Efficiency and reliability of power supply in the rapidly expanding data centre business is crucial to feed the ever-hungry global information economy. As a leading technology innovator, ABB has considered the needs of data centres and continually enhanced products to meet ever-expanding needs.
“MNS-Up is the result of ongoing customer-centric product development. Data centres are continually growing and two key aspects, space requirements and scalability have needed to be addressed,” says Ronald van Leeuwen, business unit manager for electrification solutions in South Africa. “MNS-Up addresses these two areas very efficiently by combining the switchgear and uninterruptable power supply (UPS) technologies into a single unit.”
Space saving
In traditional power distribution environments three discrete areas are required. The first area is dedicated to housing the input switchgear which is fed by the main transformer. The second area, in turn provides power to the modular UPS through either cable or external bus duct systems. The third area houses the UPS output switchgear, feeding power to the points of consumption. As the assemblies are physically separated, a specific level of safety is assumed and this architecture is well-proven and has established itself as the norm. However it does have significant drawbacks. This topology relies on providing separate incoming and outgoing switchgear assemblies, with the associated power cabling or bus duct, resulting in a large footprint and great expense to interconnect the three assemblies.
ABB’s MNS-Up eliminates the need for the three separate areas, allowing for a single assembly housing the power input, uninterrupted power supply modules and the power output (distribution). Footprint savings of 20% are typical for a 500 kW system, rising to a significant 30% for 2 MW systems upwards.
Scalability
Today’s information economy requires data centres to provide cost-effective solutions that can grow alongside information consumption. Avi Ramdhin, sales manager for electrification solutions, points out that, “With modules of 100 kW capacity that can be added to accommodate power requirements MNS-Up can quickly react to market driven power demands, increasing the data centre’s ability to service clients.”
UPS modules are expandable in 100 kW blocks. Each frame can support a total of five 100 kW UPS modules, this can be further expanded with a duplication of the frames. Up to six frames can be joined together providing 3 MW of power. It need not end there; further systems may be added in parallel.
Tried and tested
Safety lies at the heart of the design. Complete compliance with the International Electro Technical Commission (IEC) 61439-2 and TR 61641 form the base on which MNS switchboards are designed. The broad scope of ABB switchgear extends beyond its proven track record in power distribution, a core area of ABB’s expertise. The MNS technology boasts an installed base of 1,5 million systems worldwide. For MNS-Up, ABB has selected the Conceptpower DPA 500 uninterrupted power supply, which sports a transformerless, double-conversion architecture. This solution is the choice of mission-critical users including major international stock exchanges.
The design of the system is such that a decentralised parallel architecture is used, each module has its own input switch, bypass, UPS and output switch and the hardware and software combination operates self-sufficiently. This allows for module isolation; as a result failure elsewhere in the system does not impact the entire operation.
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