Tag: Uninterruptible power supply

Huge Power Upgrade

by Dane Jasper on January 24, 2009 • 5 Comments

We 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.

New UPS project update

by Dane Jasper on November 11, 2008 • 0 Comments

We are in the process of building a third massive UPS for our datacenter in Santa Rosa, and a number of big parts have recently arrived. This project has been underway for over a year now, and is a really large undertaking.

The new custom engineered breaker panel board arrived this week, and we now have most of the components on site. Construction has begun on the physical mounting of the equipment in our power room. We are excited about the new power delivery capacity that this project will provide, allowing for over double our current power load.

If you’re interested in seeing the images in the gallery below, you can click for a medium sized version, then click on the medium one for full size.

Critical systems: Power backup

by Dane Jasper on August 14, 2008 • 1 Comment

Image via Wikipedia

Obviously, an ISP doesn’t function without electricity, so we’ve got big investments in redundant power here.

A datacenter power system consists of multiple inputs which are arbitrated by a transfer switch, and multiple loads such as UPS systems and air conditioners (CRACs).

The primary input is PG&E, and the transfer switch monitors the quality of this input. If the utility power goes offline or fades, the transfer switch sends a signal to the starter on the generator, which powers up automatically. Once the generator power output is online and stable, which typically takes twenty to thirty seconds, the transfer switch physically swings a huge set of contacts over to the new input, transferring the load.

The UPS systems and their batteries carry the datacenter computing load during this startup and transfer, while CRAC loads are dropped during the transition. A datacenter can’t function for long without cooling, so the entire generator and transfer switch system must function as designed in order to stay online.

The generator itself is the really cool bit of this whole setup. For those who are into engines, it’s a 24 liter V-12 Detroit Diesel, with twin turbochargers. That’s a full two liters of per cylinder – imagine a piston and cylinder the size of a 2 liter soda bottle. Now, gang up twelve of them. It’s a huge engine. At full throttle it generates over one thousand horsepower, and three quarters of a megawatt of power.

In our five years at our Apollo Way location, the generator has only been called on to respond to a power outage twice. PG&E has done a great job for us, delivering quite reliable power. But, we still must test fire the generator once every week, top up it’s fuel every few months, and trade out old fuel for new periodically. It’s full generating capacity is totally load tested every few years by hooking it up to a massive resistor/heater bank. The maintenance and load testing is critical to assure that the power will be there when we do need it.