Signs of poor power quality include servers crashing, flickering lights, overheating, lost connectivity, high cooling load, and high energy bills. The lifespan of server components will be reduced by poor power quality, and additional labor will be required to troubleshoot and replace failed servers. Disposing of failed servers and the increased energy use caused by poor power both worsen a data center's environmental impact.
Sags, swells, and harmonic distortion all increase heat losses in electric motors. This excess heat reduces both the efficiency and lifetime of the motor. Other operations and safety critical devices, including lighting, motor drives, battery chargers, and electronic devices also lose efficiency, lifetime, or both when fed dirty power. Continuously monitoring and correcting power quality is important to minimize costs and downtime.
Some data centers use a DC microgrid to mitigate power quality problems. If not properly implemented, the DC microgrid will still present a nonlinear load to the utility. Such a facility will continue to have high power factor surcharges and power quality issues with its AC loads.
Denison Technologies' power engineering experts understand DC microgrids and AC-DC links. Our professional services can assess your microgrid and ensure that you are getting the full benefits possible.
Denison Technologies' monitoring gateways and software can track the power in your server farm. Monitoring is possible on the service entrance, individual server racks, and other loads like cooling. Comprehensive assessment and monitoring will disentangle these diverse loads and elucidate the root cause of power quality problems. Continuous monitoring will ensure that your data is protected and uptime is maintained.
