Written by Mark Lloyd, Product Manager- Power Supplies & Surge Protection
For many years the use of Uninterruptible Power Supplies or UPS in the control cabinet have been the domain of the DC UPS, by which I mean mains in and low voltage DC out. Less common is the use of AC UPS, by which I mean mains in and mains out.
In certain sectors, such as Water/Wastewater it has been common practice for some years to use what I would call commercial grade AC UPS, such as you would find in office IT applications. Because these UPS are not designed for industrial applications they are usually just sat in the bottom of the cabinet. Not a very elegant solution.
Phoenix Contact has a number of good industrial grade AC UPS solutions and the range is expanding…….
A few years back we brought out the QUINT AC UPS (pictured above) which is a 500VA (400W) AC UPS designed for mounting in the cabinet on din rail and when used with the existing QUINT Batteries provided a good industrial UPS solution. This has proved to be a very popular big selling UPS, and I am very pleased that we will also be releasing a more powerful 1kVA/900W Online AC UPS in the QUINT4 family, which I will no doubt be blogging about later this year when it is available.
But for now I want to briefly talk about the new TRIO AC UPS which is available NOW.
The photo to the right shows the UPS on the right hand side next to a TRIO power supply and diode which hopefully will give an idea of the compactness of the UPS.
This UPS is available in 230V or 120V input/output (There are not many CE marked low voltage 120V AC UPS on the market) and both feature an integrated 3.4AH battery making them ideal for saving space in the control cabinet or for easy retrofitting in existing systems. For longer runtimes you can add one extra 3.4AH battery.
The TRIO UPS generates and delivers a pure sine wave at the output and the sine wave generated in battery mode is synchronous with the mains previously used for supply, so the transition from mains to battery is seamless.
Other features include the ability to start up directly from the battery without power supply network (120 V/230 V) thanks to the BAT-START cold start function.
There is also a USB interface for connecting to higher-level controllers, and connected industrial PCs can be shut down via the integrated USB interface, and free downloadable UPS-CONF software.
So if you have an application that you need to back up with a UPS, AC or DC and need some advice on battery sizing then please contact me, mlloyd@phoenixcontact.com or telephone 07717 335477.
