There are many things the Danish are famous for but who would have thought that they lead the world in energy independence? In 2006 Danish imports of energy actually fell -8% (minus eight percent!) whilst the rest of Europe rose by more than 2.4%.  So how has this been achieved? The answer lies in decentralised power distribution rather than the more traditional centralised approach. In Denmark, consumers can not only draw power from the grid but feed power into it as well - from solar panels and wind turbines. The key is a term called ’smart-metering’ and may set the model for the future. You see in a generating station only a third of the energy used is converted to electricity which can then be fed into a grid. This change in generation has taken Denmark over 20 years to implement and I wonder just how far behind the UK is? Now in terms of power quality management I have no idea how good or not the system is but I suspect they are pretty hot on this to.

The Olympic Games start today in China. I wonder how many people realise just how important uninterruptible power supplies are to their every day activities. Take the new Beijing Airport. This now has over 12MVA of Riello uninterruptible power supplies supporting a range of functions, all designed to move people, plans and baggage as safely and as smoothly as possible. The installation is a great reference site for Riello UPS and demonstrates the silent part we play in making sure some of the world’s greatest events happen - without a glitch.

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.

Thanks to my contacts at Data Power Protection who gave me a link to a Daily Mail website article the other day about the state of the UK’s electrical supply network. The newspaper article discusses the state of UK power generation and lack of investment which will see us facing regular blackouts and rising electricity costs over the next few years. The basic problem is that our existing power stations are coming to the end of their working lives and our government has not initiated new-build programmes as quickly as required. For Riello UPS and UPS suppliers like Data Power Protection, this means continued market expansion and opportunities but not just for UPS. We would also expect to see a huge demand for standby generators. Personally, I just wonder if local, on-site power generation will be as common a feature of the modern home as a satellite dish and Nintendo WII.

I came across a piece the other day in The Peninsula, Qatar’s leading English Daily, covering the harnessing of solar power. The article is on a French engineer, Olivier Boegner, whose passions are solar power and sailing. Now I had never considered solar power anything but a secondary standby power system. Here we have it as the prime one. With a little research I then came across the MW-Line company in Switzerland who have been making solar powered boats for several years - the one shown runs for less than 1Euro per day which is simply just quite staggering. I think that the downside will off course be speed when compared to traditional fossil fuelled engines. However, with engineers like Olivier pushing the boundaries (and attempting ventures like a planned British Channel crossings), this technology and application will continue to mature.

In terms of power protection I think that we will see a merging of battery and solar power technologies for buildings in the future to create a central storage of electrical energy. From this ‘local pool’ electrical devices will be able to draw their standby power. This has implications not just for Uninterruptibe Power Supplies but any back-up device. It will provide building engineers with a central maintenance point for standby power and provide a host of benefits - the only downside is that there is still no cheaper energy store than a battery, and especially the sealed lead acid maintenance-free type.

I read recently that though solar power installations have been growing at over 35% a year since 1998, the installed global base still only represents 0.1% of total global electricity generation. Whilst the UK has been a  slow developer in terms of installed Photo Voltaic (PV) installations, it is actually a leader in the technology which it exports to sunnier climates. The UK market is now also expected to grow more rapidly to over 3.2MW per annum as a result of the the Department of Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform’s (BERR’s) Low Carbon Buildings Programme and Local (and Regional) Authorities new building requirements for a significant proportion of building energy to come from renewable sources. Riello UPS has repsonded to this emergent side of the power protection market with its Helios Inverter range with more developments to come from its research & development team in the future.