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UPS Standards?

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SJBatTCE

Electrical
Oct 8, 2001
41
Anyone have a suggestion of where to look for Uninterruptible Power Supply standards? Would like to review them for inclusion in specification baselines.

Thanks.

Steve
 
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IEEE Std 944 is a good start. It has several internal references that may also apply.
 

One reference may be IEEE Std 446-1995 Emergency And Standby Power Systems For Industrial And Commercial Applications [Orange Book]
 
Liebert.com has their guide specs for various UPS sizes and configurations available for download in Word format. It includes various UPS standards and also may have some other relevant information that you might care to include in your own spec.

Other major UPS vendors (MGE, Powerware, APC, etc) will also generally have guide specs available for free, either via direct download from their site or via email & phone call request.

The two big pieces of the spec that are generally missing from these guide specs are:
1. installation requirements
2. factory & field testing requirements.

Also, beware that there will be a general bias toward the author's company in these guide specs. But if you can delete/modify that stuff, there's also a lot of valuable information in there.
 
Just quoting standards is not sufficient, although important.

Ask hard questions and review the reliablility and maintainability of the UPS system. All UPSs are not made equal even if they meet all 'standards'.

Even some of the names mentioned above as 'major' have issues , imho.

Some permit maintenance on a module (of a multi-module system) without need to take the entire system to bypass (utiltiy or gen source). Some can not do that.

Some have a simple means (a key switch or a key pad) to smoothly transfer to static bypass and back. Some goes to bypass only when a module overloads, and even if you command the these system to go to bypass, they in fact shutdown a module, fooling the system to think its overloded and the system then transfers to the bypass source..as dangerous ploy.

Some have built-in input isolation transformer, (by its default design) others do not and offer them as an option.

Some can load bus synch some do not. I am not saying this is a deal breaker..but the sysetm has to be designed right.

Some are equally good as a singel ssytem, multi-mpdule system or a parallele redudandant ( two separate multimdule systems, creating A and B bus backing each other up), some are not good in some the configuration.

Some have ability have a system bypass switch, some have a bypass switch for each of the modules.

You will have to decide which features are important to you and needed for the application at hand.

many other items too such as 100% continuos duty rated static bypass switch vs. momentary rated..

Type of batteries...

More importantly, some provides after sale service/maintenance by a factory trained and their own employees, while others farm out the service, although they claim the third party technicicans are factory trained.

Other things too numerous to list..but above are high points..



 
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