Schneider Electric UPS Targeted at Light Industrial Use
Article By : Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio
Schneider Electric's Square D Easy 3-phase UPS family makes business continuity easy for small and medium commercial buildings.
Schneider Electric has recently introduced the Square D Easy UPS (uninterruptable power supply) product family in the Unites States and Canada. The Easy UPS offers a combination of optimized footprint and advanced features for protecting critical equipment in many different environments from damage due to power outages, surges, and spikes.
In an interview with EE Times, Elliott Jepson, non-IT strategic initiative manager at Schneider Electric, said this family is specifically designed for non-IT and light industrial applications. The Square D Easy UPS, shown in Figure 1, addresses applications such as manufacturing facilities, telecommunication, healthcare, and transportation. “
These UPSs feature internal modular battery strings, include start-up service and are easy to install, as they can be rolled into position. “The included start-up service ensures the UPS is properly and safely configured for optimal performance, reliability, and safety,” said Jepson.
He added, “the Easy UPS is one of the first products that we have branded Square D, bringing it to end users who require devices able to withstand harsh environments with dust, moisture, and fluctuating temperatures. We have added a protective coating on all the printed circuit boards, added a replaceable dust filter and provided a design with a wide operating temperature range. This UPS can operate in a range of environments, has a robust construction and it is very easy to operate,”, said Elliott Jepson, non-IT Strategic Initiative Manager at Schneider Electric.
Square D Easy UPS key advantages
The Square D Easy UPS is a three-phase UPS able to deliver a power of 10-40 kVA at 208V. It is a rugged and robust device, featuring a wide input voltage window, overload protection, small size and reduced footprint.
Jepson pointed out that the display interface allows the user to configure and monitor the UPS operation; in addition, customers can monitor and manage the UPS status remotely through Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure IT cloud-based and on-premise software suites. With user-selectable efficiency modes, this unit delivers up to 94% efficiency in double conversion mode and up to 98% efficiency in energy-saving ECO Mode (which is static bypass mode), the company said.
“I think that a lot of new UPS opportunities are coming from Industry 4.0, where everything in the production chain is becoming more digital. As operations are being digitally monitored, controlled, and connected, power backup, power reliability and connectivity is key. This is really where we are seeing a lot of need for this type of UPS, where business continuity is so critical, and there is a loss of revenue in case of downtime,” said Jepson.
Easy UPS features
The UPS block diagram, here referring to the single configuration, is shown in Figure 2. Besides the main four functional blocks (rectifier, charger, inverter and static bypass switch), the circuit includes five breakers: maintenance bypass breaker (MBB), static switch input breaker (SSIB), unit input breaker (UIB), battery breaker (BB), and unit output breaker (UOB).
Other configurations are meanwhile available, such as the 1+1 redundant parallel system with a common battery bank (internal batteries, if present, shall be removed and the internal battery breaker BB shall be opened), and the more general parallel system which can include up to four UPSs connected in parallel. From a technical point of view, the UPS adopts the double conversion technique. That means the device is able to provide uninterrupted power to critical loads by filtering and converting the input power to DC power, which is then converted in a second stage (the inverter) to a perfect AC output power.
“Double conversion provides not only, as requested, a continuous power, but also clean power. For some critical applications, such as networking, it’s definitely an added benefit,” said Jepson.
Easy UPS main features are as follows:
- operating temperature up to 40°C
- common battery under 1+1 mode
- parallel capability, up to four UPSs can be placed in parallel to meet power capacity and redundancy requirements
- conformal coating on PCB for protection in rugged environments
- UPS performance verified by Easy Loop Test before connecting the load
- replaceable dust filter which protects the UPS in harsh environments and is easily accessible
- optional SNMP card
“The really nice thing is that the UPS has internal storage and depending on which power size the customer is using (from 10 kVA to 40 kVA), that internal storage can be different. As a result, total cost of ownership or initial investment don’t have to be very large. Customers can start with the single UPS with internal battery storage, and then, as their need grows, they can add a modular battery cabinet and add more battery modules,” said Jepson.
By purchasing the SNMP card, users can monitor and manage the UPS status remotely, from anywhere and at any time, through a web interface or through EcoStruxure IT’s cloud-based and on-premise software suites. Jepson highlighted that EcoStruxure leverages advancements in IoT, mobility, sensing, cloud, analytics, and cybersecurity. EcoStruxure IT Expert and EcoStruxure Asset Advisor are cloud-based solutions that provide customers with data-driven insights to optimize data center performance.
This article was originally published on EE Times.
Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio holds a Ph.D. in Physics and is a telecommunication engineer and journalist. He has worked on various international projects in the field of gravitational wave research. He collaborates with research institutions to design data acquisition and control systems for space applications. He is the author of several books published by Springer, as well as numerous scientific and technical publications on electronics design.