Uninterruptible power supply systems offer data-centric businesses energy reliability, by Don Talend, brand storytelling, content strategy and demand generation expert. Energy industry

1. January/February 2011www.distributedenergy.com
Efficient Lighting | Backup | CCHP
ENERGY AUDITS
Increasing efficiency
and decreasing costs

2. 22 • www.distributedenergy.com
I
t’s difficult to imagine a business to which backup
power is more critical than Profitability.net, a
Cincinnati, OH-based provider of private data center
space, hosted applications, cloud computing capacity,
and network storage. Redundant security is a major
element of how the firm defines itself, both in terms of clients’
data and equipment, and the power supply to the equipment.
Any unauthorized personnel attempting to access an infra-
structure cabinet would run into five layers of security; the
cabinets themselves are electronically secure and provide 24/7
notification of unauthorized attempts at access. The company,
which was founded in 2002, also uses a redundant flywheel
UPS system to prevent outages from compromising data cen-
ter cooling infrastructure and, thus, data security.
Aaron Larkins, Profitability.net’s president and CEO, says
that UPS redundancy has always been considered mandatory
at the company’s 23,000-square-foot facility, which can be
expanded by 12,000 additional square feet. Until late 2008, two
separate battery-based systems had been used as a redundant
UPS for the company’s single generator.
“We have public company clients, medical groups, and
large manufacturing multi-site companies that rely on our data
center to access their business applications,” says Larkins.“So
we made a decision that we would have a primary and redun-
dant power source from the UPS forward to ensure that no
matter what happens in that primary line, whether it’s a fatal
problem with the UPS, or the power distribution unit [PDU],
or the circuit breakers that are feeding individual branch cir-
cuits, the customer has a secondary source of power.”
In late 2008, the company had a CleanSource UPS from
Active Power installed for the redundant system, and then
added a second unit for the primary system a little less than
a year later, replacing battery UPS systems that had reached
the end of their service lives. Profitability.net’s experience
demonstrates the choices in equipment that managers at
companies in a wide variety of industries have in protecting
Business owners explore a wide
variety of electrical equipment options
and renewable energy alternatives for
their backup power operations.
BY DON TALEND
Equipped for
ActivePower
Continuity
their power supply.
The CleanSource UPS uses a flywheel that normally spins
at 7,700 rpm and stores kinetic energy. In event of a power
outage, discharge energy from the flywheel provides about
15 seconds of “ride-through” power, typically a sufficient
length of time for standby generators to kick in. According to
the manufacturer, the system is 98% efficient. The flywheel
is located between top and bottom mechanical bearings and
the entire unit is enclosed in a cast-iron housing. Rather than
turning on a vertical shaft, magnetic pulses turn the flywheel.
The UPS steadies the kinetic energy produced by the flywheel
to a 480-V, 60-Hertz output, and an automatic transfer switch
transfers power from the flywheel to the standby system.
Each client’s cabinet has a primary and redundant power
source from the UPS forward. Each UPS feeds its own PDU
that feeds the individual cabinets.

