COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL Technical Bulletin February 24, 2000

Technical Comparison: Delta-Conversion On-line vs. True Dual-Conversion On-line

In recent months, American Power Conversion (APC) has introduced the Danish-made Silcon DP300E three-phase UPS to the North American market. This product is advertised as Delta-Conversion Online technology, and is promoted as superior to the legacy double-conversion UPS products built by Liebert, Powerware and others.

Something for Nothing?

The claims made for the DP300E are truly spectacular. Some exerpts from their promotional materials include: Save 30% in installation costs. These savings will supposedly come from smaller diesel generators, smaller input cables, smaller input fuses, smaller input breakers, physically smaller UPS, and fewer components in a system. Save tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in operating costs over the life cycle of the UPS. It pays for itself in five years. Operating gains supposedly come from a moreefficient UPS, causing less of a load on building air conditioning and lower energy consumption. This financial gain comes with an even bigger benefit: total security, bulletproof power protection and peace of mind. In other words, these products claim to be even more reliable than dual-conversion UPS products. Improve the environment of the UPS by injecting fewer damaging harmonics back in to the input bus and providing unity power factor on the input and output of the UPS. Has APC discovered a way to make a 3-phase UPS more efficient, more reliable, more environmentally friendly, and less expensive all at the same time? Life experience tells us that everything has a cost, and that the laws of physics haven changed much in the past 30 years. The rest of this document will study t the DP300E to see if it can deliver all or any of its claimed benefits.

UPS Topologies: The Offline UPS

Before we can put these claims into perspective, we must discuss the different UPS topologies. The simplest type of UPS is the offline topology, shown in Figure 1 below. Under normal operating conditions, AC power from the utility passes straight through the UPS to the critical load. A charger or 4-quadrant converter. converts AC power to DC to charge the battery. The inverter is used to convert the DC power from the battery to create AC power to support the load when the utility fails. Normally the inverter is operating in the stand-by mode, keeping the batteries charged. Should the utility power go out of specification, the inverter powers the load, drawing energy from the battery. This topology is labelled single-conversion because at any point in time, power is only being converted one time. In normal operation, a small amount of power is being converted from AC to DC to maintain battery charge. When input AC power goes out of specification, the UPS converts the DC power to AC to support the load. When the input power goes out of specification, there is a power disturbance in output voltage as the power failure is detected and the output inverter changes from idling to carrying 100% of the connected load.

INPUT

Transfer Relay Battery Charger DC/AC Inverter

Filter

LOAD

Battery

Figure 1. Offline UPS The offline product can be made very inexpensively, and the efficiency is very high in normal operation. It is ideal for home use or for powering individual computer workstations running non-critical applications that only require outage protection. Offline products (like Liebert PowerSure ProActive) s sometimes have surge suppression and/or buck and boost circuits to compensate for high or low input voltage, but otherwise do not attempt to provide any significant input power conditioning.

UPS Topologies: The Line-Interactive UPS

The next step upward is the line-interactive topology, shown in Figure 2 below. It resembles the offline product, but inserts a transformer or inductor in series between the utility power source and the load. This inline inductor enables the UPS inverter to interact with incoming power and provide a measure of power conditioning to the load. Typically these 4-quadrant converters are constant voltage devices. They adjust to shifting loads by changing the output phase angle. Since the phase angle cannot be shifted quickly, the difference in power is extracted from the battery. The resulting frequent hits on the battery can shorten battery life. Another limitation of line-interactive products is that they cannot completely isolate the critical load from the input line without operating on battery. Small perturbations in frequency and power quality can get passed directly to the critical load. Without electrical isolation, common-mode noise also passes right through to the load.

INPUT

Transfer Relay

Filter

LOAD

Converter

Battery

Figure 2. Line-Interactive UPS Like the offline UPS, the line-interactive products can be inexpensive and efficient because they only support the entire critical load during power disturbances, and only for the duration of the battery. Compared to the offline UPS, the line-interactive units pay a small efficiency penalty for the series inductor and for losses associated with their power conditioning functions. And like offline products, the line-interactive products usually have a small (but measurable) amount of voltage sag on at least one phase during the transition to battery power. Liebert PowerSure Interactive UPSs are examples of lines interactive products.

