Uninterrupted and Renewable
The concept of pairing UPS with sustainable technologies is getting a closer look.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
By Carol Brzozowski
Power outages cost US businesses
$152,000 every minute, according to J.T. Packard, a network critical power
equipment sales and service provider.
Data centers comprise about 80% of
the total demand for UPS, says Mike Jones, senior marketing manager for S&C
Electric Company in Chicago, IL. The rest go into other critical operations,
such as a hospital, service industry, or government institutions that may host a
data center operation. “The combination of higher oil prices and government
mandates tells me there’s going to be robust growth in renewables,” says
Jones.
Combining uninterruptible power
supplies (UPS) with renewables offers onsite power benefits and efficiencies.
Less space is required, and the combined system offers reduced site demand,
absence of fuel handling, and toxic waste disposal costs.
One of the most common power
problems being faced by mission-critical operations these days is rapidly
increasing data center loads coupled with higher electricity prices, says Jones.
“We’ve heard that the amount it costs to run a data center in a year is just
about equal to the equipment costs,” says Jones. “So, you spend $100 on
equipment. Running that equipment the first year also costs $100. All of the
equipment is getting smaller and more compact, which means you can pack more of
those in the same area, so the power densities are going up.
“The heat goes way up,” he adds.
“The amount of air conditioning you need goes way up. People want more services
and more features and they want everything to run faster. You couple that with
higher electricity prices, and you’ve got data managers who are struggling for
the first time. How do we sustain this operation? It’s getting very expensive to
run. And now they’re being told they have to be greener and reduce their carbon
footprint, but they’re using an awful lot of air conditioning and wonder how
they cope with all of these requirements.”
Jones says one approach is to use
an offline UPS to reduce heat in the data center, and gain higher efficiencies,
“which translates into real energy savings at the end of the year and does
reduce your carbon footprint because you’re burning less kilowatt hours.”
S&C’s UPS technology is
different from conventional choices, in that the company manufactures
large-scale outdoor UPS systems—PureWave UPS Systems—at low and medium
voltages.
Among the benefits of placing the
UPS outdoors, says Jones, “you are removing batteries from the building, which
means you open up some floor space. In many cases, you can expand your data
center, so moving the UPS outdoors helps free up space. Removing the batteries
from the building means you’re also reducing the air-conditioning load.”
The static-switch UPS starts to
support the load during a utility disturbance. Jones says the system is up to
99% efficient. “Data center equipment has become much more robust and doesn’t
need that constant power conditioning that it used to,” says Jones of
conventional systems.
S&C participates in the wind
energy business through power conditioning equipment, says Jones. “It’s not a
UPS, but it is equipment that allows the wind farm to be connected to the
utility to keep the wind farm output within parameters,” he says.
S&C Electric has been involved
with energy storage systems that allow batteries or other storage mediums to
store energy off-peak, then convert alternating current (AC) power into direct
current (DC) power to charge the batteries—at another point, it will discharge
the batteries, convert it back to AC, and put it onto the utility system, says
Jones.
The company has installed its
Distributed Energy Storage System for the American Electric Power Co. at
substations in Ohio and West Virginia. “It has applications for wind farms,”
adds Jones. “Peak winds occur during the late evening or early morning hours, so
that doesn’t always coincide with when you use power. One nice thing about
energy storage is you can store the energy while you’re producing it, and then
use it when you need it.
“For solar, you only get the sun
during certain hours of the day,” he says. “You can store the energy while it’s
being produced, and then use it for later times. Also, because you now have
these storage blocks, if you have a storage site that has a lot of potential
energy there, you can treat that as a generator.”
Thus, if an operation loses power
from a utility, it can create an island around the site of distributed energy
from which customers can be served, Jones adds.
Martin Olsen, the vice president
of business development for Active Power in Austin, TX, says more companies are
looking to place their operations near renewable energy sources. Olsen
references Google as a prime example. “Google places their data centers in close
proximity to renewables such as solar, hydro, and wind,” he says. “It provides
them a lot of flexibility.”
GE, in late 2008, teamed up with
Google to promote renewable energy and clean technologies.
Active Power utilizes flywheel
technology in its systems. Unlike batteries that store energy through a chemical
process, flywheels store energy through a rotating mechanical element. Cited
benefits include a longer lifespan and less maintenance. Active Power calls its
system “economically” green in its reduction of energy expenses realized through
a lighter energy draw, which acts to reduce over all carbon dioxide emissions.
The systems in 2007 saved more than $40 million in energy costs and displaced
more than 630,000 lead acid cells containing 9,000 tons of lead, according to
the company.