3. January/February 2011 • 23
“The flywheel systems are designed to give us sufficient
run time until our generators start up, which in our case, is
a little less than 10 seconds in the event of a power outage or
voltage drop in the grid,” says Larkins. Each system never has
more than a 50% load, allowing a “bridge” of longer than 15
seconds should a power outage or voltage drop occur.
“In this business, power infrastructure invest-
ments are pretty substantial, and you have to
take the long view on what your costs of
operation are going to be over time,”
points out Larkins. “Our analysis in
2008 showed that energy costs were
already starting to pop up, and our
thought was that energy isn’t going to
get any cheaper over the next 10 or 15
years, so whatever we deploy needs to
be the highest-efficiency available.”
Larkins adds that the new system
also offers continual monitoring ca-
pability. “Stored kinetic energy doesn’t
lie—if you’ve got a wheel rotating at a
certain rpm [revolutions per minute], you
know you have a certain amount of power,”
he says.
The system performed as intended dur-
ing a brief power outage along the down-
town Cincinnati corridor shortly before
1 a.m. on July 24, 2009. The company’s
monitoring systems immediately identi-
fied the power issue from Duke Energy
and signaled the generator power system
to start. The transition occurred in less
than 10 seconds.
“Before [the outage], we had a
confidence level that they would work,
because we saw them in operation every
day and we saw the consistency in how
they performed,” says Larkins. He adds that
the company has realized financial benefits
from the new installation as well. It was possible
to shut down one of two 10-ton air conditioners that were
dedicated to the UPS room. Additionally, the company saves
about $18,000 in the form of lower maintenance costs every
year since the installation, according to Larkins.
Growth Meets Modularity
When Atlantic.net, an Orlando, FL-based provider of busi-
ness data services such as server colocation, dedicated serv-
ers, data backup, security, and private networks looked at the
impact of future growth on its 25,000-square foot facility, it
was clear that growth, reliable power, and sustainability did
not have to be mutually exclusive.
In 2003, the company built the facility—which is fully
steel reinforced and meets Category 5 hurricane require-
ments—and had two Eaton 9315 battery-powered UPS
units rated at 225–750 kVA installed. By 2007, the 9315s had
reached capacity and the company began looking to expand
its UPS capacity. Minimizing energy consumption and costs
were a major consideration, however.
“We have global customers, so just because we’re in the
Eastern time zone, that doesn’t mean that when we go home,
Client demands,
infrastructure
adjustments, and
an overall desire
to minimize energy
consumption led
Atlantic.net to
expand its UPS
capacity.
Photosthispage:Eaton

4. 24 • www.distributedenergy.com
our clients stop working,” points out Brett
Haines, operations manager for Atlantic.net,
which was founded in 1994.“We need to have
100% uptime—that’s something that we have
to guarantee to our customers and we have to
provide it. A UPS helps us to guarantee 100%
uptime,” he says, adding that the company
serves several industries in which data is criti-
cal, such as travel and medical, and small com-
panies to multimillion-dollar corporations.
Haines acknowledges that Atlantic.net
is served well by its power supplier, Progress
Energy, which routinely conducts line tests
and trims trees located near wires. Normally,
problems only occur with the power sup-
ply as a result of human mishaps, he adds.
Regardless, the company employs a 2-MW
Caterpillar generator for standby power and
management recognizes the importance of a
foolproof power supply.
But like nearly everyone, management
also recognized the fact that energy costs had
been steadily ticking upward during the past
decade. Clients were making infrastructure
adjustments to try and keep up. The company
responded to the demand by opting for new
high-efficiency, modular Eaton BladeUPS
systems for the server racks.
“More and more, our clients have been
virtualizing the components that they use—
they’re going from more servers down to a
few,” says Haines. “As more clients come in and
use our space, the virtualization helps because it
reduces our power needs, but as more clients come in, we
need more power. In those fewer servers, they’re using more
energy and they’re also putting out more heat, so we try to
minimize our heat load on the floor as much as possible, and
the BladeUPS help because they’re more efficient.”
The BladeUPS system is a three-phase, rack-based UPS
system new three-phase system designed primarily for mod-
ularity. According to the manufacturer, users can expand
their UPS capacity from 12 kW to 60 kW in a 19-inch enclo-
sure by adding from one to six parallel BladeUPS modules to
create redundancy. The units
reportedly provide up to 34
minutes of run time and are
98% efficient.
As of early fall 2010,
Atlantic.net had installed nine
BladeUPS racks and a total
of 50 modules, in addition to
the two Eaton 9315s still in
service. Haines reports that
bridges typically last 15
seconds with a maximum
of 29 seconds, not that it
has been put to use very
often. One time, a car had
struck a power pole and an
Left: Flywheel-
based UPS
recently installed
by Profitability.net
Right: The Beth
Israel Deaconess
Medical Center
and Ty Dell
recently imple-
mented flywheel
UPS systems
to help protect
two data centers
against power
outages.
entire grid section was shut down, according to
Haines. The UPS bridged the outage for 20 sec-
onds, and the generator ran for two hours with
no adverse impact on clients’ equipment.
The modularity of the new UPS system
suits cloud computing, an Atlantic.net capabil-
ity. “As more clients come, we’re going to need
more computers online for our new cloud
product,” says Haines. “The way we can do
that with our UPSs is to put in redundant UPS
systems. What we did was put two BladeUPS
modules into each rack so now, in case one
component fails or a battery isn’t up to par, we
have those in place.
“As you increase the load, UPSs become
more efficient and you don’t want to have large
400- or 500-KVa modules sitting there with
10% load—that’s not very efficient.” He adds
that the BladeUPS modules operate at 40% for
“fail-over” capability.
Medical Facility Goes Green With
Flywheels
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
(BIDMC) in Boston, MA, a 550-bed adult
medical-surgical teaching hospital affiliated
with Harvard Medical School, recently estab-
lished a goal to increase green purchasing by
15% by Fiscal Year 2012. A major element of
this initiative is the selection of “clean energy”
flywheel systems to help protect the BIDMC’s
two data centers against power outages. The
main 7,000 square-foot Renaissance Data
Center is located 1.5 miles from BIDMC’s hospital cam-
pus and the separate Span Data Center 3,000-square-foot
disaster recovery data center is housed at the main campus.
These data centers provide critical clinical support to the
facility’s medical records, pharmacy, laboratory, chemother-
apy suite, and operating rooms.
The UPSs protecting the servers, switches, routers, data
storage devices, and PDUs utilize flywheel systems from
Vycon. The Span Data Center contains a standalone 225-kVA
ActivePower
Vycon
OnStat Power Systems’ Silent
Sentry could be described as a
self-contained UPS for various
non-life-threatening surgical
procedures.
SilentSentry

