New Industry Products

Smart-Grid Ready UPS for Large Data Centers

November 10, 2015 by Jeff Shepard

AEG Power Solutions today launches its latest Protect Blue UPS at Data Centre World Frankfurt, where it is exhibiting in Hall 4.1 on Stand 244. Aimed at large data centers that require the highest standards of reliability, the new Protect Blue provides a highly efficient and flexible UPS solution in power ranges from 250kW to 4MW, reducing total cost of ownership and saving money for data center operators, and is well- suited to cloud and hybrid IT.

For maximum flexibility, the new version of Protect Blue was designed as a modular UPS to meet the actual power requirement of any data center, while also being easily scalable to the evolution of the infrastructure it supports. Protect Blue is based on a modular architecture with 250kW power blocks that makes it simple to adapt to increasing or decreasing load by just adding or removing blocks. These modules can be configured in parallel to meet high power requirements up to 4000kW, and support n+1 redundancy. To increase operational safety, the blocks have decentralized control mechanisms.

Protect Blue is transformer-less, and uses 3-level IGBT inverter technology to achieve efficiency of more than 96% in double conversion, and more than 98% in Eco mode. In times of constantly increasing energy prices, this high efficiency helps to reduce operating and cooling costs, and thus significantly reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).

The new version of the UPS features innovative technologies to maximize the efficiency during online operations. A new IGBT-based Vienna Rectifier automatically corrects the input power factor to more than 0.99 and limits the harmonic rejection to the mains at a THDi of less than 3%, at nominal load. Another new option is the Load Bus Synchronization (LBS), which provides synchronization between two UPS systems if due to temporary conditions, such as battery operation, the whole system cannot ensure it.

The new UPS can handle non-linear loads up to its full rated capacity, and can supply, without derating, all kinds of loads (both inductive and capacitive) with an output power factor up to unity. This means that the UPS offers the best flexibility for all the critical loads, independently from their power factor.

The new idle mode enables Protect Blue to follow load variations during its operating cycle, by auto-hibernating the surplus power blocks in case of lower power demand, thus reducing operating costs and optimizing efficiency even at partial loads. In the event of a mains failure or other emergency situations, all power blocks will automatically be switched on.

Protect Blue with its special version “Smart Grid Ready” is able to feed energy back into the grid and to communicate with intelligent power supply systems. This version is compatible with alternative energy sources and contributes to a sustainable energy management of data centers.