Assumption continues to be the mother of all disasters - especially in the current realm of erratic power supply. This means one cannot assume that protection fitted to the mains supply alone will be a sufficient gatekeeper for all infrastructure and instrumentation.
Christelle Larkins, area manager: South Africa, East Africa and Indian Ocean, MGE Office Protection Systems, explains that to safeguard mission-critical instrumentation and systems, CIOs and engineers need to investigate specific means of keeping these functional and protected 24/7.
When it comes to protecting your infrastructure and instrumentation, you cannot take anything for granted. Not only are the rolling blackouts we`re currently experiencing largely unpredictable, but you are also not assured of "clean" power being restored to your systems immediately when the lights go back on. Surges are becoming increasingly common and, as such, your equipment remains vulnerable throughout - whether you`re experiencing a power cut or not.
Individual protection for mission-critical instrumentation has thus become vital to ensure not only business continuity, but also the wellbeing of your infrastructure. Fortunately, there are a number of options now available in the market to suit a variety of instrumentation needs.
The first option available is that of a UPS (uninterruptible power supply). Ideal for departmental networks, servers and workstations, a single phase UPS such as the Pulsar MX can support up to 110 servers at a time. Ensuring redundancy for highly critical applications, these UPSes typically offer hot-swappable sub-modules (power and battery) for maintenance without load interruption. They also have large input voltage and frequency ranges to avoid using the batteries unnecessarily, and should come with an internal bypass built-in to supply the load even if the UPS fails.
Perhaps the best feature of a UPS like the Pulsar MX, however, is its flexibility. Not only can it be used as a free-standing tower unit or rack-mounted, but it has a built-in "Powershare" system allowing you to remotely reboot the connected equipment, begin a sequential start-up or load-shed some of your systems while operating from battery in order to maintain the power to critical loads. An automatic battery test should be a standard feature of these devices - and one which I cannot urge you strongly enough to take advantage of! By connecting individual equipment to this type of UPS you will thus not only remain functional during an outage, but also prevent possible damage from fluctuations in voltage whilst the lights remain on.
A power supply conditioner is another option for companies looking to protect sensitive equipment like laboratory instruments and programmable logic units from erratic voltage. A conditioner like the Pulsar CT will prevent premature damage to the electrical components of your instrumentation thanks to a number of critical features. Ensuring total electrical isolation between the input and the output, a conditioner prevents the power supply to the application being affected by any electrical fault - even a 4 000V lightning strike! It also continuously regulates any voltage fluctuations within a range of 3% to 5%. The filtering of harmonics both from the output voltage and from the sink current means that any interference generated by the power unit is not fed back upstream into the electrical power supply. The result? Controlled and regulated power supply - when there`s electricity available.
With load-shedding predicted to remain a standard feature of life in South Africa for a number of years to come, everyone who has invested in valuable infrastructure and systems would do well to find a way of physically protecting these investments. Investigate the alternatives available, find the one that best suits your business continuity needs - and won`t be in for any rude shocks when the power does eventually come back on.
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