5. January/February 2011 • 25
UPS that uses two Vycon flywheels rated at 275 kVA for
11.7 seconds. A 200-kW computer load provides 15 seconds
of run time on the flywheel before the generator starts.
The BIDMC staff is in the process of making this facility’s
electrical and cooling systems as redundant as those in the
Renaissance Data Center. The latter facility receives power
from the utility vault through four automatic transfer
switches (ATSs) that switch to a generator during a pro-
longed power event. The cooling system and computer load
are supported by two sets of redundant ATSs; if either one
loses an ATS, the data center remains operational.
Two sets of Vycon VDC flywheels to back up the two
parallel 225kVA UPSs. According to Ty Dell, data center plant
manager for information systems, during a power outage the
facility obtains 30 seconds of flywheel runtime at 400 kW of
computer load before the generator starts up. Dell points out
that this is plenty of time, as the generator must come online
within 10 seconds in order to meet the National Fire Protec-
tion Association’s NFPA 99 regulations for Emergency Power
Systems; the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health-
“Stored kinetic energy doesn’t lie—if you’ve got a wheel
rotating at a certain rpm, you know you have a certain
amount of power.”
Ecommerce Inc. had two Generac 500-kW MPS Diesel generators installed
for standby power for its data center.
Generac

6. 26 • www.distributedenergy.com
care Organizations (JCAHO) requires that the generator
must come online within 12 seconds.
The flywheels have a maximum energy storage of 3,000
kW per second at 100 kW and a rotational speed of 18,500 to
36,000 rpm. For the short term, management is opting to use
batteries and the flywheel systems in tandem. Dell reports
that the staff is currently evaluating whether to eliminate the
batteries, noting that a rapid flywheel recharge time of less
than 150 seconds provides reliability and that the flywheels
do not require special cooling.
Redundancy in Standby Generators
Redundancy is often a high priority for standby generators,
too. That was definitely the case for Columbus, OH-based
Ecommerce Inc., a company founded in late 1999 that
houses nearly half a million Web sites or nearly half of 1%
of the Internet. In fall 2007, the firm was constructing a new
data center in Columbus and was selecting a backup power
solution and needed a scalable system to address future
growth in the climate-controlled facility that would soon be
filled with industrial-grade servers. One option was a single
2-MW generator and transfer switch with no redundancy,
a solution that would have taken nearly a year to install.
Rick Gideon, vice president of operations for Ecom-
merce Inc., was introduced to an alternative redundant
solution by chance. The company and Columbus-based
Generator Systems Inc. (GSI) had the same real estate agent,
which is how Gideon was introduced to GSI. He met with
Brian Kennedy, vice president, sales and marketing for GSI,
who recommended the Generac Modular Power System
(MPS) for protecting Ecommerce, Inc.’s 10,000 1U server
room. Rather than installing 2-MW gensets immediately, the
company had two Generac 500-kW MPS Diesel generators
installed that are providing 100% redundancy at a lower cost.
Enough space is available to add three more 500-kW MPS
Diesel units to allow for future growth within the facility.
A Different Kind of Medical Backup Power
Cardiac Equipment Services, Nassau County, NY, provides
slightly different medical backup power systems that could
be described as self-contained UPSs. The company is owned
by Charlie Bergin, who has worked in the biomedical engi-
neering field for 25 years—the past 15 as a provider of med-
ical power backup systems. He often recommends one of
two systems—OnStat Power Systems’ Reassurance or Silent
Sentry—for office-based surgical centers.
The Reassurance product, developed by Medi+Products
in the early 1990s, is a fully enclosed, stainless steel, cabinet
Counterclockwise from left:
Norfolk Naval Air Station, Norfolk,
VA, “tower” and walking surface
Bottom right: County Juvi Prison,
San Bernardino, CA.
(Note the large exhaust particulate
filter on top.)
GenSysSupport