UPS Topologies: The Dual-Conversion On-line UPS

The premium UPS topology is the true on-line or dual-conversion product shown in Figure 3 below. Incoming AC power is rectified to DC power to supply the internal DC bus of the UPS. The output inverter takes the DC power and produces clean AC power to support the critical load. Batteries attached to the DC bus are float charged during normal operation. When the input power is out of spec, the batteries provide power to support the inverter and critical load.
Bypass Static Switch

CB3

Bypass Input Rectifier UPS Input

CB1 CB2

Critical Load Inverter

Battery

Figure 3. On-line UPS Liebert on-line UPS products include the UPStation GXT, the UPStation S, the UPStation S3, the Series 300 and the Series 600. Some advantages of this configuration include. The critical load is completely isolated from the incoming AC input power. The critical load is always being supplied by the output inverter, which is always being supplied from the internal DC bus. When input power fails, there is no transitional sag in the output voltage because the inverter is already operating on DC input. The input voltage and frequency may fluctuate, but the dual-conversion UPS doesn care (within t reason), since the rectifier is only making DC power to feed the DC bus. For example, a Liebert Series 600 UPS can operate indefinitely and even recharge its batteries with input voltage at 15% below nominal. It can continue to operate, without discharging the batteries, through voltage sags of 20% below nominal. Likewise if input frequency is fluctuating in and out of specification, the rectifier will continue to make DC power and the output inverter will continue to make 60 Hz power without using the battery. The output inverter usually contains an isolation transformer that can produce a separately derived neutral. This enables the UPS to be electrically isolated and provide common mode noise protection for the load. All Liebert three-phase UPS products have output isolation transformers as standard. The dual-conversion UPS is inherently dual-input, meaning that it has separate inputs for the rectifier and bypass circuits. The customer may request a single-input model as a convenience for installation, but dual-input UPS products are incrementally more fault-tolerant. In Liebert three-phase UPS products, the output inverter can sychronize to any internal or external reference source while operating in the normal mode (without using the battery). In normal operation, it will sync to its own bypass source. When operating on system batteries, it will normally sync to its internal reference clock. However, a true dual-conversion UPS can be used in a dual-bus power system, where the UPS will sync to the designated reference source in all operating modes: on utility, on batteries, or on the backup generator. A fault on the input line causes the UPS to go to battery power, but the UPS rectifier will not allow power from the DC bus to flow upstream. We will discuss this in more detail later. 3

 This design is very mature and very well understood. It has been applied successfully to every imaginable application. Our medium and large on-line products have achieved million-hour critical bus MTBF with this topology.

UPS Topologies: The Delta-Conversion On-line UPS

To begin with, Delta Conversion On-Line is a marketing trade name. It is not true on-line technology as defined by IEEE and NEMA where a rectifier and inverter are providing the regulated power to the load at all times. However, APC has trademarked the phrase and uses it to describe their specific topology. Figure 4 shows a diagram of the DP300E. This is a line-interactive UPS in the classic sense, meaning that the series transformer and output inverter interact with the incoming utility voltage to alter the output voltage. The DP300E has a small input inverter/charger(called the delta inverter) to also modify the input voltage. It is called a delta inverter because it theoretically only processes the difference (the delta) between the actual input waveform and the ideal output waveform. The delta inverter attaches to the DC bus, which it uses as a pipeline to exchange power with the output (main) inverter. Their literature shows the delta inverter passing power to the output inverter when input voltage is high, and the output inverter passing power to the delta inverter when input volts are low. Since the delta inverter processes only the difference in power in either direction, it is only rated for 20% of the UPS rated output. APC claims that the DP300E achieves unity input and output power factor because of the active filtration and power shuffling performed by the delta inverter.
Bypass Static Switch

Input Isolation Cont actor

Utility Disconnect Static Switch Input Filter Buck/Boost Transformer

Output Isolation Contactor

Input

Output
Output Filter

Inverter/ Charger

Main Inverter

Output Auto Xfmr

Neutral

Neutral

2 Batteries 192 Cells Each

Figure 4. APC Silcon UPS Block Diagram

In the normal mode (nominal input waveform, linear load on UPS), the input isolation contactor, the utility disconnect static switch and output isolation contactor are closed and utility power is directly supplied to the output. The delta inverter operates as a charger and delivers a float charge to the battery system. The main inverter is off or idling under these ideal (unreal) conditions.

