FlyWheel UPS - Have any of you heard of this or used this technology ?

[Baker in Virginia]

Good Afternoon ,

We had a rough summer with power outages , and I am always looking for a stable UPS system that would " ride us through" an outage. I have been looking for a large 480 VAC 3 Phase UPS , and came across this website " Engineering 360 IEEE . They are advertizing a company called ActivePower in Austin , Texas and their FlyWheel UPS . Are any of you familier with this technology and / or used it ?

Thanks so much ,

 

[Dirt]

Flywheel type of UPS:s is for very short periods of outages (<1m or so), until you get your diesels up and running.

How long are your power outages?

 

[Baker in Virginia]

about 20 seconds.

 

[jkerekes]

Sort of like M-G set to get extremely good power.

 

[Baker in Virginia]

What do you mean by " M-G set "

 

[Mickey]

See link for a good explanation.

http://www.qpsolutions.net/2015/11/flywheel-vs-battery-ups-which-should-you-choose/

What do you mean by " M-G set "

https://www.google.com/search?q=M-G...et&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[jkerekes]

Motor Generator. This gives you very good regulated power without complicated electronics. Basically you have a big motor with a lot of inertia driving a generator, which is then connected to your load. Minor blips and dips in the incoming power have now effect due to the large inertia of the motor.

 

[jraef]

Good Afternoon ,

We had a rough summer with power outages , and I am always looking for a stable UPS system that would " ride us through" an outage. I have been looking for a large 480 VAC 3 Phase UPS , and came across this website " Engineering 360 IEEE . They are advertizing a company called ActivePower in Austin , Texas and their FlyWheel UPS . Are any of you familier with this technology and / or used it ?

Thanks so much ,

I can't even keep track of how many flywheel UPS companies have come and gone over the years, they have a hard time staying alive. It all sounds great and looks good on paper, in reality they are a maintenance headache that people usually regret, so they don't often get repeat customers and eventually tank.

All that said, ActivePower is one of the few survivors, because they were bought by and rolled into Piller, who is a huge DG and UPS system provider for the Data Center industry. So because they can offer it as PART of a more complete package, it works. But understand that the typical Data Center has very dedicated maintenance teams and they spare no expense on keeping things running perfect all the time. Their maintenance budgets are rarely if ever scrutinized by bean counters who cut budgets and staffing, forcing maintenance to become crisis management. That's where the flywheel UPS systems fall apart.

Gaining popularity in the industrial world are static systems that rely on magnetics to hold up through short dips and/or ride through until a UPS can come on. Soft Switch Technology was the biggest provider of that, they were bought by Rockwell a few years ago.
http://literature.rockwellautomation.com/idc/groups/literature/documents/pp/1608-pp002_-en-p.pdf
They hold up for about 5 seconds, but that allows you to use an OFF-LINE UPS system instead of a double conversion on-line UPS unit that consumes energy running all the time whether you need it or not.

 

[harryting]

A plant I worked in had one, it was built in the early 80s and it's more of a stabilizer. I won't go that far and call it a UPS. That plant also had a Foxboro DCS that uses punch-card for sequence programming.

I wouldn't bother with it.

Baker in VA? The Nabisco plant?