DataSafe XE Batteries: Built for Modern Critical UPS Application

INTRODUCTION

Recent years have seen significant changes in the nature of the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) market, and on the requirements of batteries in those markets. Until now, battery manufacturers have been slow to respond to those shifts. In response to this need for a purpose built battery, EnerSys has introduced the DataSafe XE battery series. The DataSafe XE battery series has been developed on the foundation of EnerSys Thin Plate Pure Lead (TPPL) technology, but further optimized to meet the unique demands of the modern critical UPS market.

BACKGROUND

Historically, batteries sold into the UPS market have focused on 15 minute rate discharges, and have required tightly temperature controlled environments. Taking a look back, there were a couple of key driving factors for the 15 minute runtime specification. First, in the era when standards were being established, well before modern computing, blade servers, interconnected functions, etc., organizations relied on isolated main-frame computers, going as far back as the use of punch cards for programming instructions. These units were extremely sensitive to changes in power quality or loss of power. In fact, if power was lost during operation, the result was not only a loss of the functions being performed during the outage; moreover, the entire data set may have been irrevocably corrupted. Thus, the loss of power was deemed catastrophic. This sensitivity to loss of power required engineers to determine how long the main-frame operators would require to reliably: 1) realize the outage was occurring, and then 2) perform an orderly shutdown to prevent the loss and, worse, corruption of data. Algorithms were designed and tested and a certain value was assigned to the support time, with appropriate safety margins.