Electricity is perfect when it is produced, but the mains, because of its own structure, can alter its frequency, cause over or undervoltages and, in some instances, even create interruptions and black outs.
This is why you need an Uninterruptible Power System (UPS): it protects your devices, which are becoming every day more and more important in our lives, from all of these potentially harmful disturbances.
A UPS has mainly two purposes:
- Protect your electronic devices from all the disturbances commonly present on the mains and preserving them from breaking, failures and systems malfunctioning;
- Protect from micro-interruptions and black outs, thus assuring the continuity of your work even in case of mains failure for a time depending on the load and the capacity of the batteries connected to the UPS.
For a company, the risk of economic damage caused by power surges, could be very high: costs related to data loss and time needed to recover it, when possible, or to repair or replace damaged hardware in IT systems in failure. Lost sales and production capacity caused by worker’s inactivity should also be taken into account.
The imperfections on the mains can cause several problems to your equipment:
Hardware damage or failure;
- Hardware damage or failure;
- Total or partial data loss;
- Data elaboration failures;
- Improper stress of electronic components;
- Peripherals failures;
- Work station failures;
- Production process failures.
A UPS protects your devices from all these risks created by the mains.
There are many kinds of electrical disturbances on the mains, and each one can cause different problems.
SAG (O BROWNOUT): short span drops in voltage. It is the most common disturbance of the mains (about 87% of total), it is caused by the turning on of electric devices such as engines compressors,elevators and freight elevators. The SAG can cause your PC or your server to stop working or sudden crashing of the system, losing or damaging the data you are working with.
BLACK-OUT: mains failure due to extremely high demand of power or by natural events. A BLACK OUT can cause the loss of the data you are working with, and sometimes even the loss of the FAT (File Allocation Table), with consequent loss of the data stored in the driver.
SPIKE: fast and short signi cant increase in voltage, for example caused by lightning. This disturbance can cause very serious damages to hardware and data loss.
SURGE: short span voltage increase, with a minimum duration of 1/10 of a second caused by the turning off of electric engines that require great amounts of power. The SURGE can cause premature faults in sensible electronic components.
NOISE: also known as EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference), it distorts the sine-wave on the input. It is caused by industrial lighting, switches, generators, broadcasting stations and machinery; it can be intermittent or continuos. NOISE creates empty spots and errors in programs and in data files.
UPS: How do they work?
The UPS (Uninterruptible Power System) is an electronic device that is able to improve and modify the way that power is provided. When a UPS receives power from the mains, it modi es it in order to provide alternated current that has been perfectly stabilized, in both voltage and frequency, without interrupting the supply of power.
The UPS can guarantee a stable supply of energy even when the mains is absent. This thanks to its batteries, which are usually on the inside, from which it takes the power that the devices connected to its output require.
Powercom Europe’s UPS ensure a regular current, perfect in amplitude and frequency and unaffected by mains’ disturbances.
UPS kinds
Powercom Europe offers two kinds of UPS, encoded by the european regulation EN64040-3:
- Line Interactive UPS;
- On Line UPS.
Off Line UPS, regularly encoded by European regulations, are not offered in our catalogue for the standard market. Products are available on demand and have to be used in installation where there is no required interaction by the machine in the presence of the mains.