Power conditioner/UPS for sensitive machine

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electrofelon

electrofelon

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Location
Cherry Valley NY, Seattle, WA
Occupation
Electrician
I have a client that has a bunch of $100k microbiology machines, and apparently these are extremely sensitive to power imperfections. Now normally I am extremely skeptical of these people who want "clean power" but they do actually have years of experience with these and using them on UPS's that are not fast enough. This was all news to me, but I guess most UPS's are not actually "uninterruptible". They say they have tried UPS's that switch over in 3ms and that is still not fast enough and makes the sequencer stop. My understanding is the jargon for the truly uninterruptible UPS's is "double conversion" or "online UPS". So,. I guess the questions are:

1. Do you agree with what the lab people and I are saying or find it plausible.

2. Do you have any experience with such devices.

3. Is there any such thing as a " power conditioner" that might do the same thing?

The machines are single phase 208v, and draw about 18 amps (that is actual, I have measured). They have 9 of them. Apparently they don't care about running them for any length of time on battery, just literally a few seconds to ride thru these power incidents.

Thanks
 
They want protection from un-planned power outages, too? If so, a conditioner alone won't do.

1. Yes, but I'm surprised they don't already know what units they want and need.

2. Not personally.

3. I'm sure they really need both conditioning and back-up.

I believe that standard UPSs switch to the battery, while double-conversion UPSs are constantly on the battery.

Then there is the type with a spinning-rotor-driven alternator. I think it's called a rotary UPS.
 
LarryFine said:
They want protection from un-planned power outages, too? If so, a conditioner alone won't do.

1. Yes, but I'm surprised they don't already know what units they want and need.

2. Not personally.

3. I'm sure they really need both conditioning and back-up.

I believe that standard UPSs switch to the battery, while double-conversion UPSs are constantly on the battery.

Then there is the type with a spinning-rotor-driven alternator. I think it's called a rotary UPS.
Click to expand...

Larry,
They are not too concerned about power outages. I did just install a generator on site and it has the capacity, but I believe they are skeptical that these machines would run on the generator. I guess they just figure if they can smooth out these power quality issues and carry thru these few second outages, that will solve 99% of their problems.

They did send this for my review:

tripplite.eaton.com

SV Series 40kVA Modular 3-Phase On-Line Double-Conversion 208/120V 50/60 Hz UPS, 3 Battery Modules | Eaton Tripp Lite

Scalable capacity up to 80kVA (or 60kVA with N+1 fault tolerance) Economy mode option helps reduce operating and cooling costs Pre-installed Network Card for 24/7 remote access DSP/IGBT technology and 1% output voltage regulation Includes 3 internal battery modules; supports 1 more for added...
tripplite.eaton.com tripplite.eaton.com

But I am looking at any other options as well. Also it may be best to have individual units rather than a central unit.
 
I've used a Falcon UPS for exactly one project, and was happy with it:
www.falconups.com

ED UPS & Frequency Converters, Rackmount & Tower - 1kVA to 5kVA

Frequency converter accepting a 50, 60 & 400Hz input yielding a fixed 50 or 60Hz output. It can also supply a 400Hz, 120V output.
www.falconups.com www.falconups.com

Project needed to provide uninterrupted power to test equipment on an airplane, so we needed both UPS and frequency conversion. We had one unit arrive DOA; company was responsive and fixed it immediately; second unit worked perfectly for the project.

If the 'microbiology machines' are anything like other expensive lab equipment with very small user bases, then the machines themselves are complex but not very robust; 99% of the design effort goes into simply making the thing work. There isn't much effort put into making the system tolerant of the imperfect real world.

-Jon
 
winnie said:
I've used a Falcon UPS for exactly one project, and was happy with it:
www.falconups.com

ED UPS & Frequency Converters, Rackmount & Tower - 1kVA to 5kVA

Frequency converter accepting a 50, 60 & 400Hz input yielding a fixed 50 or 60Hz output. It can also supply a 400Hz, 120V output.
www.falconups.com www.falconups.com

Project needed to provide uninterrupted power to test equipment on an airplane, so we needed both UPS and frequency conversion. We had one unit arrive DOA; company was responsive and fixed it immediately; second unit worked perfectly for the project.

If the 'microbiology machines' are anything like other expensive lab equipment with very small user bases, then the machines themselves are complex but not very robust; 99% of the design effort goes into simply making the thing work. There isn't much effort put into making the system tolerant of the imperfect real world.

-Jon
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Thanks jon, I'll check those out.

I do find it somewhat annoying these things are so sensitive. You would think an appropriate power supply would be provided, or they could be made to continue/resume after an aberration. These machines do "inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry". My understanding is they typically take 10-12 hours to process a sample.
 
I post this in audiophile and pro audio forums:

Power Conditioner

In that 'power conditioner' is an undefined term. It could mean almost any combination of the following.

a) Noise filter - a low-pass EMI/RFI filter.
b) Surge protector - although it's better to have surge protection at the home's service entrance.
c) UPS - note that many UPS's are not really UPS's!
d) Line voltage adjuster.
e) Balanced power transformer.
f) Isolated power transformer.
g) DC blockers.
h) Regenerators (PSAudio)
i) Power Factor Correction
j) I forget? But I think that there are more.
 
