High-efficiency and reliable UPS are the future of data center

Delta’s focus on innovation and R&D to enhance efficiency and redundancy in Data Centers helps us offer a value proposition to our customers.

Explaining the significance of UPS systems in Data centers, Deepak Singh Thakur, Head of Business – India & SAARC at Delta Electronics India Private Limited, says “As we continue to improve, the next generation of UPS systems will be far more energy efficient than current technology.”

How can power solutions like UPS systems help to minimise energy consumption?
The data center account for about 10 per cent of global energy consumption. Large amounts of data and the computing power used in data center are stored in these facilities. But the energy used by air conditioning systems accounts for about 40 per cent of total energy consumption. Although UPS systems are essential, they are not the main drivers of increased power efficiency in this market.

However, there are various ways to deploy better technology and configuration to control our redundancy levels and reduce power usage. Furthermore, the efficiency of the new UPS systems is greater than 96 percent, compared to 93–94 per cent for the older ones. By increasing your efficiency, you can save 2 per cent. The power consumption at data center is measured in MW, so even 1 per cent of energy saved significantly impacts system operations. This may sound too low.

Today’s UPS systems are built with a modular architecture because they save more energy thanks to higher efficiency components. It also allows for redundancy innovations, as most data center are designed with similar redundancies that run 24*7. As a result, it is critical to address it. For example, to maintain 1MW of IT load, we require 2MW of UPS systems with 2N architectures. This can also be accomplished by using a Tri-Bus architecture design. Here is where we come in to assist our customers in achieving similar levels of redundancy at a higher efficiency rate.

How do you manage the power surge and the shutdown that might stall the activities at data centers?
Data centers are exceptionally architecturally important. Because UPS is an electronic system, it serves as a level of protection to manage and maintain power surges. To handle such surge levels, certain levels of power surge devices, such as transient voltage surge suppressors and other surge protection devices, must be deployed throughout the architecture. These devices are deployed at various levels based on types A, B, and C. Furthermore, surge suppression devices  are installed in the electrical architecture to protect against these surges, and the UPS has its own internal protection devices. As a result, it provides double protection for the IT or server load. On the other hand, a better grounding and bonding system helps to protect the equipment from such incidents.

What steps have you taken to manage and control power consumption and improve efficiency through your UPS systems?
Delta is a major OEM and ODM for these types of UPS systems. We have invested heavily in R&D to create new products. Delta designed these UPS with the best-in-class energy-efficient components with the smallest footprint, based on our experience and customer feedback. In terms of energy, these innovations provide a value proposition to customers. UPS was previously transformer-based technology. And those required to generate the output from the UPS system in those topologies harm the efficiency portion. Because adding a transformer to an uninterruptible power supply system reduces efficiency by 1-1.5 per cent. As a result of removing these transformers, the next generation of UPS systems are transformerless and based on IGBTs. They have better characteristics in terms of clean power, both at the source and consumer levels.

Delta has developed UPS systems that use the latest technology of transformer less systems. It includes a monolithic, modular construction and Modular hots-swappable architecture. Delta thus has all three of these ranges. One of these systems, Monolithic, is commonly used in most IT configurations for office applications and other purposes. In contrast, modular construction and modular hots-swappable are typically used in large data centers. Usually, one specific UPS system will be less than 50 per cent of the original capacity to build the redundancy. In that case, if they use a 500-kW monolithic on one end and a 500 KW UPS system on the other end of a monolithic architecture. At an average 80 per cent load, it will run at 50 per cent loading on each UPS. Hence each UPS will see 40 per cent loading or lower depending on the total load. Thus, each UPS system will operate at <40 per cent loading, and efficiency will be lower than peak  efficiency of >50 to 75 per cent.

However, in hot-swappable modular architecture, Delta provides a feature known as green mode architecture. The load on the UPS system determines the number of modules activated. The same 500 kW can be used for a limited number of active 50 kW power modules if the load is only 50 per cent. So, six modules are working, and the balance is in sleep mode. This will keep each UPS loading in a higher efficiency range due to higher loading on each UPS.

As a result, the balance modules can only be put to sleep mode and will get activated if the load exceeds 50 per cent. This helps to load the UPS onto a higher efficiency curve. In UPS, the efficiency is lower when the load is 10-15 per cent, with >50 per cent and higher considered peak. The UPS loading range has been increased from 45 per cent to 50 per cent, which improves the efficiency of the UPS system, which was previously operating at less than 30 per cent to 40 per cent loading. It can run at 50 per cent capacity by putting some modules to sleep. As a result, this technology improves energy efficiency while increasing architectural redundancy.

Can you shed some light on your new additions?
We have data centers that have deployed DCIM software. These are referred to as Delta Infrasuite solutions. The DCIM is an infrastructure management software solution that analyses and resolves all data points captured within the data center. The data is provided, and the customer receives a thorough analysis of the needed improvements and actions to improve. The data center DCIM software is assisting the customer in becoming less reliant on manual interventions and data analysis, which are both time-consuming and inaccurate because they cannot be manually monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with a power meter.

The consumption at different levels is the same software, which can provide you with detailed data on power consumption on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, as well as across multiple sites. The customer can compare the power usage of two or more facilities; as a result, management can decide which factors can be improved to improve data center purity further. With this, we are introducing higher efficiency UPS systems. R&D. is already taking these steps. As we improve, the next generation of UPS systems will be far more energy efficient than current technology.

Apart from that, we have cooling solutions, with Delta heavily investing in liquid immersion cooling solutions, another critical factor for high-density applications.

We anticipate a 10-to-15 per cent compound annual growth rate. The UPS industry should segment itself; the UPS industry as a whole will grow at a rate of 6 to 8 per cent, but growth in this specific data center segment will be much higher. There is a future demand for higher efficiency and more reliable ecosystems, and India is not far behind because our current data center infrastructure is comparable to global giants. We are still in the early stages. As a result, there is tremendous room for expansion.