$50 billion is the annual loss American businesses incur due to power failure. One can just imagine the loss Indian businesses must be incurring due to power failure. Leave alone the establishment, these days almost every house is dependent on some form of machine to make life easy and comfortable. So power failure is beyond doubt the villain who is causing hindrance in the electrical system from running smoothly, be at home or at work.
Critical operation facilities like data centers, hospitals, retailers, call centers, banks, TV or radio stations, manufacturing factories, universities, telecommunications and cable companies, etc require a clean, stable and consistent power supply. Even a momentary glitch with the power has the capacity to result in lost data, zapped systems, corrupt files and mislaid production. For a failsafe backup plan, installing power backup in the form of a branded inverter/UPS or generator is inevitable in India where power crash in cities range from 2 to 4 hours and in small towns and villages it goes up to 8 hours or more. Be it your home or business establishment, it is vital to make informed decisions before buying an inverter/UPS and batteries.
What is inverter?
During power cut, the inverter provides the power supply to the electrical equipments by receiving the supply from the battery and converting direct current to an alternating current. When the power resumes, it takes the supply from the AC source and charges the battery. Generally for households inverter is used. Another limitation of the inverter is that it does not protect the load against spike or voltage fluctuation like UPS. On the other hand, switching of UPS from the main supply to the battery is much quicker than an inverter. For this reason, critical electronic equipments like computers and machines in establishments require UPS.
What is a UPS?
UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) is nothing but inverter with inbuilt battery charger. It can be as small as a box that sits near your personal computer to protect it during power failures to a mega-ton box with huge capacity to power big business. The bigger systems usually include a switch gear and power transformers to provide consistent, reliable electricity and guarantee from zero to only seconds per year of downtime. The UPS can act as a filter for the power coming in from a utility source and protect against the outages and fluctuations that originate with the source. A UPS might be a single-phase or triple-phase configuration and is powered by an array of batteries.
Besides power back up, a UPS also protects your data and devices from energy surges, spikes or dips that cause fluctuations and irregularities.
How does a UPS Work?
Here are the major types of UPS:
- A standby UPS system might also be called an offline or line-preferred UPS. It normally has an inverter, battery, static switch, low-pass filter and surge suppressor. The system remains on standby unless there’s a power failure. For personal workstations that consume less than 2 KVA, a standby UPS can do the work efficiently.
- A line-interactive UPS system contains a battery and inverter that are always connected to the output, and if power fails, a switch changes the electrical flow. The continuous connection provides superior filtering. Most popular and reliable UPS type existing in the market today, used in establishments is the Line Interactive UPS. It is ideal for harsh power environments and distributed servers that uses lesser than 5 KVA.
- A double conversion UPS system has a backup battery that is charged by the input AC and powers the output inverter for a seamless switch.
- Delta Conversion Online UPS is a modern innovation that eliminates the disadvantages of the traditional double conversion online UPS. For operating over 5 KVA, Delta Conversion On-Line UPS is highly efficient as it reduces the substantial life-cycle cost of energy in large installations. The delta converter moves components of the power from input to the output.
Why Battery is the heart of a UPS?
While the UPS is your power infrastructure, it is the batteries in this system that initiates and acts as a secondary power source in the event of a power outage. Therefore, it is important to understand your UPS battery options just as well as your options for the UPS/ inverter.
The most commonly used UPS battery today is the VRLA
Valve Regulated Lead Acid (VRLA) Battery
Pros
- Less up-front costs
- Doesn’t require pouring of distilled water, therefore requires less maintenance
- Safer to store and use as the valve vents out gas when it reaches a certain pressure
Con
- Has shorter lifespan of 5-10 years, if stored at room temperature in a dry, climate controlled room
Flooded Cell or VLA Batteries
Pros
- Very reliable
- Has a lifespan of 20 years
Cons
- Need their own separate battery room due to potential chemical hazards
- Higher upfront costs than other batteries
- Requires maintenance by keeping water levels filled correctly and requires equalization
Lithium Ion Batteries
It’s being used in electric vehicles, UPS storage, for harnessing renewable energy, grid sharing and for industrial process control support.
Pros
- Small in size and lighter in weight
- Lower operational expense costs
- Need less frequent replacement
- Has very long life
- Charges faster charge times
- Is safer, as it manages charge current, voltage, and cell voltage balance and in case of over temperature, automatically disconnects the batteries
- Have built in battery monitoring and management system that sends alarms on the UPS in case of any change in cell performance
- Can operate at higher ambient temperatures
Cons
- Have high charge and discharge times
- Very expensive
Now that you have a fair idea about the difference between UPS and inverter, and the different types of UPS and batteries, happy shopping! At Ian Trading Company, we recommend Eaton brand for UPS, Amaron inverters and Amaron batteries for all your power backup solutions at home or business establishment. Get in touch with us for a personalized service.