Where can you get help in choosing the one that’s right for you?

If you are in the market for UPS power protection – and this is the first time you have thought about it – trawling the internet for information can be frustrating and you could end up more confused than ever. It’s a big subject, and a specialist one.

UPS manufacturers are a great source of information but much of it is either technical (geared towards electrical engineers rather than end users) or biased towards a certain type of technology.

If you’ve already got a UPS installed, you’ll have a good idea (based on past experience) of what to look for when it comes to upgrading or replacing it. However, in the past few years the power protection industry has undergone an evolutionary process of change and development of UPS products, solutions and services, driven largely by the desire for greater energy efficiency and lower lifetime costs of UPS systems overall. Advances in technology and manufacturing have resulted in smaller, more powerful products with fewer component parts and which are more reliable and sophisticated than their forebears.

Which UPS should I choose and where can I go for objective information?

Sadly, there are few places you can get information like this for free. UPS specialist resellers and manufacturers are running businesses from which they need to make a profit and they usually either charge for consulting advice or give it for free if they can then sell you their products. You may not be at the stage where you are ready to choose your UPS manufacturer or their products so, what can you do?

As luck would have it, we’ve written a book: The Power Protection Guide – the design, installation and operation of uninterruptible power supplies, which was published in 2007. It’s available from Amazon, all good booksellers and our own estore. At 290 pages, it details all of the elements you need to think about in terms of UPS power protection – and although our publisher insists on a cover price of £28-95, it offers great value for money and may even save money for you in the long-term. Armed with knowledge, you will be in a better position to get what you need and negotiate a good price.

Covering such items as criticality, UPS topologies and designs, UPS sizing and selection, online UPS designs, building in UPS reliability and resilience, batteries and alternative UPS back up solutions, UPS and generators, UPS monitoring and remote control, UPS logistics and installation, UPS warranties, maintenance and service, the book provides a handy tool for anyone responsible for assuring the delivery of critical power supplies for the continuity of their business – whatever business that might be. We’ve purposely incorporated a detailed index to make it easy to reference and appended some useful forms and worked examples. It is illustrated throughout with clear diagrams, charts and graphs.

The first ever CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme Performance League Table was published in November by the Environment Agency, which is responsible for running it. It showed that 60% of organisations have taken action on energy management by installing smart meters and obtaining certificates for ‘good energy management’.

Ranked organisations count among them some of the largest energy users in the UK; large businesses and public sector organisations that use more than 6000 Megawatt Hours of electricity a year.

The scheme is intended to help the UK meet its carbon reduction targets and encourage large energy users to be smarter about how and where they consume electricity so that it can be reduced.

At Riello UPS, we think anything that encourages users to focus on reducing energy consumption is a great idea and we help our customers do so (and thus reduce their energy bills) while securing power continuity. We do that by providing products that are efficient, reliable and functional. I cannot help thinking, however, that the UK’s efforts to reduce energy consumption overall and meet carbon reduction targets could be given a real boost if energy suppliers started installing smart meters as standard. Only those that stand to benefit the most from so doing can afford to install smart meters and while that is the case we will continue to see the waste that is associated with a haphazard approach to measuring energy consumption.

For more information about UPS and power protection, visit our website.

A report published by the Energy Saving Trust last month claims that our love of electronic gadgets, such as flat screen TVs, tablet PCs, Smartphones, electronic toothbrushes and big fridges is leading us away from reaching our emissions targets and that we should be weaned off them.

The government has set down a target to reduce domestic electricity emissions by 34% by 2020 but the Energy Saving Trust says that we will fall far short of this is we don’t cool our love affair with gadgets.

The number of domestic devices and appliances in the average UK household increased by three and a half times between 1990 and 2009, according to the report, and overall energy consumption from consumer electronic goods rose by more than 600% between 1970 and 2009.

Reported in The Guardian last month, a spokesperson for the Trust pointed out that consumers would never buy a car without checking out its fuel-efficiency first and yet we are happy to fill our houses with electronic consumer good without sparing one thought for their electricity consumption and how much it will cost. “People need to be educated about these things.” She said.

It’s not just consumers either. In business many people now work from home or use equipment at home and in their personal time that is provided for business use, such as laptops, smartphones, GPS navigation systems (that require home charging), tablet PCs and so forth. Between 2000 and 2009, electricity use from home computing more than doubled and the number of devices in Britain’s homes rose from 30,000 to 65,000.

Five years ago, the Energy Saving Trust issued a report The Rise of the Machine, which found that the number of electrical appliances, products and gadgets people typically own had trebled since the 1970s. Although such appliances are more efficient now, electricity consumption has doubled between 1970 and 2002.

