RECAP | ROUNDTABLE - Taking the Decision to use a UPS in ECO Mode

This roundtable looked at how a decision is made to run your UPS in ECO Mode, and discussing the experiences of members when they have done so.

To being the Roundtable the Uptime Institute Consultant Expert leading, Amber Villegas - Williamson, opened with a quick recap of both the benefits and also possible concerns when using ECO Mode.

Benefits of Eco Mode often given by manufactures:
The benefit of eco-mode is that the efficiency of the bypass path is typically between 98.0% and 99%, compared to the base UPS efficiency of 94% to 97%. This means there is a pickup in UPS efficiency of between 2-5% when eco-mode is used.

Risks of Eco Mode
Eco-mode cannot predict the future. It must respond to a problem that already exists and then switch to the inverter. This means that a mains power problem can get through the UPS to the critical load until the following four things happen:
• The power problem is detected
• The UPS determines whether and how to respond
• The UPS inverter is energized (Note: in advanced eco-mode, it is already energized)
• Static bypass switch commanded off and the critical load taken up by the inverter

The Roundtable began with the current situation within the members facilities. All but 1 member on the call were not currently using ECO Mode, but are in the middle of the decision-making process internally regarding whether or not to do so. For those considering it, being taken into consideration were
• Looking to improve the overall efficiency of their Datacenter
• Concern regarding Filtration and Switching Times
• Concern that availability will not be the same when in use

Unfortunately for the member on the call that had been using their UPS in ECO Mode said that it had recently been approximately 80% to blame for a system outage in their facility that was merely seconds from total shutdown and loss of IT load.

As the discussion moved onto members experiences in general with UPS’s one member commented that current UPS’s are now overly engineered, firmware is often the cause of issues and unfortunately this is now causing customers to lose faith with the vendors. The member who had suffered the near outage confirmed the issue was down to a firmware upgrade that was needed but that the manufacturer had not informed them about, raising another issues – how, and should, the vendors communicate more to customers issues with equipment. From those that had joined the call one vendor name seemed to feature more than others, and a concern was that they may be trying to save reputation, or just have not got a coordinated customer communication program across different divisions, but that at this point it is causing a lack of confidence and in some cases a decision to no longer use them entirely. While this is not directly related to ECO Mode it is an important point to note regarding relationships that vendors need to improve upon with their customers.


Back to ECO Mode – another Uptime Institute consultant joining the call, Paul Johnson, brought up the question if those on the call thought that the vendors were conducting comprehensive enough factory acceptance tests to try and mitigate these issues. One member on the call thought that indeed the manufacturers were indeed trying to condense these tests down too much, and, given the issues they are seeing this is possibly contributing to the fall in confidence.

Amber brought the call to the final point by asking if Datacenter Operators are considering all financial sides to using ECO Mode. While most agreed that they have costed the energy savings relating to switching the UPS into ECO-Mode none had conducted a costing exercise to understand the financial impact to their business should the UPS fail to operate as intended. It was agreed that manufacturers will often stress the energy cost savings to an organization and given the near miss that was experienced the financial loss and damage to reputation does not outweigh the risk.