When the input voltage is present but not nominal, the delta inverter injects a voltage into the buck/boost transformer to add or subtract from the input voltage to create a regulated output voltage, similar to some electronic voltage regulators on the market today. When the input power goes out of specification, the main inverter is activated to supply full output power and the utility disconnect static switch is turned off to prevent backfeeding, similar to an off-line UPS. Power failures include anytime the input voltage goes outside the regulation range of the delta inverter and whenever the input power source frequency or phase shift is not nominal. APC claims that the unit provides load harmonic current and power factor correction. That is correct, but it requires that the main inverter operate to inject the required compensation currents -- both harmonic currents and fundamental frequency reactive currents. Whenever the inverters operate, either the voltage correcting inverter/charger or the harmonic current and power factor-correcting main inverter, there are additional losses that significantly reduce the unit efficiencies well below the advertised 95% efficiency.

Actual Operating Efficiencies

A visit to the APC website yielded the following efficiency table for their 10 to 80 kVA units. There are columns for efficiency with resistive (linear) load and nominal input voltage (unit not doing anything), and columns for units with nominal input voltage but with nonlinear loading (requiring harmonic current compensation by the main inverter). Note the significant change in efficiencies for the real-world conditions of supplying nonlinear loads. Table 1. APC Silcon UPS Operating Efficiencies
%Load kVA 10 15 20 30 40 60 80
Linear Load

100%
Nonlinear Linear Load

75%
Nonlinear Linear Load

50%
Nonlinear Linear Load

25%
Nonlinear

94.3 94.3 94.9 94.3 95.0 94.0 95.0

91.0 90.0 91.8 90.8 92.4 90.5 92.5

93.5 93.6 94.3 93.4 94.3 92.9 94.0

89.1 87.7 90.0 88.5 90.8 88.0 90.5

91.3 92.0 93.3 91.5 92.9 90.3 92.3

85.5 83.0 86.5 84.8 87.7 84.9 87.8

86.6 86.2 89.0 86.2 88.4 83.5 86.7

76.0 71.8 77.0 74.0 79.0 74.5 78.9

The above efficiencies do not include losses for their optional external input or output isolation transformers. Since most customers prefer some amount of load isolation (see next section), an additional 3% must be subtracted from the above numbers to account for each external transformer. Although not shown on the chart, there are further declines in the unit operating efficiencies if the input voltage is not nominal and the inverter/charger must regulate the output voltage. The DP300E operating efficiencies with real-world operating conditions (i.e. when the loads are nonlinear and input voltages are not ideal) are not better than and often are worse than conventional, true on-line UPS operating efficiencies under the same operating conditions. To summarize, the advertised operating efficiencies of 95% can only be achieved in a perfect environment or a manufacturer test lab: s

 The connected load must be purely resistive, like a load bank or a room full of light bulbs. Since most units in this power range supply power for rooms full of computers with switch-mode power supplies, the real efficiency will be several points lower. The connected load must be close to 100% of rating. Since most data centers (especially with parallel-redundant UPSs) operate with the individual modules at about 50% load, the DP300E efficiency will be lower still. The customer must not require any electrical isolation or voltage transformation (see next section). Either of these will reduce efficiency by a minimum of 3%. The input line must be close to nominal rating. Otherwise the delta converter and the main inverter will be working to do power-quality corrections on the input and output, and will lose a couple of points of efficiency. By contrast, all Liebert three-phase UPS products are at least as efficient under any type of linear or nonlinear load, from 50% to 100% load, under a wide range of input conditions, and while providing output isolation and output voltage transformation.

Electrical Isolation and Voltage Transformation

Note that there is no electrical isolation of the output from the input power source with the DP300E. This UPS topology does not have an integral output isolation transformer that can be considered a separately derived power source. Neither does it provide common mode isolation. No voltage transformation is provided in the Delta Conversion topology. Therefore, the nominal output voltage is always the same as the nominal input voltage. For example, any 480V input, 208/120V output application always requires an extra stepdown transformer that reduces the system efficiency (typically by another 3 to 4%) and increases the unit footprint.

Dual Input
The DP300E module is inherently single input. There is no way to have separate feeders for the rectifier input and the bypass input. This introduces a single point of failure as the bypass cannot be supplied from a separate source.

Maintenance Bypass
The DP300E does not include wraparound maintenance bypass. Maintenance bypass is important to allow maintenance (including normal preventive maintenance) to be safely performed on the UPS system without disturbing the load operation. The disconnect switches that provide this function are built into the separate bypass cabinet, which contains the input and output switches normally included in a three-phase, dual-conversion UPS. The small footprint of the DP300E can be deceiving since adding the normally required maintenance bypass or stepdown transformer significantly increases the footprint of the installed system. By contrast, the Liebert Series 600 and Series 300 provide internal maintenance bypass as standard.

