Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

A study conducted by Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), finds that power disturbances cost the United States industry as much as $188 billion annually in lost data, material and productivity. According to industry analysts at the Darnell Group, companies spend over $5 billion worldwide to overcome the crisis faced by power disturbances.

Accordingly, ensuring power protection is of the utmost importance.

“Driving down costs and increasing data center system uptime are motivating important initiatives such as energy efficiency, sustainability and reliability,” said Dann McKeraghan, vice president of marketing for VYCON, in a statement.

“Today's data centers are more complex and require highly efficient energy solutions that not only protect vital data, but also help data centers decrease rising energy costs and reduce their carbon footprint,” McKeraghan added.

Minuteman UPS/Para Systems, a company that produces some of the industry's most reliable power technology products, has a spot on its homepage dedicated to answering the question, “Why is power protection needed?” And, according to the power protection company, the answer is because at any moment you can lose access to your important data.

Like Minuteman, VYCON relies on its flywheel systems to protect data centers from the costly and damaging effects of power disturbances, according to company officials. They provide reliable power connection and protect the data center from unplanned outages, reduced services and loss of revenue.

VYCON's flywheel systems complement the uninterruptible power systems (UPSs), replacing space- and maintenance-intensive batteries. Company officials estimate that over a 20-year lifespan, cost savings from VYCON's flywheel versus a five-minute valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) battery bank range between $100,000 and $200,000 per flywheel deployed.

The flywheel technology also eliminates the need for expensive cooling and maintenance. It takes up a fraction of the space compared to banks of backup batteries, the company claims.

Recently, Minuteman reminded people that power outages do occur and that they can be extremely damaging.

“While people often operate under the assumption a problem will not happen to them, the fact is that outages happen frequently in the United States,” Bill Allen, marketing director at Minuteman, told TMCnet. “According to studies by J.D. Power & Associates, the average business experiences 5.7 outages per year. Electric Power Research estimates the total cost of these outages to the U.S. economy between $104 and 164 million.”

For example, last summer, more than 70,000 Monmouth County New Jersey residents were left without power when equipment failure in the power transmission system at a Jersey Central Power & Light sub-station resulted in a massive blackout. For almost five hours, homes and businesses were affected as power was knocked out in almost every municipality in Monmouth County.