Five Tips to Ensure Power Quality in Your Data Center and Facility
By Molly Gross, Principal, Power Solutions, LLC
Power quality problems are inevitable. Downtime doesn’t have to be. These five practical tips help you build a resilient power protection strategy.
Power problems — surges, spikes, sags, transients, brownouts, and blackouts — are facts of life for any facility connected to utility power. The question is not whether they will happen, but whether your infrastructure is ready when they do. This whitepaper delivers five practical, immediately actionable tips for improving power quality and protecting critical infrastructure: maintaining a backup plan, identifying points of vulnerability, understanding operating environment standards, reviewing service and maintenance schedules, and considering modernization over replacement. A fast read with real-world impact for any IT or facilities professional.
Whitepaper Summary
Q: What should be included in a data center power quality backup plan?
A: A backup plan should address UPS runtime adequacy, battery health, generator availability, management software for remote shutdown, and a tested procedure for manual operations if automated systems fail.
Q: How do you identify power quality vulnerabilities in a facility?
A: A data center power assessment or power quality analysis can identify single points of failure, aging equipment, undersized protection, and gaps in monitoring. Power Solutions offers Data Center Assessment Services for this purpose.
Q: What are the operating environment standards that affect power equipment?
A: Standards including ASHRAE guidelines for temperature and humidity, NEC electrical codes, and manufacturer installation requirements define the conditions under which power equipment is rated to perform. Operating outside these ranges accelerates degradation.
Q: How often should UPS service and maintenance be reviewed?
A: Annual review of your UPS service and maintenance schedule is a best practice, ideally coinciding with a preventive maintenance visit. Any significant equipment change in the power path should also trigger a review.
Q: When should I consider modernizing aging power equipment rather than replacing it?
A: Modernization — such as upgrading network management cards, adding battery monitoring, or installing new batteries in an otherwise sound UPS chassis — can extend equipment life and improve performance at lower cost than full replacement.
Download this whitepaper.
For more information about Maintaining Power Quality in your Facility,
call 800-876-9373 or email [email protected].