Industrial Production Operates 24/7

Industrial Production Operates 24/7 with Scalable, Redundant N+1 UPS

Scalable, N+1 Redundant UPS can be vital to protecting critical systems with reliable power 24 hours a day.  Many industrial applications must operate 24/7. Industrial production cannot stop otherwise thousands of dollars and materials will be lost. The solution is an on-line UPS with redundancy, plus scalability for expansion. If one UPS is not operational, the other will take over.

The following is a case example of a major manufacturer:

Alcoa: Leading Producer of Primary Aluminum

At its Messina plant, Alcoa operates an integrated aluminum smelting/fabricating facility and a smelting/casthouse facility. The two smelters produce a combined total of 252,000 metric tons of molten aluminum per year. Alcoa can’t take chances with its power.
A staff electrical engineer explains, “The aluminum reduction process is very sensitive to power outages, and in fact, after

about four hours of lost power, the pot lines are at a state where they can no longer be restored and a very expensive restarting process has to be undertaken to restore production.”

Alcoa searched for a solution to keep the operations running smoothly. Redundancy and scalability were critical. Alcoa found that Falcon Electric’s FN Series Scalable N+1 Tower UPSs would fit the requirements to protect the main power control room that controls remote operations plus the intake water system. The FN UPSs are stand-alone units that can be connected in parallel, providing low-cost scalable solutions from 3kVA to 40kVA. This approach eliminates the added expense of buying cabinets to house power and battery modules.

The staff engineer explains, “Now we can have a standardized modular solution that can be scaled up to accommodate the control station capacity-in our case four FN Series (4kVA units in an N+1 arrangement) – or scaled down to a smaller substation level configuration (two 4kVA in N+1).”

In conclusion, there are many applications that must operate 24/7–whether it’s industrial production that cannot stop, otherwise thousands of dollars and materials will be lost or a 911 call center where life-saving calls are received (see blog of Feb. 19, 2014: 911 and Public Safety with an Online UPS).

To learn more about scalable, N+1 redundant UPS, including specs, click here.