Batteries
The battery system for the DP300E is very unconventional: a center-tapped, high-voltage battery system. For 480VAC systems, 384 cells are used in two 192-cell strings. The float voltage is over 850VDC. This requires special consideration for the wiring and DC disconnect switches, and has serious safety

implications and installation considerations for any battery applications on racks. Two separate multipole disconnect switches are utilized due to the unconventionally high voltage. Some other observations concerning the DP300E battery system: The high number of cells in series creates more cells to maintain and reduced reliability due to the increased probability of a cell failure (higher parts count). The output inverter is referenced to the center tap of the battery. Any imbalance in battery string voltages are reflected in the output voltage, thus potentially subjecting the load equipment to DC offsets. With 192 cells in each string, there is a high probability of such an imbalance developing. When the DP300E is operating on battery power, the center tap of the battery is used as the return path for the neutral current. This means that the critical load will operate ungrounded if there is no input neutral provided with the neutral-to-ground bond in the circuit. The input neutral is required for all applications, whether or not the UPS supplies 4-wire loads, to provide the proper grounding of the UPS for safety purposes. This requirement increases the installation costs of the DP300E.

Generator Compatibility
It is ironic that APC should promote this UPS as generator-friendly when generator interaction problems for line-interactive UPSs are well documented. Line-interactive products (including the DP300E) require stable source frequency and phase shift. Stable source frequency is required since the line-interactive inverters of the DP300E must track the supply frequency to provide the voltage and current correction, and the output frequency of the system is the same as the input frequency unless it is operating on battery. A classic operational problem is the starting of other loads on the generator causing the generator output frequency to vary, which then causes the line-interactive UPS to cycle on to battery s operation. The problem is especially pronounced with natural-gas-powered gensets. This repetitive battery cycling can cause the battery to discharge completely, while significantly shortening battery life. Another potential line-interactive UPS and generator problem is the generator instability that occurs when the UPS load is transitioned to the generator. The solution requires that the frequency window (delta f) and sychronizing slew rate (df/dt) of the lineinteractive UPS that defines a power failure be widened well beyond critical load tolerances. Generally acceptable critical load limits are 1 Hz for frequency window and 1 Hz/second for slew rate. In order to operate properly on gensets (i.e. to avoid going on battery too often), the DP300E is set to sychronize in a 4 Hz window and at a 4 Hz/second slew rate. These variations are passed on to the critical load. Conventional on-line UPSs rectify the input supply and can accommodate large swings in supply frequency while continuing to supply regulated, stable output frequency, without the use of the battery. Further, the major on-line UPS manufacturers have developed input current distortion reduction techniques that greatly improve the compatibility of UPS with generators to allow closer load sizing. APC claims that dual-conversion UPS products need 3x generator sizing (compared to their supposed 1.3x oversizing). However, we have observed Liebert Series 600T products used with 1.25x to 1.5x oversizing without problems. One other consideration: no provisions are included in the DP300E to inhibit battery recharge while operating on generator. Conventional on-line UPS designs typically include an On generator contact input to reduce or inhibit battery recharging while operating on generator.

Parallel-Redundant Systems
The APC advertisements proclaim that they can put up to nine Silcon modules in parallel for larger system applications. This sounds impressive to the non-technical person, but rings alarm bells for experienced facility managers. First of all, reliable systems should have as few components as possible, and should have only as many parallel UPS modules as needed to ensure redundancy. It better to have a few large ones than nine small s ones. Second, the DP300E parallel-redundant system has no system-level static bypass switch. During overload or maintenance bypass conditions, all of the module static switches must fire in parallel, in perfect synchronization. The static bypass switches in all modules are electrically in parallel, creating multiple lower-capacity paths whose current is entirely dependent on the parallel circuit impedances. Even minor differences in cable routing or length results in unbalanced currents in the various bypass paths, potentially overloading the lowest impedance path. APC tacitly acknowledges this problem by requiring that all parallel modules be fitted with identical-length input and output cables. Failure to properly match these impedances can lead to cascaded failures during overload or fault-clearing conditions. Third, the Silcon system has no system-level monitoring in their system cabinet. The user has no indication of system-level status, problems or alarm conditions. Fourth, no matter how many units are put in parallel, the APC system still has a single-input power source with multiple UPS modules fed from a single input switch. Fifth, these products cannot be used in dual-bus power systems, described in the next section.

