generators kick in.

Sorting through the Google data center summit hype

Over the past week, there has been a lot of discussion online regarding the Google data center energy summit held at the company’s Mountain View facility last week. In particular, there has been a flurry of activity pointing to a video tour inside a Google container-based data center. Let’s step back and take a look at what information was actually new, however.

Container-based data center

Google confirmed what everyone already knew — that the company has a container-based data center. Robert X. Cringely reported this back in November 2005, so it’s not exactly news. But it’s the first time Google actually confirmed the rumors and showed a sneak peek inside. You can take a look at the video below, taken by Data Center Knowledge:

Pretty cool stuff. But as James Hamilton, an engineer at Amazon, wrote in a recent blog post, it’s interesting to note that Google built this container-based data center, but then never returned to that design. In fact, Hamilton thinks that the data center design isn’t optimized for shipping containers: Continued »

Get the lowdown on UPS batteries

Eaton, one of the big data center UPS manufacturers, is offering a free handbook on uninterruptible power supply (UPS) batteries. Most people know that the most vulnerable part of a UPS are the batteries. Knowing how charged they are and how much juice they have left can mean the difference between having enough through time to get the generators started, and leaving your customers without a data center.

I ordered one. I can always learn more about UPS’s and their batteries. According to Eaton, the guide “covers characteristics, performance and maintenance of UPS battery types along with a comprehensive glossary of battery terms.” Sounds good to me. And since I already get plenty of emails from Eaton for all their products, I didn’t care about putting my information in there. They can only send me so many emails, right?