Power Solutions

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SELECTING THE CORRECT UPS FOR THE JOB

When most people think about poor power quality, blackouts or brownouts come to mind. In fact,
these are some of the most uncommon power quality issues facing the industry today. The most
typical power quality problems are under voltage (sags), spikes and surges, over voltage, noise,
and lastly, blackouts. While outages are the most visible of power problems, equipment damage,
data loss, and spurious errors are usually caused by these other more common power quality
problems.

The best way to safeguard from power quality issues is to set up an Uninterruptible Power Supply
(UPS).

There are several considerations when deciding on what type of UPS to use. The major options
include using a large centralized three-phase UPS or a smaller-application specific single-phase
UPS. To decide what type of UPS is best for your application, consider the following:

How important are the loads (non-essential vs critical loads)?

Which UPS topology best supports the applications (online, line interactive, off-line)?
What are the power requirements (is three-phase power in use)?
UPS Capability and battery run time?
How difficult is UPS installation?
When maintenance is required and how extensive is that maintenance?
What is the life-cycle cost of the system?

Non-Essential Vs Critical Load

The consequence of equipment failure is the single most important factor in deciding on the type
of UPS. For small office PC loads where single station or small network data protection is
required, a small single-phase UPS is often an adequate solution. Most single-phase UPSs use
off-line or line-interactive topologies, resulting in a small (but acceptable for standard PCs and
servers) interruption when transferring to and from battery power. Because PCs, workstations and
peripherals are often located in a decentralized manner throughout offices, a dedicated off-line
UPS or inexpensive line-interactive UPS often priced under $200 provides an ideal solution.

If the equipment to be protected is critical, an online UPS is the best choice. This topology
transfers to and from battery and internal bypass without any power interruption to the load,
providing a truly seamless transfer to battery power.

For loads above 16kVA, the most practical solution is a three-phase UPS. Three-phase online
UPSs offer the advantage of providing centralized protection using a single UPS. This simplifies
maintenance and battery replacement while supplying high quality uninterruptible power to
critical loads.

UPS Topology Choices

The power protection technology supporting lighter load equipment such as desktop computers
and workstations differs significantly from the advanced power management systems that protect
mission-critical equipment. This creates a lot of confusion in trying to understand the three basic
types of UPSs:

Off-Line UPS
For a UPS with offline topology the inverter is connected in parallel and acts simply to backup
utility power. The first component in an off-line UPS is input surge protection to protect the load
from high-voltage surges/spikes. The second element is the battery to supply the inverter with
power, and the third element is the inverter. The inverter takes the dc battery voltage and creates
the ac voltage required to power your equipment. The fourth component is the battery charger.
Under normal conditions, the inverter is sitting idle until the input voltage goes above or below a
usable level. At that point, the inverter will turn on and supply the load with ac power.

Line - Interactive UPS

With the line-interactive topology, the inverter is connected in parallel and acts to backup utility
power. It also charges the battery. Through its reversible operation, it interacts with utility power
to stabilize the voltage.
A line-interactive UPS is similar to an off-line UPS because when sensing an under voltage or
over voltage situation, it also requires a transfer time for the inverter to turn on and to supply
power to the load. The main difference between an off-line and a line-interactive UPS is that a
line-interactive UPS in the stand-by mode has active voltage regulation. The primary advantage
of a line-interactive over an off-line UPS is that it doesn't use its batteries nearly as often, which
extends battery life

Online UPS
With online topology, the inverter is connected in series between the ac input and the load. Power
for the load flows continuously through the inverter. An online UPS has some of the same
components as an off-line UPS with a few differences — most notably, a rectifier. An online UPS
has input surge protection, batteries, inverter components and a rectifier. The rectifier takes the
input voltage and changes it from ac voltage (alternating current coming from the utility power)
to dc voltage to charge the battery and provide dc power to the inverter. In most online UPSs, the
rectifier or filtering is used to make sure that the load, as well as the UPS, does not allow
unnecessary noise and harmonics to be fed back into a building's power. Because an online UPS
is always creating its own power from the rectifier and inverter, it never has transfer interruptions
and can provide a much higher level of power quality.

All of the topologies offered differ in price and performance, the key to successful power
protection is choosing the UPS that is right for your needs, no less and no more.

Facility Power requirements

In larger facilities the electrical distribution network, as a power source, is generally a three-phase
power configuration. This configuration provides multiple voltages: three-phase power, single-
phase (phase-to-phase), and single-phase voltage (phase-to-neutral). Smaller facilities often have
to contend with the availability of only 208Vac Single Phase.

