Maintaining reliability is a data center operator’s highest priority, but most would identify managing costs as a close second. While power efficiency and costs savings are hardly new concerns, the following trends have made them more critical in recent years:

• Tight budgets: Global competition and weak economic growth have combined to make reducing operational expenses more important than ever.
• Sustainability initiatives: More and more businesses are publicly committed to operating in an environmentally responsible manner. Reducing data center power consumption is typically an important part of such efforts.

Cloud computing vendors, colocation service providers, and operators with other types of multi-tenant data centers whose data centers represent their product costs have an additional incentive to decrease energy use: low margins and intense pricing pressures. In fact, any mission-critical application (financial services, health care, e-commerce, etc.) has a responsibility to control power costs to be both cost-conscious and socially responsible.

Companies looking to save money and shrink their environmental impact can dramatically improve power efficiency by deploying high-efficiency mode uninterruptible power systems (UPSs). Under normal conditions, a high-efficiency mode UPS operates in a highly efficient energy-saver mode. If power conditions fall outside pre-determined limits, however, a high-efficiency UPS automatically and immediately switches to double-conversion mode. Later, when power quality returns to acceptable levels, the UPS automatically transitions back into energy saver mode.

In older UPS models, transition times between energy-saver and double-conversion mode are lengthy enough to jeopardize data center reliability. However, today’s more sophisticated products can complete transfers in two milliseconds or less. As a result, companies can decrease power consumption without weakening reliability.

To learn more about the benefits of high efficiency mode UPSs, register for an exclusive Mission Critical webinar on March 31 hosted by Eaton Product Manager Ed Spears. Click here to register.