When thinking about battery solutions there are varying factors to consider whether at the beginning design stage of your UPS system or after a period of time when the needs and demands of the business has changed.

Increasing UPS capacity:

• Adding more UPS capacity is due to an increased load demand
  • Businesses grow and this drives the requirement for more UPS capacity, for example, more data storage space is needed, more critical loads are connected to the system and therefore a larger UPS is required.

When thinking about the initial purchase or your UPS, taking expansion and upgrading in to consideration is vital. As there are products which are very adabtable and suited to increase in capacity without causing down time with in your business and some products and UPS that are not so flexible.

• Modular UPS is the easiest unit type to accommodate that extra load increase
  • Additional power modules can be added to the system for extra power
  • Customer does not have to install the final load capacity on DAY1, which gives them more flexibility and positive impact on their CAPEX

• Monoblock UPS units would not have the same possibility – they have fixed capacity
  • This unit type would require adding another UPS in parallel or replacing the existing unit with a more powerful one in order to support more load

No matter what the UPS solution is there can always be site-specific limitations that need to be considered before installing any units and we (Constant Power Services) can assist in choosing the right equipment that allow UPS capacity to grow along the business

Increasing Battery autonomy:

This is not something we come across often because at Constant Power Services we take into consideration the customer’s current power requirement within the business and discuss the future plans so as to ensure that the product being purchased will provide the autonomy and coverage required.

• Autonomy should be known in the early stages of the project
  • What equipment in the system, PC’s, servers and are there back-up generators to provide additional support should there be a power failure.
• Adding extra blocks or strings to an existing battery solution to get more backup time is generally not recommended
  • Mixing old and new batteries or batteries with different Ah rating is not advised
• Autonomy increase can take place but would be during a battery replacement
  • Batteries have a life span and should your business require a longer autonomy, a review of the batteries can take place and therefore changed to cover a longer autonomy.