For three-phase power, during plant evaluation and UPS installation, the engineering team
distributes the electrical loads equally between the three phases of the electrical network system
by ensuring that all are supplying the same amount of power to within 30% of each other.
This requirement has to be considered from the initial installation and must be reevaluated every
time a new piece of equipment is added or removed. Ignoring this key step or increasing the load
imbalance between phases could cause problems with the power source, which results in voltage
regulation being lost or displacing the phase angles. It might also cause overheating and
overloading of the power source.
Both single-phase and three-phase UPSs provide power protection for critical loads, but there are
several important power loading considerations to evaluate.
A three-phase UPS can supply a 100% unbalanced load on its output without causing any
problems or affecting its performance. With the inverter generating the power, it can also
compensate for the unbalanced load and regulate the output voltage accordingly.

Single-phase UPSs (phase-to-phase or phase-to-neutral) act as a load on the main power source.
This situation can cause an unbalanced load on the power source. The loads upstream to the UPS
may have to be rewired to compensate for the unbalanced load.
Current demand on the input of a three-phase UPS is much less than the input current on a single-
phase. The reduction in the input current results in a reduction in the input cable size and the
upstream protection devices, such as circuit breakers.
Example:
If the load requirement is 10 kVA @ 280 Vac
Single-phase UPS input current is:
(10 kVAx1000)÷208 Vac = 48 amps
Three-phase UPS input current is:
(10 kVAx1000)÷208 Vac÷1.732 = 28 amps
This calculation indicates that the input current of a single-phase UPS is nearly twice that of a
three-phase. Reduced input current requires smaller cables and circuit breakers, which shrinks
installation and maintenance costs.
On the other hand, a single-phase UPS may be fine in a highly distributed cell or light
manufacturing environment where there are a very large number of small UPSs. The higher
upfront costs of networking these cells into one large system (if plant wide data collection is
unimportant) may outweigh the benefit of a larger systems network approach. Data back up
systems also can be installed to save information on a periodic basis. If the facility wasn't initially
set up for three-phase power, the additional retrofitting costs also might make a three-phase UPS
prohibitive.

UPS Capability and battery run time

UPS capacity should suit your needs. Include any future expansion requirement and remember
that, typically, networks grow by five to 10 per cent on average. Also remember that spare
capacity in the early years of your UPS results in longer runtimes when mains fail.
Consider the amount of runtime required for your application. Generally five minutes is
acceptable if you have a generator in place however much more time would be required should
you need to gracefully shut down. For longer run time applications, you’ll need to consider the
heat impact on your data center when air conditioning is not available.

Cost of installation
Single-phase plug and play off-line or line-interactive UPSs are easy to install. The end user often
does it during initial PC setup. Combining each single-phase UPS into a network may not be easy,
requiring extra cabling hardware as compared to supporting the entire network with a single
three-phase UPS.
Three-phase UPSs protecting larger facilities or more critical loads require an electrical contractor
to install the system. Upfront costs of using an electrical contractor can be relatively expensive,
but a properly designed electrical power system with a UPS and backup generator can pay large
dividends over the long-term by reducing electrical power costs and plant downtime.

Daily operation
With one three-phase UPS, all status and alarm functions can be monitored from a central point.
To monitor the status of each single-phase UPS, they must be connected individually resulting in
costly wiring runs. In addition, the ability to quickly identify a defective single-phase UPS from
a central location may be difficult. With a three-phase UPS, there is no doubt as to the location of
the UPS.

Maintenance
Battery monitoring and replacement are by far the biggest maintenance tasks with both single and
three-phase UPSs. Single-phase UPSs are often considered a disposable peripheral; just toss and
replace when the batteries are dead. While this is convenient in one sense, it gets to be a time-
consuming task when a plant is full of discrete single-phase UPSs in multiple locations that
require constant checking one at a time, especially if there is no network on-line monitoring
capability.
For many smaller-to-midsize facilities, which are experiencing growth, one of two problems
begin to occur after retrofits. Either isolated (non-networked) UPSs fail during power
interruptions due to undetected dead batteries in inconvenient or forgotten about locations or
battery monitoring software goes off frequently in multiple locations, causing the plant
maintenance staff to spend too much time on battery or UPS replacement.
With a single three-phase UPS, battery testing and replacement are more conveniently done at the
network level. Testing can be performed from one central monitoring location with a single
battery set, as opposed to testing the batteries of each single-phase UPS located throughout the
building (which also can be done in a networked single-phase UPS system). Battery maintenance
and replacement are performed in the plant's computer room.
It is far less expensive to maintain one single set of batteries for a three-phase UPS than a large
quantity of single-phase UPS module batteries. In some cases, the batteries for a single-phase
UPS are not replaceable and the entire UPS must be replaced. Three-phase UPS modules can
have single batteries replaced if they fail.

This white paper is written by Guy Lacerte with the assistance of MGE UPS Systems.
Guy Lacerte can be reached at 800.876.9373 (x282), glacerte@power-solutions.com