Kens Korner

Why UL Listed Power Cables By using UL Listed and Hi-pot tested power cable assemblies, data center managers can be certain that the power whip code requirements are met and that there are no weak links in the material used to fabricate the power feeds to the critical servers. If your data center is hosting outside customers; you can feel...

Tips on Selecting Rack PDUs "Power Strips" The term PDU refers to two major classes of hardware power devices. The first and typically most common one in the data center facility world refers to the higher-cost floor mounted power distribution devices that transform large capacity UPS power output feeds into distributed power feeds within a server room. These floor-mounted PDU...

Testing and Exercising Branch Circuit Breakers A slow tripping circuit breaker will not only result in unnecessary disruptions to electrical service, but maintaining high fault currents for extended durations can stress the network and cause damaged to equipment.  Defective circuit breakers can allow extensive damage, personal injury, or make an outage more widespread and expensive when a fault occurs. Any...

Avoid Outages with Infrared Scanning If you think what you can’t see doesn’t exist…think again! Better yet…think infrared scanning! Infrared (IR) scanning is used to see radiation given off by objects.  While infrared radiation is not visible to the naked eye, objects still radiate (heat) even in the dark.  The hotter the object is, the more it radiates heat.  A...

Conducting Infrared Electrical Panel Inspections  Why Infrared Scanning Increased resistance and heat are the primary reasons most electrical components fail.  Before electrical components fail, they heat up.  Infrared scanning is used to inspect electrical equipment because excess heat is usually the first sign of trouble.  Loose connections, imbalanced and or overloaded circuits, defective breakers, damaged switches, faulty fuses, and material...

UPS Systems & Preventative Maintenance   An uninterruptable power supply (UPS) is designed to provide emergency power to electrical equipment when the primary power source fails.  A UPS typically serves as a bridge between the primary power source and an auxiliary power system, like a diesel generator, to provide time to properly shut down sensitive equipment.  A UPS can either...

UPS Buying and Maintenance Tips   The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has labeled the nation’s electrical grid as a “patchwork system” that will ultimately breakdown by 2020 without massive investments. As the U.S. electrical grid becomes less reliable, and the number and severity of outages increase the steps taken to ensure continuous uptime in tomorrow’s data centers will...

16 UPS System Battery Room Safety Issues   At the heart of any UPS system supporting a mission critical facility is the battery. IEEE, OSHA, EPA, NEC, NFPA, and many more agencies, committees and groups offer safety recommendations regarding the design, construction, maintenance and monitoring of battery rooms. Even though the data centers I was responsible for hired consultants and...

UPS Battery Maintenance Tips The weak link in a standby battery based emergency backup system is the battery.  Storage battery failures cause more down time and service calls on UPS systems than any other component.  Buying the best battery for your intended use is the first step to success, regular monitoring and preventative maintenance is the next step in making...

Selecting UPS System Batteries (UPS Battery Basics) According to Ponemon Institute’s September 2010 National Survey on Data Center Outages, 95% of the companies surveyed had experienced unplanned outages in the prior two years, with 88% citing the loss of primary power as the culprit and experiencing an average downtime event lasting 107 minutes per outage.  The survey also indicated the...