A flexible and truly modular approach to Uninterruptible Power Supplies has never been more important. With the increasing digitalisation of industry – combined with the rapid expansion of the data centre market – first generation infrastructure designs are falling short of current needs and are not flexible enough to meet future demands as they evolve, according to Socomec’s Phil Dunn. Furthermore, not all UPS technologies that claim to be ‘modular’ offer ‘true modularity’.
In the first of a series of video interviews, Phil Dunn explains how the flexibility of modular architecture enables an organisation to adapt rapidly to changing requirements. Rightsizing through modularity in design enables the power protection capacity to be added – when it’s needed, to meet actual or existing demand, instead of total upfront deployment.
Providing the right kind of scalability is essential when it comes to managing short-term capacity demands – without risking system integrity. In addition, the rapid repair times associated with the very latest modular configurations can reduce mean time to repair (MTTR) significantly.
At the recent Data Centre Dynamics conference and exhibition, held in London, a new disruptive, modular UPS solution was presented by Socomec – the Modulys XL, designed to remove any single point of failure.
“Next generation modular UPS avoids the need to have any ‘hands on’, within the UPS. You can remove any part of the system, with the system working live, whether it is a power module or a battery module, protecting the customer’s load. It is about keeping the MTTR as short as possible… But it is also about reducing human risk – you do not want technicians putting their hands into a UPS,” comments Phil Dunn.
He points out that edge computing is also having a significant impact in driving the trend toward modularity, but warns end users that they need to be wary of the term ‘modular’, which has become a widely used “buzz word” in the industry. Not all systems are ‘truly’ modular, he claims.
In this video, Energyst sister title, Mission Critical Power, asks Phil Dunn: how can modular UPS contribute to increased resilience and efficiency and what does it actually mean to be ‘truly modular’? He looks at what is driving the trend for modularity and discusses how the UPS industry must innovate to deliver improvements in design.
To view the rest of the videos in this series, click here.
