Meissner, a leading South African supplier and manufacturer of uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) is proud to be celebrating the supply of continuous power to leading blue chip and industrial companies in the South African market for 40 years uninterrupted this year.
In fact Meissner has supplied these same leading companies with their second, and in some instances, their third generation systems, proving the quality of the product and service supplied by Meissner. In this article, Graham Beyleveld, sales and marketing director for Meissner, explains more about UPS protection.
We are facing an ever-increasing power crisis in this country due to a combination of poor maintenance of power provision facilities and the overloading of our power grids in an effort to meet the huge building and industrial boom in South Africa. No longer are power failures an infrequent irritation, but rather a daily or at least a weekly occurrence that is having a huge impact on both our ability to carry out business and our daily living conditions. The recent extended power outages in the Bedfordview and Eastgate areas of Johannesburg is a classic example of how extreme the impact of power outages can be on our daily and personal lives. Hospitals and clinics in the area were even turning patients away and could not perform any surgical operations until the prolonged outage was rectified… and we are heading into winter where power consumption and overloading will increase and stress the system even further.
We need to seriously take into consideration the costs of these power failures. Financial and commercial operations are extremely reliant on their IT infrastructure, PABXs and security controls. Health care cannot function when operating theatres and ICU facilities are at risk. Even the traffic patterns are severely impacted costing us all time and money that the economy can ill-afford.
The power-outage threat has spawned a proliferation of new generator and UPS vendors, the unscrupulous of which are preying on our lack of technical knowledge to flog us standby systems that can sometimes do us more harm than good.
Merely inserting a generator into the electrical supply system is not necessarily going to avert your crisis. Even if the generator has an automatic start-up and change-over feature, the power break of 10-45 seconds will have already wreaked havoc with any computer, process control or communication system involved by the time the 'Genny' starts up. This is where a decent UPS comes into the picture, to bridge the gap between power failure and generator start-up. Then there are the technical considerations. Generators should be evaluated on a number of aspects such as output voltage quality and regulation, frequency control and performance at altitude. Petrol vs diesel is a major consideration from a safety and insurance point of view. Then… what about the noise and air-pollution factors?
Not all UPSs will work off any old generator that is coupled up as many unsuspecting customers discovered in the Western Cape during last year's Koeberg crisis. Most of the sales personnel in the hardware and computer superstores, that are now 'expertly' flogging UPS and generator combinations, are technically unaware of how frequency and voltage instability or harmonic mismatches can lead to far more severe hardware problems and failures than before. The generator designed to drive an angle-grinder on a building site is not necessarily suited to drive your sensitive file-server, PABX or even your expensive home theatre system.
It is important to consult a professional electrical engineer or a company such as Meissner to ensure that you get a solution with both a generator and a UPS that are technically and performance compatible, especially for mission critical applications where lives are at stake or for commercial operations where downtime = revenue lost.
Many companies already have UPS systems in place but should take care to ensure that the system is fully functional. Too often the UPS, buried in a basement storeroom, has not been properly serviced since it was first installed. Finding out at the instant of a power failure that the UPS batteries are long past their replacement date makes ownership of that UPS somewhat pointless.
Do not let price be your only decision-making criterion. After all, if you were going skydiving… would you purposely set out to buy the cheapest parachute or, worse, let a novice re-pack your chute for the next jump? Choose a supplier that has the reputation, expertise and infrastructure to service your power back-up system.
Meissner is dedicated to the supply and support of UPS solutions and boast 24/7/365 highly trained in-house service and support in major centres across South Africa. Meissner also offers factory witness testing to ensure that installations perform to customer expectations. An added feature is that Meissner also offers Maintenance Contracts that are customised to suit specific customer requirements.
Meissner offers the most comprehensive range of UPSs on the South African market that are suited for either industrial or commercial applications and that will interface with quality generator systems to give indefinite back up time.
The looming threat of power outages has resulted in both large and small businesses approaching Meissner seeking some sort of UPS system, only to discover that they are constrained by the capital expenditure necessary to implement a decent technical solution. Ever conscious of their customer's needs, Meissner now offers an innovative rental option allowing customers to retain their working capital whilst still gaining a reliable UPS solution packaged with a maintenance contract for complete peace of mind. An added bonus is that the monthly rental premium is fully tax deductible as an operating expense. Rental contracts can, for an extra premium, include all spares.
A vital function of the maintenance contract is a complete check on the UPS system ensuring that it is operating within its design parameters from both a performance and an environmental perspective. A full battery check on a cell-by-cell basis is a critical function carried out to ensure that back-up time is at optimum in anticipation of that dreaded power outage.
For more information contact Graham Beyleveld, Meissner, +27 (0)11 824 0202, [email protected], www.meissner.co.za
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