Keeping UPS Up and Running
Part 1: UPS: Preventive Maintenance Ensures Power Supply
Part 2: UPS Testing: Identify Potential Power Interruptions
Part 3: UPS Maintenance Checklist
Part 4: Top Tools for UPS Maintenance
Part 5: Adhere to NFPA Requirements During UPS Testing
UPS: Preventive Maintenance Ensures Power Supply
By Michael Newbury - August 2008
Simply providing an uninterruptible power system (UPS) does not necessarily ensure an institutional or commercial facility’s equipment is protected from power-supply fluctuations and distortions. Maintenance and engineering managers must factor in regular testing and maintenance of a facility’s UPS to ensure it remains in peak operating condition, protects critical systems, and keeps them reliably operating as designed.
By fully understanding the role of a UPS, required maintenance procedures, and the diagnostic tools to keep a UPS running, managers will be better able to develop a preventive maintenance (PM) strategy that meets an organization’s needs.
A Growing Role
A UPS is essentially a series of batteries that maintains power to critical pieces of equipment that cannot withstand a power interruption. A UPS protects equipment from such elements as power interruptions, voltage variations, frequency variations and transient disturbances.
As technology advances, more pieces of equipment require uninterruptible power, making a reliable UPS increasingly crucial in any facility. Upon losing utility power to a facility, it often can take 10 seconds or more for the generators to start and power to transfer to the emergency source. Most electronic equipment will not tolerate more than a few cycles of power disruption without shutting down.
Minimizing disruptions to the power source starts during the power system’s design phase. A reliable power system depends on quality equipment and reliable design. A facility’s UPS should be designed to protect critical and high-tech equipment and to facilitate planned power outages so technicians can perform maintenance.
Perhaps the key factor in keeping a facility up and running is a thorough preventive maintenance program and a risk management approach to ensure critical services are available when needed.
Comments
scassidy7 wrote re: UPS: Preventive Maintenance Ensures Power Supply
on 8/24/2009 12:54:23 PM
The topic of UPS maintenance interests me very much. It is what I do (Remote Monitoring Systems) for a living.
And I agree with you, there are more and more UPSs being turned up every week. And the only real way to keep them running at peak performance is through a reliable PM schedule.
My experience has been it can take as much as a full 30 seconds for a generator to stablize and transfer the load.
