THE INVALUABLE RISK IN THE DATACENTERS: DOWNTIME!
Introduction
The values/assets we own have started to be monitored more with the advancement of technology. Datacenters are also investments that have been established with serious costs and have certain maintenance costs to keep them alive. Along with the monitoring infrastructures offered by the technological capabilities, the idea of ‘Everything is fine if there is no fault’ has begun to lose its effectiveness, on the contrary, our trust in our infrastructures has started to increase thanks to the power of the collected data.
Datacenters are infrastructures where Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) are used extensively. Before looking at the datacenter in general, when we look at UPS in particular; 80% of Uninterruptible Power Supplies failures are caused by undetected/unseen battery problems.
When all faults are in different categories occurring in datacenters are evaluated, UPS/Battery-related faults take the first place with 29%.
UPS / What is a Battery Backup System?
UPS batteries are electrochemical components that can transfer the energy they store in case of a power outage. The performance of the batteries during the transfer of energy does not always occur at the same rate. It weakens and loses value during the lifetime of the batteries. Therefore, it is common practice in the datacenter field to replace UPS batteries every 3 to 5 years. There are other factors besides aging that cause performance drops in batteries, which is an electrochemical component.
Excessive Loop Usage
During any power outage, the UPS batteries are activated and discharged. After the outage ends and the mains return, the batteries are charged by the UPS to be ready for the next outage. Each discharge and charge reduce the total capacity of the battery.
In the first installation; Your system, which is sized for the appropriate capacity and shaped accordingly, will begin to lose a certain amount of its total capacity in the future as the number of discharges/charges increases.
Suboptimal Storage and Maintenance Conditions
You know that batteries that are not actively used are constantly discharging energy, albeit in small amounts This is why we recommend our customers to charge the batteries they are not using every 3 to 6 months. Otherwise, there will be a permanent reduction in capacity. Even if you are not going to use it, storing your batteries at temperatures as low as 10 °C has also been proven to extend their life.
Unstable Floating Charge Voltage
Voltage fluctuations that occur during the charging of UPS batteries also affect the performance of the batteries. Undervoltage charging causes the plates in the battery cell to harden; high-voltage charging also causes the battery to dry out, which subsequently causes thermal runaway and internal melting.
Misapplication
UPS batteries are developed to provide short-term (usually 15 minutes or less), high discharge rates. However, IT personnel generally prefer to size the UPS/Battery system with a larger capacity during project design in order to achieve longer run times during
any power outage. Plates in batteries that are not designed for longer discharge times by battery manufacturers will overheat and cause malfunctions during long-term operations, even if the battery capacity is not fully used.
UPS Battery Faults
As a result, any of the factors listed above can occur. That is, the battery cell may dry out, causing an inadvertent open circuit. If you did not create a parallel battery string for redundancy during the project, your system will be open circuit due to the failed cell. In this case, you cannot get the current you demand during discharge from the battery pack and the system will be interrupted.
This and similar faults; interruption of service to customers, the collapse of infrastructure, explosion, fire, etc. can lead to results. This is also the case in businesses with critical functions such as datacenters; It causes significant financial losses, damage to the company's reputation, and disruption of operations.
ALPAIS Battery Monitoring System
In order to avoid such problems, it is necessary to monitor the batteries instantly and take necessary actions before problems occur. At this point, the Alpais Battery Monitoring System (BMS) has been developed to provide a solution.
Alpais BMS; It can monitor the batteries connected to the UPS or Rectifier one by one. It consists of Battery Modules (Voltage, Temperature, Internal Resistance/IR) connected to each battery, String Modules (Ambient Temperature, Ambient Humidity, String Current, Total String Voltage) connected to
each string, and the Control Module that manages 4 separate strings in total. Control Module; It manages the Battery Modules and String Modules, exchanges data with them,
evaluates the collected data on-site, and transmits it to the web server application for the user to monitor/follow.
The web server application visualizes the relevant data for the user to interpret and sends the necessary notifications to the relevant users by e-mail in case of alarm/warning.
Alpais BMS; It monitors battery terminal temperatures and ambient temperature, protecting the battery infrastructure from potential thermal runaways that could destroy it. It can also report existing problems with air conditioning or battery room ventilation, based on measured temperature values. Alpais BMS monitors the Internal Resistance of each battery periodically, indicating that the battery must be replaced before failure, maximizing the redundancy and uptime of the battery infrastructure.
By measuring battery voltages and total string voltages, it also enables the detection of UPS/Rectifier-induced over/under charge voltage problems beforehand.
The system can be integrated into existing SCADA systems via SNMP, MODBUS TCP/IP, and MODBUS RTU.
Alpais BMS not only monitors the performance of the backup battery power system but also reduces the UPS/Rectifier battery maintenance and replacement costs. In this way, ineffective and expensive quarterly manual testing can be eliminated. With the Alpais BMS, battery replacement decisions will be made according to the data, so the battery infrastructure is used until the end of its useful life.
Source
1. Data Center Outages, Incidents, and Industry Transparency https://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/data-center-outages-incidents-industry- transparency/
2. Lawrence, Andy. (2020, January). Houston We Have a Problem. Uptime Institute. Retrieved from http://journal.uptimeinstitute.com/outages-drive-authorities-and- businesses-to-act.