Huge Power Upgrade
January 24, 2009 – 5:36 pmWe have been working on a large upgrade to our power capacity in our datacenter. The work today was a key step in bringing online our new Mitsubishi 500KVA backup power system. This massive unit is our third UPS, the others are a Leibert 130KVA unit and a Powerware 160KVA.
The system design and the work today was supervised by Russ Irving, our staff power system expert. The work was accomplished without any interruption in service to our datacenter. During the transition, we had a second standby generator and transfer switch wired in to the power and cooling systems via a carefully orchestrated process.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e7c5dfae-f5fb-492b-958f-8f6d36ee3872)
5 Responses to “Huge Power Upgrade”
I assume the second backup generator is in the “cat” trailer and isn’t permanent? In theory, how long can you now run off your UPS with your current datacenter load?
Thanks for your great work guys!
By Brian Petro on Jan 26, 2009
Yes, the Cat was here just in case PG&E failed during the six hour window of the migration. During that time, our own automatic transfer switch was the item we were working on, meaning we had to have another transfer switch and generator on site to pick up the load in case of utility outage.
-Dane
By Dane Jasper on Jan 26, 2009
Looking at the screw terminals, I’m surprised the terminals are so close at such high volts and amps. Can an electrician explain the proximity of those items to me in respect to the energies Sonic uses?
By Brad Allen on Mar 1, 2009
Brad, not an electrician, but the screw terminals would have to be near the ground for them to arc.
The three wires you see are for 3 phase power, a system that uses offset alternating current to provide peak power.
So the three wires you see are all for the positive current…hence no arc, I believe.
By Conan on Aug 27, 2009