The SMPS are burning: Check it out on Friday

night

Ever since I took the charge of electrical maintenance I was told that
the quality of the electricity supply is very bad and it cause lots of damages to the
computers and accessories in this office. Quite a handful SMPS (the switch mode power
supply unit of the computers) need to be replaced every year.

A week later in the morning meeting the IT-head raised the point to the big boss and the
big boss asked my boss to do the needful.

So, my boss called me and told me to talk to the electricity supplier and get to the root
cause of the problem.

[SMPS are burning quite often]

Boss, 'Is this an electrical problem or an electronic problem ?'. My boss says, 'It starts
with 230 volt 50 Hz., so it's you at the beginning'.

OK, then let me remove the 230 volt, 50 Hz. Supply from the socket . I'm off and so
gone are their problem.

Boss got my point. 'OK, you prove that the supply is OK, or within the permissible limit.
I'll see the rest'.

I knew that there is nothing wrong with the supply. The problem is with the SMPS itself.
But to prove my point I arranged a demand side management audit. Half of the cost is
borne by the electricity supplier, in my case the Reliance Energy Limited. The auditors
came and did the audit for two days. The report was clean except little imbalances in the
R-Y-B phase currents and presence of some harmonics in the lines. All are with in limit.

The 'R' phase was taking almost 20% more current than the Y and B phase. That might
be causing the presence of harmonics. But there are more other prominent reasons for
generation of harmonics like, the CRT type desktop monitors , the UPS for the servers
and SATCOMs etc. I asked the auditors whether these were the reason for SMPS
failures but they were negative to it.

I start my investigation for the current imbalances. I did not have to probe much. The 'R'
phase was taking more currents as all the blowers of the 26 numbers AC machines are
connected to the 'R' phase only. So I told the technician to distribute the blower
connections to all the three phases uniformly.

Next week my electrician told me that the phase currents were perfectly balanced, all the
phases were taking 300 ampere currents at the energy meter connected at the metering
point.

I waited for next two weeks and then I told boss that my supply was clean and the little
current imbalances were perfectly ironed out. The IT guys should now look in to the
other side of the SMPS . Boss was quite satisfied.

[SMPS continues to burning]

During these two weeks another three SMPS burnt out ,among them one was big boss'
desktop computer.

Typically all these SMPS burnt out during morning start up / booting time. Not during
evening or any other time.

I asked my electrician to collect one damaged SMPS for me. I opened it but it was so
heavily burnt that nothing was left to investigate. So I opened the SMPS of my home
computer.

[How it works: More help from Internet]

The 230 volt AC is first made to 230 volt DC by a bridge rectifier and then the
switching transistor or MOSFETs switches it to high frequency AC voltages. It then goes
through a ferrite core isolating power transformer. After that it is converted to DC
voltages by rectifier diodes.

+5 volt …...red color line …. at least 4 such wires

+12 volt......yellow color line....at least 4 such wires
-12 volt.......blue color line....at least one such wire
+3.3 volt.......green color line... only one such line is there

For stabilizing all these different voltages there are many electrolyte and ceramic
capacitors. The oscillation section has a 3.3 volt (typically only one green color line)
which is when grounded (short with the black color line) the oscillation starts and the
cooling fan starts rotating along with all other lines become live. The color lines are
universal for all the SMPS for computer mother board. All these low voltage lines carry
very high current.
That means when you switch on your computer ,you simply short circuit the green line
with the black line.

This indicates one simple thing , when you do not switch off your computer from switch
board these 3.3 volt DC and 230 volt DC remains present in the entire SMPS supply line
.And so many electrolyte and ceramic capacitors need to work hard on no load current
on the weekends. Some will stop getting charged further and some will be charging
continuously (leaky capacitors).

The next Friday night I went to office to see the picture myself. Almost 60% computers
are not switched off from the switch board. The monitor lamps are glowing amber color
and the computers are all in stand by mode. After two days off on Monday morning
when they press the start button. These differently charged capacitors may get charged
together or some may fail. SMPS will burn....

The picture is very clear now. Most of the failures took place either on Monday morning
or after long weekends (3 days off).

Immediately I told the security guard to switch off these computers from switch board
and instructed them to do so on every Friday evening after they employees leave the
office.

[After 3 Months on these practice]

There is not a single SMPS failed since that Friday night. The IT-head is surprised how
the power quality is suddenly improved that there is no more SMPS failures.
I told my boss what has taken place in between. I was surprised when he said that he
knew it. He is a smart guy.
He told me to issue a circular for the changed practice.
….. …... …... …...

So , do your office face a similar problem. Check it out on Friday night.

S. Bera
Mumbai