The Carbon Trust is a Government initiative whose goal is to create a low carbon economy by helping organisations to reduce their carbon emissions. As part of this strategy, the Carbon Trust is also working to get suitable hardware systems onto the Energy Technology List (ETL). This will allow organisations to benefit from Enhanced Capital Allowances and improved corporation tax relief. This is possibly something that will happen in 2009 with the right momentum (subject to parliamentary approval) and is another reason to consider the eco-friendly Riello Multi Plus UPS.

Riello UPS has an open rather than closed protocols policy. This means that we do not lock-out service access to our uninterruptible power supplies, unlike many of our competitors. This policy opens up revenue opportunities for resellers, gives clients a larger potential choice of service partners and prevents them being locked into expensive ‘monopolostic’ maintenance contracts. The problem for clients is how to ensure that the company they are using to maintain their UPS is certified to the latest Riello UPS standards and training course content. If in doubt we always recommend two courses of action. Firstly, contact our Technical Support Team to check the latest list of Riello UPS Certified Engineers. Secondly, ask the company to provide documented evidence that they hold a current certification, and one for the UPS model they are being asked to maintain. The latter is an important aspect because UPS models can vary in design between power sizes - consider a 10kVA Multi Dialog and an 800kVA Master Plus. Other aspects to consider include: access to the latest technical documentation, firmware upgrades and spares. So will Riello UPS ever go ‘closed protocol’ - the jury is still out on that one and given the high level of customer satisfaction experienced by Riello UPS this winning formula may not change for some time to come.

Well our current advertising slogan is that it only takes one second without power to crash a network. Looks like Lastminute.com had more than their fair share of power troubles recently - losing almost half a day of trading due to a power loss. You can read the full story at Computer Weekly.com which covers the power outage at their Colt data centre which is so far being put down to circuit breaker problems. The resulting power loss also affected their subsidiary sites including Medhotels.com, Holidayautos.co.uk and Travelocity.co.uk. Circuit breaker discrimination is a key part of any power continuity plan and if this was a case of random tripping, the route cause could be down to a plethora of problems on site. Off course Riello UPS offers a complete power audit service and would be only too happy to investigate this further if called in to do so. The service has been used successfully by a number of clients over recent years who have come to rely on our professionalism in power protection.

The jury is still out on this one. A new report - World Flywheel UPS Markets - has just been published on the subject, looking at the global market and sales of flywheel energy storage systems within power quality applications as backup devices. Flywheel are great in principal but there are some barriers to overcome when used as part of a power continuity plan. The primary weaknesses are the higher capital cost and low runtime available. The first means that the devices are only really suitable for large applications of several hundred kVA or more - (with uninterruptible power supplies such as the Riello Master Plus UPS). Secondly, they have to compete as a substitute product against sealed lead acid batteries which can offer minutes and hours of runtime rather than just several milliseconds. Sure, flywheels do have a compact footprint and offer a ‘green’ technology but their benefits only really accrue over several years use - think battery replacement and disposal. So, my view is that if the flywheel industry finds some way of cost-effectively extending the runtime available and/or lowering the entry barrier costs, they may be onto a more competitive winner.