“The renewable aspect of our
system comes from the sources it is fed by,” says Olsen. “With UPS in general,
we use flywheel as an energy storage, which helps us both from the power
conditioning standpoint, as well as from the backup standpoint, so when the main
utility is out and you have a break between that and getting your generator
up-and-running, the flywheel provides that break.
“The flywheel in itself is not
really the renewable power system—where it comes into play is when we start
integrating this into what we call PowerHouse, which is a containerized power
architecture where we essentially put a standby generator, the switch gear, and
a flywheel into it,” continues Olsen, “and it is far more flexible than what you
would have with a regular legacy battery system. It can be placed close to, or
in proximity to, a renewable energy source such as wind, hydro, or solar.”
Olsen says if an operation needs
to be close to a substation that can provide required power, it could augment it
with renewable energies. “Obviously, you don’t need to be tied that closely to a
power grid that can provide you with all that power—that’s really where the
PowerHouse comes into play,” he says. “It makes sense for a flywheel and
generator to be packaged in the same container.”
Batteries, points out Olsen, are
fragile, require certain temperatures, and consume a larger footprint. He says
that flywheel technology has been around for a long time, and, in the past 30
years, has started to replace existing lead acid batteries in mission-critical
industries such as data centers, hospitals, broadcasting studios, and industrial
applications.
Olsen says while the western
world’s energy grid is “fairly robust,” it is still subject to fluctuations,
sags, brownouts, and spikes. “That’s where the UPS comes into play and cleans it
up,” he says. “It’s 480 volts per 60 hertz, which greatly extends the life of
whatever equipment you’re feeding in there. The UPS addresses virtually all
power problems by sags, blackouts, brownouts—any irregularities in the power—it
fixes that.”
While the UPS does consume energy
to condition the power coming in and out of the system, it does so at a 98%
efficiency rate, says Olsen. In addition to conditioning the power, it reduces
the footprint consumed by batteries by as much as 25%, he says. Operating
expenses can be reduced by as much as 50%, he adds.
Then there is the replacement
issue, Olsen says. “When you’re dealing with a lead acid battery, it has a
three-to-five-year cycle—some may have a 10-year cycle,” he explains. “But there
is a replacement of it. You have costs, including labor and materials, to deploy
the new batteries. Then there are the costs in energy for recycling. You can
question where that toxic waste goes.”
There can be a challenge in
combining renewables with UPS for those data centers that have been accustomed
to building a certain way for many years and trying to make the paradigm shift,
Olsen says.
The biggest shift is on the
ride-through, he says. “The pushback we get from time to time is that our
flywheel provides 15 seconds of ride-through as opposed to battery—as much as 15
minutes, or even more than that,” says Olsen. “The fact of the matter is the
generator will start up in five to eight seconds, assume the load, thereby
spinning the flywheel back up again, and it’s ready to go.
“The remaining 14-and-a-half
minutes on a battery system is really used based on the assumption that the
generator didn’t start the first time,” says Olsen. “That’s highly unlikely,
given an extra crank on the manual engine to get it started—it’s never been
proven that’s physically possible to do in 15 minutes. It’s a lot longer than
that, if the generator doesn’t start.”
With heat density, operations
can’t afford to be on battery for very long periods of time because of the heat
load in the data center, says Olsen. “With the UPS traditionally not backing up
the mechanical load or the cooling load, you want to make sure you get the
cooling loads up and running as fast as possible before your service is
essentially burned out,” he says.
In addition to concerns about
ride-through, the containerized architecture is another pushback, says Olsen.
“We don’t claim that’s for everybody, but it does offer a lot of benefits from a
modularity and cost-effectiveness standpoint,” he says. “If you already have
excess capacity, and in certain other scenarios, it may not be the answer.”
There are “slightly higher” costs
for flywheel UPS versus battery UPS, says Olsen. “Increased demand for flywheel UPS helps
drive down costs in making it,” he adds. “In the current economic climate, we’re
seeing a lot of people thinking about long-term renting and leasing. We have
even internally talked about other programs that would leverage the fact that
we’re so much more efficient, so, essentially, you’d get a system for free to a
certain extent, but you’d only be paying us for whatever energy savings you
have, and then, over time, that system would be paid off.”
Olsen sees more renewable energy
sources coming up on the horizon … literally. During a recent drive through the
Palm Springs region, he observed windmills throughout the landscape.
According to Olsen, he believes
solar power will be the biggest segment in renewable energy, especially the
development in photovoltaic technologies. He says it’s “perfectly reasonable” to
think that within the next decade, a data center or household could have a roof
that’s comprised entirely of solar panels.
Another benefit, says Olsen, is
“having the opportunity to enjoy rebates from the utilities as a function of
leveraging the renewable energy sources, put less strain on the grid itself,”
and possibly benefit from the competitive cost of renewable energy sources over
fossil fuel sources.
