Secure power solutions: Wise investment in digital age
Secure power solutions: Wise investment in digital age
In recent years, despite the great strides forward in enhancing power supply reliability and preventing abrupt outage, the headline “Power Outage Announcement” still appears in newspapers, due to subjective reasons such as the repairing and maintenance of the electricity network or system or objective reasons such as insufficient rainfall.
Power outage obviously causes many disruptions to household chores as well as the operation of small-scale businesses and offices. To enterprises whose work is greatly intertwined with Internet connectivity and data processing, power outage does not only affect their commercial activities but also seriously threatens the viability of their products and services –at the worst case, it can even be life threatening.
The unexpected power outage at Ho Chi Minh City-based Tan Son Nhat International Airport’s air traffic control tower in late 2014 has changed the itineraries of many flights and caused considerable delays.
Unfortunately, power blackouts do not only wreak great havoc in Vietnam. The damage inflicted by an afternoon-long power outage on April 16, 2002 at Rhode Island Hospital in the US lay far beyond the numerical figures. At another case in Canada, the Visa payment system of TSYS was paralysed because of an outage occurring at its data centre in 2013.
Besides, one study on the damages of power outages at hospitals in the US has produced striking figures: on average, the damage of one power outage at a 200-bed hospital was estimated to be more than $1 million, as well as the incalculable risks of increased chances of infection in the hospital grounds and endangering patients and clinicians’ safety.
However, not all enterprises or organisations are able to afford a reliable and quality back-up power system. One reason for this is the enormous cost and the still underestimation ofimportance of such a system in business activities. Furthermore, the insufficient information circulating in business circles causes a rather limited access to suitable and secure power solutions in this digital age.
“A power generator or UPS (UPS – uninterruptable power supply) system providing back-up power connected to the internal power grid to prevent power outage incidents is necessary, but not enough. A complete and standardised secure power solution must also meet the following requirements: availability, reliability, quality, instant connectivity to back-up power in case of power incidents, flexibility, ability to be effectively and economically integrated into the existing power grid, utmost and remote manageability and, most importantly, environment-friendliness,” said Ivan Habovcik, general director of Schneider Electric IT Vietnam Ltd.
Most certainly, having a standard UPS system is always a prerequisite of any great airports or subway stations in the world, since this is a quality and secure power solution. However, this also creates a demand to innovate existing UPS systems on the market to ensure efficiency, continuous power supply, security for electrical equipment in the system and environment-friendliness.
Most international airports in Berlin, Beijing, Cairo, Dublin and Singapore, as well as railway and subway systems around the world, such as the French Railways, the Australian Railways, the South Mediterranean Railways and the WMATA Railways all prioritise these three requirements when choosing a secure power solution.
There are many secure power solutions announced every year in the world and APC by Schneider Electric which is a prestigious name thanks to its 45 years of experience in researching and innovating UPS systems. Recently, the launch of its latest three-phase UPS Galaxy VM received warm welcome, since it meets all the strict requirements stated above.