The best (but very pricey) point of use surge protectors are:
Brick Wall
ZeroSurge
SurgeX
 
If they are that sensitive, somebody else is going to specify what needs to be used, I will have no performance guarantee presuming I installed it correctly, and maybe would help out in manufacturers warranty claims but only if I sold them the equipment and failure was a manufacturing issue under manufacturers warranty.
 
'Double conversion' or 'online' runs the loads off batteries and an inverter even when the grid is there, and just constantly charges the bats from the grid. So that's how it achieves zero switchover; there is no switchover, just loss of battery charging. Otherwise something can have up to 12ms switchover time and still qualify as a UPS. Guess you just need find double conversion in 208V and 18A.
 
jaggedben said:
'Double conversion' or 'online' runs the loads off batteries and an inverter even when the grid is there, and just constantly charges the bats from the grid. So that's how it achieves zero switchover; there is no switchover, just loss of battery charging. Otherwise something can have up to 12ms switchover time and still qualify as a UPS. Guess you just need find double conversion in 208V and 18A.
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Yes it appears that is what we need. They appear to be readily available, about $4k for a KVA unit
 
I've always been a fan of Liebert (now "vertiv")- a 3kva GTX5 runs under $3k on amazon.

And for completeness, I'll say that anything which is that sensitive to power issues has an extremely badly-designed power supply and the manufacturer ought be be providing the UPS instead of the customer.

jaggedben said:
Double conversion' or 'online' runs the loads off batteries
Click to expand...
To be more accurate, the inverter always supplies the load and that's powered by the DC bus.
 
Just to clarify a bit: an on-line UPS is not exactly “running off of the batteries all the time”. The load is running off of the INVERTER all of the time. When utility power is present, the inverter gets its power from there and at the same time, floats the batteries. When the utility power is lost, the batteries feed the inverter but since they were already connected, there is no transfer time.

Another choice is an older style of off-line UPS that uses a ferroresonant power conditioner as the input to the UPS. Ferroresonant power conditioners, also called “Constant Voltage Transformers”, were an early type of power conditioner and one of their hallmarks was the ability to hold up their output for 2-3 cycles with no input. Sola was the inventor and this put his company on the map. An off-line UPS that includes one gets around that transfer delay problem and provides clean power all of the time. They have kind of fallen out of favor because the CVT is only about 93% efficient at best, getting worse at lower loads, plus they must be oversized if there are motors or other high inrush loads on them, because they inherently current limit. Still, for primarily electronic loads they are a good choice.
 
I was thinking the same thing ^^. It's probably an application for a ferroresonant (transformer) line conditioner. Especially if they can get by without the battery backup UPS equipment and just use the line conditioner with a 1/2 sec or so ride through.

Advantages, they are extremely durable, tough, and would not have a problem with typical utility noise and transients. Extremely reliable, no moving parts, no maintenance. The no batteries, no battery maintenance would be a huge plus, unless you are in the battery maintenance contract business.

Would probably be an order or magnitude less installed cost, and then maintenance overs the years compared to a large battery UPS hard to compare something with zero, infinitely less maintenance cost over time.

Disadvantages, less efficient and produce heat as stated about. I am guessing the less efficiency is not going to outweigh the higher installed cost of a battery UPS, especially if located un an unheated basement or lower level.

I would ask them if they could live with it going down if the power does go down, no UPS, and I would definitely be looking at a Sola unit. Possibly, if they already have the interactive type UPS and want to keep it, the Sola could go after the UPS. But I would try to trade it for the UPS. Ferroresonant could probably handle 99% of all disturbances that are less than 1 second. They may be able to live with that.
 
IIRC, older ferro-res transformers had some non-trivial voltage distortion, the newer ones might be better. If the device power supplies are sensitive to a 3ms interruption (or less than half a half-cycle), they might not like any distortion either.
 
It would appear to me that a double conversion UPS would be the way to go here. Over the years I've been involved with a number of situations like this where off line UPS were not satisfactory.
 
I have had good success with Eaton power ware. Their 9000 series is a double conversion. Good tech support, software is easy to use. But if you furnish and install you will be the first call for any issues. Perhaps the lab equipment mfg can specify a UPS
 
zbang said:
IIRC, older ferro-res transformers had some non-trivial voltage distortion, the newer ones might be better. If the device power supplies are sensitive to a 3ms interruption (or less than half a half-cycle), they might not like any distortion either.
Click to expand...
Yep, back in the 1980's & 90's we had a few in R&D and production. They were hot & noisy. They needed a load (say 50%) to do much of anything.
 
LarryFine said:
They want protection from un-planned power outages, too? If so, a conditioner alone won't do.

1. Yes, but I'm surprised they don't already know what units they want and need.

2. Not personally.

3. I'm sure they really need both conditioning and back-up.

I believe that standard UPSs switch to the battery, while double-conversion UPSs are constantly on the battery.

Then there is the type with a spinning-rotor-driven alternator. I think it's called a rotary UPS.
Click to expand...
A resonant (e.g. Sola) constant voltage transformer has a several cycle ride through too, but the output may not be a pure sine wave.
It does provide primary to secondary noise and distortion isolation Probably a lot lower cost.
 
Ok thanks for all the replies. I do not want to be involved in selecting a product for them so I think I will just let them handle it, get what they think will work, probably a double conversion UPS. I also suggested a single unit for each machine rather than a central unit because these machines are on a panel board with other stuff and it would take a fair amount of rework for me to split them out. I don't really want or need any more work so if they get single units they would basically just be plug and Play I wouldn't have to do anything
 
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