What Does My UPS Do?
Your UPS provides the crucial power that your business needs when utility power has failed. Your UPS can step in, seamlessly supplying energy long enough for you to either shut down gracefully so that none of your essential data is lost or for an alternative source of electricity, like a power generator, to come online.
How Much Power Do I Need?
Calculating the size of your UPS is a specialist job that involves detailed calculations about you, your business and your requirements. At Carter Sullivan, we design UPS systems around our clients. During our free on-site survey, we spend time with you to understand all of the factors that help us to identify the right UPS that’s right for you and your business.
Every UPS has a load rating measured in volt-amperes (VA). UPS systems can vary in size between 300 VA and as high as 5,000,000 VA or more. The higher the rating, the more power that it can supply.
While calculating the size of your UPS system is a specialist job, you can provide a rough estimation yourself. One of the world’s leading UPS providers Eaton recommends this basic five-step procedure for calculating an approximate UPS rating your organisation requires:
- Make a list of all the equipment your UPS will be protecting.
- Determine how many volts and amps every device on the list draws.
- For each device, multiply volts by amps to arrive at a VA figure.
- Add all of the VA figures together.
- Multiply that sum by 1.2, to build in room for growth.
By following this simple approach, you will have a rough idea of the UPS you will require. If you would like to learn more about the process, we’ve created a more in-depth guide to sizing your UPS which you may find useful.
How Do I Calculate Run Time?
The UPS you have installed must be large enough to drive the required load. If it’s underpowered, it simply won’t do the job. How long it lasts is dependent on the amount of power that is being drawn and the number and size of the batteries that are powering your UPS.
The more energy that your UPS is supplying, the faster it will deplete the batteries. You can view the runtime of popular UPS systems from APC, Eaton and Riello on their websites. These will give a rough estimate of expected run time for each UPS at different levels of power consumption.
The quality and condition of your batteries can affect the run time of your UPS. Eaton estimates that situational factors can see a variation of up to 15% in your UPS’s operating time, so be aware of that while designing emergency plans. The performance of your UPS can be affected by your equipment, battery age, operating temperature and other factors that may reduce operating times. It’s one of the reasons that UPS battery maintenance is so important.
Be aware that the information provided on company websites is generic, and doesn’t take into consideration any of the other factors that may influence the performance of your UPS. Only by working with experienced professionals who can understand all of the specific elements that will affect your UPS can you get a realistic estimate of how long your UPS will last.
How Long Is Enough?
We encourage you not to think about how long your UPS will last in the event of it being called into action, but will it last long enough?
Your UPS can provide a short supply of emergency power for your comms room or data centre, but it must also be supported by early warning systems and rapid-response support to ensure that your precious data and systems remain secure.
When the UPS is called into action, you must have systems, processes and plans that will deliver business continuity. This planning includes working through scenarios, deciding at which point you’ll shut systems down, transfer to generators or wait for mains power to be restored.
Designing For Security
As we have seen, several factors can influence the runtime of your UPS which makes calculating how long it will last complicated. Our expert team can design a UPS system that will deliver the crucial power you need it when you need it.
When calculating the size of your UPS that can provide estimates of run time that will enable you to develop the contingency plans to ensure that you use that time wisely to safeguard systems and protect data.