7. January/February 2011 • 27
use in equipment such as standby generators. In 1988, the
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated that
underground storage tank (UST) owners comply with new
standards for corrosion resistance, leak detection, and spill-
age and overfill protection by the end of 1998.
This regulatory development has created a market for
related equipment: AST platforms. Larry Hill, CEO of Col-
lierville, TN-based Generator System Support (GSS) and
engineering manager at Thompson Power Corp. in Memphis,
TN, points out that the proliferation of ASTs has meant that
gensets are sometimes located too high for proper service and
maintenance. GSS constructs aluminum service platforms that
allow access to two sides and one end of gensets.
The platforms use 0.125-inch aluminum tread plate mate-
rial that is bolted together in the field. Platforms in the stan-
dard configuration do not touch the concrete pad; they have a
cantilever design that uses the fuel tank base as the supporting
member. The platform usually is located 36–48 inches above the
concrete pad. DE
Don Talend is a frequent contributor to Distributed Energy and
specializes in covering technology and innovation.
system on a castor base. The top surface has a 30-inch height
and the unit is equipped with front panel outlets.
The Silent Sentry is a static subpanel designed for mini-
mal impact on interior design. The unit provides 2,000, 2500,
or 3,000 W and 4 kWh of stored energy, and is based on 12-V
battery banks with built-in UL-489 branch-circuit protectors
for distributed loads. It can be inset into a wall cavity between
wall studs and has a protrusion of as little as 4½ inches. The
unit integrates branch-circuit interrupters into the system it-
self, making the battery-powered generator an uninterruptible
subpanel, eliminating the need for an emergency subpanel.
The two units have several common features, including
five-stage battery recharging, a recharger with four-stage
automatic recharging and manual equalization, battery
monitoring, an optional charge/discharge monitoring sys-
tem for tracking energy in and out of the battery bank, and
split-phase output.
Surgeons can plug their powered surgical equipment into
these units to maintain procedural continuity. Bergin points
out that the units are designed for procedures that are not
life-threatening, such as gastroenterology and plastic surgery.
“Many doctors are fearful,” says Bergin.“When the power
goes out, they don’t know how long it’s going to be—they
just want enough time to close and get out. They may not
finish the procedure. It depends on where they are in the
procedure—if it happens right at the beginning, they might
just close up and have the patient come back.”
Still, JCAHO mandates two hours of standby power.
Gastroenterologists power equipment such as vital sign moni-
tors and O2 concentrators, and plastic surgeons need to wire
entire operating rooms because they use general anesthesia.
“All of the procedures are elective, and all are outpatient,”
says Bergin.“It’s not like they need hospital-based generators,
which are diesel-based and located outside the building.”
Bergin indicates that a market for standby power for
non-life-threatening medical procedures has been steadily
growing in recent years.“Today, most outpatient surgery can
be done in an ambulatory environment outside of the hospi-
tal,” he says.“It’s happening more and more where there are a
lot more facilities opening that do opening types of surgery,
from orthopedics to OB-Gyn.”
Service Platforms for Raised Tanks
Recent federal regulations have created a new market for
aboveground storage tanks (ASTs) for fuel that is stored for
Online extras
www.distributedenergy.com/backup
Uninterrupted savings!
A market for standby
power for non-life-
threatening medical
procedures has been
steadily growing in
recent years.