All mission critical facilities, data centres and organisations have their critical IT systems backed up by UPS systems, which offer support ranging seconds too many minutes with up to 15 minutes battery back-up being the norm. Extending times beyond this is often limited by the cost and size of additional battery storage. In the event of a power outage it is typical to either “ride the storm” and hope the duration of interruption will be less than a few minutes or take the decision that in the event of a failure that is likely to exceed your battery back-up time that systems are shut down which can impact the business in many ways some often unforeseen.
It is often overlooked that the UPS system is supporting only critical IT systems and that in the event of a failure to the mains supply, supporting systems in particular cooling will fail to run unless a stand by generator system is present. When this happens the IT loads present in many facilities cause the room temperature rise to levels which will cause the IT systems to shut down and/or fail.
Having a stand-by generator system that protects, UPS systems, critical infrastructure and size permitting, your entire building enables you to assume a business as usual approach in the event of an extended failure and will see the capital expense returned very quickly. In these types of failure situations having systems of this type can also assist with customer confidence in your business continuity and disaster recovery procedures.