Dual-Bus Power Systems

Best practices for data centers now means dualbus power systems for all three-phase loads. This configuration has two independent UPS systems, with both systemspower available to every item of load equipment, as shown in Figure 5 below. This system topology brings power redundancy as close as possible to the point of use, and makes full utilization of load equipment that has dual power cords. The enabling technology is a Liebert innovation called Load Bus Sync , which keeps the output of two or more UPS systems constantly in sync, even when the systems are operating on batteries or asynchronous backup generators. This means that downstream equipment can be switched transparently between the two power sources. Another advantage of this configuration, called distributed redundancy, is that it increases the faultFigure 5. Dual-bus Power System resiliency of the system. Studies show that 80% of power failures originate between the UPS and the critical load equipment. By bringing two power sources to each item of distribution equipment, the distributed-redundant system can survive a higher percentage of all power disruptions. Further, the entire AC power system can be maintained without disrupting the load operation: each UPS can carry the full load and continue to provide conditioned power while the other UPS is being serviced. 8

The DP300E cannot be configured for dual-bus operation because of the line-interactive design. The DP300E can only sync to its own input, and cannot sync to an external reference without operating on battery.

Comments on General System Reliability

Setting aside the inherent limitations of line-interactive UPS for a moment, let ask ourselves: What s does a customer really need in a three-phase UPS? The first (and obvious) answer is reliability. All the nifty gadgets and features are meaningless if the unit cannot support a customer load reliably in a 24x7 s operation. Therefore, let look at a few key questions concerning reliability: s Are there any single points of failure? The DP300E does, indeed, have single points of failure. First, the product is inherently single input, rather than having separate bypass and rectifier inputs like conventional true on-line UPS products. Therefore, every switch or wired connection between the unit and its bypass cabinet could be a potential single point of failure. In Figure 2, which only shows the UPS module itself, we see input and output isolation contactors, and two continuously rated static switches that must continually have control power and gate signals. The input contactor is a conspicuous single point of failure. Is the unit susceptible to fault conditions? Input faults are not a problem for dual-conversion UPS products. The input rectifier only allows power flow in one direction so an input line fault merely causes the unit to operate on battery. Line-interactive and offline UPS products are notoriously susceptible to input faults. That why they typically have a Utility-Disconnect Static s Switch and fast-blowing fuses on the input, attempting to prevent feeding power from the DC bus back to the utility. The DP300E has a utility disconnect that is not forced commutated and it doesn ensure that the inverter is disconnected from the utility quickly. Certain types of faults, t particularly line-to-line faults, can cause the inverter fuses to blow. This unavoidably dumps the load, since the unit has no separate bypass line to which it can transfer. In other situations, the input fuses might blow, forcing the UPS to go on battery before eventually dumping the load. DP300E systems are also vulnerable to faults between the UPS and the distribution equipment, since they are inherently single-bus solutions and can provide synchronized solutions with dual t power paths to the PDUs. Is the DC bus reliable? Battery systems are the heart of UPS reliability. However, there are questions about the APC approach. For example, the DP300E uses an unconventionally high DC bus voltage (850 VDC float) with 384 cells in series. This is an unusually high number of seriesconnected cells to maintain. Furthermore, these are all valve-regulated batteries, with a predicted life of 3-5 years, per APC documents. Any weak cells in series can cause loss of the UPS function or a DC offset in the output voltage as described earlier in this paper. Furthermore, this UPS topology has grounding and isolation issues (discussed earlier) that may prevent it from providing acceptable performance. Is the design as bulletproof as the ads claim? In a laboratory setting with a clean input line and a perfectly linear load, the APC unit is very efficient since both inverters are idle. Most customer sites are different. The tables shown earlier prove that the Silcon products are not very efficient when the connected load is anything but a well-mannered resistive load bank. This indicates that the unit actually becomes a dual-conversion device as both inverters are performing power-quality corrections to cope with the non-linear loads that are the norm in the industry.. How good is the service organization? APC is very new to the three-phase power industry, and Silcon is a European company with limited prior penetration of the North American market. APC 9

does not have the installed base required to support a nationwide network of factory service engineers to assure timely access to competent service personnel. For the next couple of years, most sites will be a first for the various regional sales and service organizations.

Conclusion
In an ideal world with clean input power and linear loads, the DP300E does not have to do anything and can meet its advertised efficiency and power quality goals. But in the real world, it cannot compare to the performance, efficiency, safety and reliability of conventional dual-conversion, true on-line UPS products.

10