The Caterpillar Uninterruptible Power Supply 250 (Cat UPS), an integrated flywheel-based power supply system developed by EPRI (Palo Alto, CA), Active Power Inc. (Austin, TX) and Caterpillar Inc. (Lafayette, IN) has been declared a winner in the 2000 R&D 100 Awards program sponsored by R&D Magazine (Oak Brook, IL).
Considered to be one of the more cost-effective ways to protect critical loads against temporary power outages, the Cat UPS does not use batteries. This frees the user from frequent system maintenance and battery replacement. When a voltage disturbance occurs, the flywheel within the system generates power and the static switch opens to ensure back-feed protection. Clean power is supplied to the protected load along with an uninterrupted transition to a stand-by generator set. At full 250kW load conditions, the flywheel can support the load for 12.5 seconds.
