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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.”