The design concept of data center backup power supply from minutes to seconds

At present, the design concept of data center backup power supply time of half an hour or even several hours is being replaced by UPS with backup power supply in seconds and diesel generators.

The BendBroadband Vault, a data center that has obtained Tier III certification from the Uptime Association, announced that the flywheel UPS, as a distribution protection facility, has been recognized as Tier 3, which means that the backup power time is less than one minute. People are beginning to transition from a "perceptual" sense of security to a rational one.

The length of backup time is not proportional to security

When deploying a traditional online UPS system, it is generally required that the UPS system can provide battery power for IT equipment for as short as 10 minutes, as long as dozens of minutes or even several hours after the mains power is interrupted. Active Power is completely different. It only provides 15 to 20 seconds at full load, 22 to 30 seconds at 75% load, and 30 to 40 seconds at 50% load. It can meet the needs of longer power outages by working with emergency backup generator sets. Some users are a little worried about the fact that such a high-power UPS system only provides 20 seconds of backup time, but this is actually unnecessary. The research results of the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) of the United States show that among all power quality problems, 98% of them are voltage sags, instantaneous power interruptions lasting 15 seconds or less, and about 95% of these two are voltage sags. In fact, real unplanned outages are very rare. Some users only encounter 1-2 times occasionally in a few years, or even no unplanned power supply for several days. If unplanned power supply for more than 15 seconds really occurs, the backup generator set can be started from the cost-effective consideration. The 30-second backup time of the Active Power Clean source UPS system is enough to switch the load to the generator set for power supply. The generator set usually starts within 2 seconds after the power outage. The entire switching process can be completed within 10 seconds after the generator set stabilizes. There is no need to worry about the problem of insufficient 30-second backup time. Of course, this requires that the emergency backup generator set is usually in good condition. This is the same as the traditional online UPS equipped with several hours or even longer time, which needs to be kept in good condition. If these traditional online UPS are usually in a bad state, then the backup time, whether it is 60 seconds, 60 minutes or even several hours, is meaningless, because such UPS cannot be started at all. Many domestic companies currently have two power supplies. If both power supplies are interrupted at the same time, it only takes ten seconds to switch to the backup diesel engine. This is not only an industry standard, but also has been written into the data center specifications in Europe and the United States.

Air conditioning protection is crucial

In addition, UPS is not a power supply device from the original design. It is not like the mains or diesel engine that can provide reliable and long-term output. It is just a transitional power supply. Currently, few data centers protect the air conditioning cooling system. According to relevant experts, the ideal working environment temperature of IT equipment such as servers is more than 20 degrees. For high-density data centers, if the air conditioning and other cooling systems are not protected, once the air conditioning cooling system is shut down due to power interference, the temperature of the computer room will quickly rise to 50 degrees or even 60 degrees in less than a minute. At this time, sensitive IT equipment such as servers will go down, resulting in data loss, business risks and damage to the corporate image.

Some manufacturers tend to use large-capacity UPS to protect air conditioners. However, using UPS to protect air conditioners will greatly increase the cost. Using flywheel + diesel generator to protect air conditioners is a relatively new solution and needs a promotion process. There are many large customers abroad, such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Ebay and many other large data center customers have adopted this solution for deployment.

Some experts said that with the development of the times, green data centers will become more and more important, and the evolution of technology will also break through some existing stereotypes, and we must keep up with this change. ■