The Cleantech Show #033: Green Uninterrupted Power and Cooling Systems, Interview with Jim Clishem, CEO, Active Power
The Cleantech Show #33 (MP3 - 14MB - 38min)
Interview with Jim Clishem, CEO, Active Power
More and more energy efficiency is gaining focus as a means of reducing carbon emissions, energy consumption and cost. In data centres for instance the power demands in an individual server rack have gone from approximately 1kw to 7kw in the last 10 years. This has a two fold effect. Namely increased electricity directly used by computer hardware, and that used by cooling systems to keep the resulting increased heat dissipation in check.
The other driver for better energy efficiency and energy management is to help cope with availability, reliability and quality of power provision. For instance in China or even parts of the US there are increasing instances of brown and blackouts. Solutions purely aimed at the supply end of the market are only half of the only answer.
The UPS (uniterrupted power supply) forms part of this mix, particularly in locations like Data Centres or high quality manufacturing and fabrication facilities.
On this weeks episode of The Cleantech Show we are going to explore the energy management and UPS industry with Jim Clishem, CEO of Active Power (NASDAQ: ACPW) and in particular their Flywheel based UPS and the company’s CoolAir system, which provides both backup power and cooling. Both of these technologies provide a more energy efficient solution than traditional battery based UPS systems.
Active Power’s CleanSource Flywheel energy storage systems is able to achieve storage and release efficiencies of around 98% when compared with battery based systems operating in the 88% range. Losses of Two percent versus 12 percent equates to average savings of 84% protecting the same critical loads.
One of the interesting things that I learn’t during the interview is that now uninterrupted cooling systems are becoming more and more important in Data Centers. The reason being is that although most UPS systems backup the power provision to server farms, they don’t provide it to the air conditioning systems. Only a few minutes in these conditions and hardware can begin to fry.
Active Power also have their CoolAir DC system for this purpose. Essentially it stores energy in the form of compressed air and heat. During a utility outage, the compressed air is routed through a Thermal Storage Unit (TSU) to acquire heat energy. The heated air spins a simple turbine/alternator to produce electric power.
Enjoy the show.
cheers
Nick Bruse
Subscribe to TPN :: The Cleantech Show by Email - More about the host & contact details