The Energy Saving Trust does good work, no doubt about that, but trying to get we -the people – to give up our love of gadgets is akin to King Canute trying to hold back the tide. As we move ever deeper into the technological age, our love of (and use of) devices will continue to rise and unfortunately gadgets these days are mostly electronic. It’s up to the electronics industry and technology inventors to ensure they are the most energy efficient they can be, but I agree, users should be more aware of the implications of using such implements on electricity consumption and educated as to responsible energy use.

If you would like to know more about energy efficient UPS, or any of our comprehensive range of power protection products and services, visit Riello AROS UPs’s website.

According to a report published by CRN.com earlier this month, data centre power consumption is not as high as it was expected to be. Rather than attributing this to better data centre design and the work by data centre managers (DCMs) that has gone into implementing strategic efficiency measures, the slow-down is being accredited to the fact that the installed server base seems to have levelled off.

How unfair is that?

Nowhere do we see energy efficiency being placed higher on the list of priorities than amongst our data centre customers! Alongside TCO (total cost of ownership), energy efficiency ratings and PuE scores are top of the agenda for DCMs.

The European Union issued an analogous document in 2007 with regard to UPS devices, prepared in collaboration with the CEMEP, the European Committee of Manufacturers of Electrical Machines and Power Electronics, of which Riello UPS is a member. Towards the end of 2008, the Union disseminated a Code of Conduct for improving the energy efficiency of Data Centers. Riello has set itself the target of being the most environmentally friendly power protection company in Europe. We are at the forefront of UPS research and development in terms of finding ways to improve UPS operating efficiencies and reduce their dependence on and usage of consumables such as batteries. To that end, Riello UPS developed the unique ECO Energy rating system – a clear method of identifying how Riello UPS products comply with and exceed the European Code of Conduct.

Findings in CRN’s report suggest the total consumption within data centres from servers, communications, storage, cooling and power distribution equipment accounts for between 1.7 and 2.2 percent of the total electricity used in the USA in 2010. A year prior, it was anticipated that it would be 3.5%.

I think the emphasis should be on decreasing power consumption, alongside increasing efficiency. UPS and cooling equipment perform at their most efficient at full load and this is not something data centres should do. Superbikes are designed for maximum performance and optimum efficiency but operating at maximum cannot be sustained indefinitely. A UPS is a critical piece of equipment and so reliability must take top priority. So, therefore, using efficiency on its own as a measure of success in reducing energy consumption, although important, is misleading. If you decrease load, efficiency will drop but then you will also be consuming less electricity.

In terms of lowering costs and energy consumption, the key to data centre design is to ensure you build flexibility in from the start. In terms of UPS, that might include installing flywheel UPS instead of battery banks to reduce the use of floor space and preserve it for revenue-earning servers. Flywheel UPS also offers greater efficiency and lower lifetime costs than battery equivalents. Instead of ripping out and replacing your UPS system every five years as your requirements outgrow it, you may also want to look at installing modular UPS, which gives you the option of increasing system capacity by bringing in additional UPS modules as you need them and simply slotting them into the system.

There are many ways you can reduce energy consumption in data centres and I think this report is testament to that fact. That’s what DCMs have been doing. Efficiency is but one way of doing that.

According to new research by the Carbon Trust, and reported in MarketingWeek, nearly half of consumers said they would shun brands that aren’t taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint. More than a fifth (21%) said they would pay more for brands that label their products with their carbon impact. 47% of respondents stated that they are likely to choose low carbon labelled goods over non-labelled.

The Carbon Trust says the findings underline the need for corporate leadership on carbon reduction. They also point out that only 59% of FTSE 100 companies have clear targets to cut carbon footprints.

I think it’s great when companies show a real interest in environmental issues but I have to say, I’m a little sceptical about such research. Firstly, the article was in MarketingWeek, which is a magazine dedicated to the marketing industry and focused on marketing messaging.

Actions speak louder than words and to me there’s a vast difference between a company or business purporting, through marketing verbiage, to be taking action on carbon change and actually doing it. Look no further than certain high-street clothing retailers recently claiming to be ‘ethical’ and yet unwittingly buying into child labour. It demonstrates how easy it is to say one thing and yet without proper controls in place to actually be doing another. Marketing messages are shallow but consumers are savvy and less likely to be taken in, in my view. It doesn’t take much to label a product green and broadcast a low carbon footprint without doing much to actually reduce your carbon footprint.

Over the last decade, we’ve invested a great deal in product design with energy efficiency, lowering total cost of ownership, and increasing performance and reliability across all our range. Our UPS use less energy, take up less space and are easier to maintain. We’re also at the forefront of new developments such as renewable energy (solar) and flywheel/rotary UPS that doesn’t require batteries. Equipment is lighter in weight, so cheaper to transport, smaller in size so it doesn’t occupy so much space and contains fewer component parts so over its lifetime it will cost less to run and create less waste. Of course, it gives us some really useful marketing messages but more than that it makes our carbon claims tangible – and it helps our customers in their efforts to minimise their carbon footprints. And that, to me, is what it should be about – not paying lip service to environmental issues.