Chuck Gougler is the marketing
manger for Staco Energy Products in Dayton, OH, a manufacturer and provider of
various types of power quality and energy management equipment. Although Staco
Energy Products does not have an installation that combines its equipment with
renewables, the company a few years ago identified areas integrating its UPS
systems with sustainable energy, says Gougler.
“We’ve seen some opportunities for
mating our UPS with flywheels, for example,” he says. “In that particular case,
the flywheels would be used for ride-through with a standby power system. When
you utilize the flywheel, you wouldn’t have to use the batteries as often as you
would normally with just the standalone UPS. From a greening standpoint, we
would look at that as helping the environment. That’s an application we see
becoming more common.
“Other areas where we can
integrate a UPS include microturbines,” he says. “Obviously they can produce
electricity, but to get the most bang out of the buck with microturbines, you’re
looking at some type of CHP application where it’s going to provide steam. If
there’s a chiller involved, you do something with water or air to cool that.
Certainly you can heat the water. If there’s some ride-through, you might
utilize the UPS from that standpoint.”
One of the main benefits of
combining UPS with sustainable technology is being “lead-free,” says
Gougler.
Going forward means thinking
outside of the box, says Gougler. “How can we take our existing product and
maybe advance some of the componentry or integrate the existing product with
other products, and have a system that is green or can be more easily applied in
sustainable energy type applications?” he asks.
Some sustainable technologies—such
as the development of inverters for photovoltaics, microturbines, or wind
power—may be expensive to produce, but competition and increased demand may
drive the price down, Gougler says. “The cost and some of the uncertainty are
probably the two biggest challenges from a manufacturing standpoint, in terms of
where we want to go with our own technology and how we can participate in some
of these markets,” he says.
Other companies participating in
these markets include AKI Power Systems. The German company provides UPS systems
for wind turbines. Power Systems and Controls makes a battery-free power
protection system that relies on a ride-through motor generator with rotational
energy while the diesel generator comes online. Caterpillar also integrates
battery-free UPS with generator sets.
There are some drawbacks to be
considered in sustainable energy, Jones points out. “Denmark has more wind
energy than any other country in the world,” he says. “Denmark also has the
highest cost per kilowatt hours of any country in the world; it’s a mixed
blessing. You don’t get the ups and downs of petroleum products. By the same
token, the technology does cost something. As far as renewable energy being less
expensive, wind energy stays about the same.
“There’s not much you’re doing
with wind energy than turning a big motor with a propeller in the wind, so the
big change is in doing it at a bigger scale,” he adds. “They’re making bigger
wind turbines, and they’re making wind turbines for off-shore in the three- to
five-megawatt range, which was probably unheard of three years ago.”
Jones says he believes most
sustainable energy activities will center on wind. “It is a proven technology,
and the subsidy issue has been resolved by Congress, which makes a payback for a
wind farm very attractive,” he says. “If you can find a site that has a fair
amount of wind blowing, you’re in business pretty quickly.”
The long-term challenge is its
impact to the utility system over time, Jones says. “It’s one thing to have a
wind farm as maybe 1% of your total generating capacity,” he says. “If the wind
stops blowing and you lose that 1%, you can increase the 99% that’s left—a
nuclear, oil, or a coal plant can pretty quickly compensate for that.
“But what happens when 20% of your
generating system is wind, and the wind stops blowing?” he asks. “If you’re a
utility, how do you instantaneously make up for that 20% loss? You basically
have to have some sort of standby capacity generator available at a second’s
notice to produce power, so that presents some interesting challenges for the
utility system for the future.
“If we keep pushing wind energy,
and it gets to be bigger, wind energy storage would be helpful, because you can
now store the energy that’s available instantaneously,” he continues. “If you
don’t do that, you’ve really got to build more plants to take up the slack and
keep the system running.”
Jones does not believe it’s in the
country’s best interest to “put all of our eggs in one basket,” with respect to
renewable energy. “We need to continue looking at different technologies,” he
says. “We’ve tried ethanol corn, and now they’re doing biomass, algae, and solar
cells, and still looking at fuel cells. All of those things together need to
keep going. Who knows what’s going to be the ultimate fuel source?”
Despite the short-term decrease in
oil prices, there’s a limited supply, says Jones. “It’s still going to be a
political type of energy subject to price spikes and disruptions,” he says. “We
just have to get used to that and concentrate on long-term development of
alternative sources.
“Because of the fact that we are
more interconnected, more wired, and—from an industrial standpoint—more focused,
having power continuity is becoming more critical,” adds Jones. “There’s a
different attitude toward power reliability, power continuity, and power quality
than there has been in the past.”
Author's Bio:
Carol Brzozowski specializes in topics related to waste management and technology. |
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